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posted by Fnord666 on Monday July 10 2017, @02:47PM   Printer-friendly
from the the-pickaxe-GPU dept.

German retailer MindFactory has removed many AMD and Nvidia graphics cards from sale because the products have a delivery time of 3 months. According to them, the GPU shortage affects "the whole of Germany" or even the "whole Europe".

The demand for GPUs to mine cryptocurrencies, particularly Ethereum, has led to OEMs creating products specifically tailored to cryptocurrency mining. For example, new cards that are smaller, have fewer display ports, with cooling systems:

While the GPU shortage continues, there are some signs of improvement. There are now several models of Nvidia's GeForce GTX 1070 in stock from various OEMs, but prices remain high and relatively close to the price of the GTX 1080. There are also a few more GTX 1060 6GB graphics cards available, and the price on the least expensive one has dropped significantly, down from $484.80 to $259.99.

At the same time, however, the price on the least expensive GTX 1050 Ti has climbed by about $10, and several models now cost around $200. The price on the least expensive Geforce GTX 1060 3GB has also climbed by roughly $20, as well. This likely indicates that sales of these cards have increased somewhat, pushing prices up accordingly.

Meanwhile, several OEMs, including Asus, Biostar, Sapphire, and Zotac, have announced new mining graphics cards that are tailored for cryptocurrency mining. We have also seen a new motherboard from Asrock that can support up to 13 GPUs for mining. Biostar has a similar board for AM4 CPUs that can support six GPUs. Although we haven't seen them yet, EVGA and MSI also have mining GPUs coming soon, and MSI will also have a motherboard designed for mining. Although these may be attractive to cryptocurrency miners, one source told us that they use the same GPU cores as traditional graphics cards, and thus don't address the underlying supply problem.

The shortages go all the way to the source. OEMs are reportedly having trouble getting GPU cores from Nvidia, and Nvidia can't get enough from TSMC. This is presumably the same situation for AMD and GlobalFoundries.

Previously: BitCoin, Ethereum and Gold
Cryptocoin GPU Bubble?


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  • (Score: 2) by cosurgi on Monday July 10 2017, @04:26PM (6 children)

    by cosurgi (272) on Monday July 10 2017, @04:26PM (#537157) Journal

    Guys who want to mine whatever cryptocurrency should first learn about difficulty mechanisms. Seriously. Usually they pay something like 5000 USD, to see that few months later their monthly payout falls below 1 USD. It has always been (since 2009) more profitable to buy some cryptocurrency instead. Just have a look at the price graphs (of whatever cryptocurrency you want), and the difficulty graphs, and do your math based on hashes per second, and speed of hardware available at that time.

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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by bob_super on Monday July 10 2017, @04:45PM (2 children)

    by bob_super (1357) on Monday July 10 2017, @04:45PM (#537169)

    I'm wondering how many of the mid-sized miners are just IT guys who don't pay a dime for the GPU power they contribute.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 10 2017, @05:25PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 10 2017, @05:25PM (#537192)

      Careful there, Bob. A few of those bioinformatics startup fealls saw The Producers one too many times and aren't too shy about driving a Porsche on their way to "cure cancer".

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 10 2017, @05:26PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 10 2017, @05:26PM (#537193)

      Loads of cryptocurrency mining is done via bundled crapware and outright botnets too.

  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by TheB on Monday July 10 2017, @05:36PM (2 children)

    by TheB (1538) on Monday July 10 2017, @05:36PM (#537202)

    Mining is risky. If your calculations don't have you making profit within 9 months you should probably stay away.

    Some people do get lucky and invest in hardware at the right time.
    A friend of mine purchased $12k worth of ASICs in January and has made $24k worth of coin in 7 months.
    After operating costs that is about $7.5k profit so far this year.
    He was lucky. BTC has doubled in price, his average daily BTC reward has only dropped by ~7%

    The same hardware now cost twice as much and has a shorter potential lifetime of profitability.
    It's a risky game to play but some people do make money... until they reinvest all their earnings back into equipment and the market shifts.

    Things to watch out for:
    -Difficulty goes up over time with more rigs mining.
    -New hardware makes old hardware less profitable. Electricity costs end up being more that you can expect to mine.
    -Coin prices fluctuate.
    -BTC rewards halve every 4 years.
    -Potential regulations.
    -Ease of cashing out.
    ...

    • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 10 2017, @08:46PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 10 2017, @08:46PM (#537317)

      Think about it.

      If you make GPUs that give a massive advantage in mining, then do you

      10 sell these GPUs
      20 use the GPUs for a few months until they're non-competitive then goto 10

      Once the competition field is equal there's less money in mining, so that is the point to sell the useless shit.

      • (Score: 2) by TheB on Tuesday July 11 2017, @11:47AM

        by TheB (1538) on Tuesday July 11 2017, @11:47AM (#537540)

        ASIC miner manufacturers sell the hardware for less than they would make mining themselves to mitigate risk.
        Guaranteed profit now as opposed to potentially 5%-20% more in 2 years.
        It allows them to make more chips now than they could if they were mining, resulting in more profits for themselves.
        Most of the time people would be better off investing in the stock market than taking on the manufacturer's risk.

        It isn't a bad idea for gamers with $500 GPUs sitting around to mine while not playing games.
        If enough gamers do so, GPU mining could become unprofitable again. This keeps the transaction verification decentralized.
        Won't work with bitcoins or other SHA256 crypto currencies though. ASIC dominate there and without another large use for them professional miners can continue to exist.