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Nvidia cripples cryptocurrency mining on RTX 3080 and 3070 cards

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621–630 of 818 posts

Re: Nvidia cripples cryptocurrency mining on RTX 3080 and 3070 cards

#621
post #441

This won't really do anything for availability or reducing scalper pricing. Miners are a sizeable proportion of sales but far from the majority. Gamers will be able to buy more of these GPUs but less of the non-LHR or AMD GPU's. GPU prices won't actually change. The real reason Nvidia is doing this is that when mining profitability inevitably drops, either because of a crypto price crash or Ethereum moving to Proof o…

Why would a gamer not buy a second hand card from a miner?

Re: Nvidia cripples cryptocurrency mining on RTX 3080 and 3070 cards

#622
post #592

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there anything sustainable about Bitcoin? But getting back on topic, Bitcoin miners long since moved to custom ASICs, you can't make a profit with GPUs any more.

I make $7-8 per day, after electrical costs, letting my 2080ti (normally used for flight sim, but when not in use…) run nicehash’s miner software. My electricity costs $0.0816 per kWh. Not a ton of money but it adds up after a month and the GPU was a sunk cost since I got it for gaming. It literally is profitable, for my situation anyway.

> My electricity costs $0.0816 per kWh.

I agree that the statement "you can't make a profit any more" is just incorrect because of the subjectivity of "you", but it's also worth noting that this is extremely variable - my electricity costs $0.38/kWh off-peak and $0.54/kWh on-peak.

Whether or not mining on existing hardware is profitable depends entirely on where you live, and since we're explicitly talking about the effects of an increased demand on GPUs due to mining, people are clearly not just using existing hardware.

Re: Nvidia cripples cryptocurrency mining on RTX 3080 and 3070 cards

#623
post #592

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I make $7-8 per day, after electrical costs, letting my 2080ti (normally used for flight sim, but when not in use…) run nicehash’s miner software. My electricity costs $0.0816 per kWh. Not a ton of money but it adds up after a month and the GPU was a sunk cost since I got it for gaming. It literally is profitable, for my situation anyway.

So at around $2500 a pop, you'd be looking at a year just to amortize your costs, and that's assuming BTC stays at its current insane levels. (A mighty assumption, since it's dropped 30% in the last week.)

2080ti's don't cost $2500.

???

Re: Nvidia cripples cryptocurrency mining on RTX 3080 and 3070 cards

#624
post #441

This won't really do anything for availability or reducing scalper pricing. Miners are a sizeable proportion of sales but far from the majority. Gamers will be able to buy more of these GPUs but less of the non-LHR or AMD GPU's. GPU prices won't actually change. The real reason Nvidia is doing this is that when mining profitability inevitably drops, either because of a crypto price crash or Ethereum moving to Proof o…

Why would a gamer not buy a second hand card from a miner?

the mining-only cards don't have video outputs

Re: Nvidia cripples cryptocurrency mining on RTX 3080 and 3070 cards

#625
post #592

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I make $7-8 per day, after electrical costs, letting my 2080ti (normally used for flight sim, but when not in use…) run nicehash’s miner software. My electricity costs $0.0816 per kWh. Not a ton of money but it adds up after a month and the GPU was a sunk cost since I got it for gaming. It literally is profitable, for my situation anyway.

So at around $2500 a pop, you'd be looking at a year just to amortize your costs, and that's assuming BTC stays at its current insane levels. (A mighty assumption, since it's dropped 30% in the last week.)

The volatility is the problem as it makes calculations unreliable but a year to cover your costs on a 2 year (if you upgrade to the latest graphics card every generation) or 4 year (if you go every second gen) life is a reasonable investment.

It's literally a ROI of 100-300%.

Or to put it another way it's similar to a risky stock with a compounding yearly return of 41% for four years.

Using a graphics card for mining that you have anyway is just gravy (apart from externalities which are another big problem).

Re: Nvidia cripples cryptocurrency mining on RTX 3080 and 3070 cards

#626
post #522

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I always find it interesting that statements like that ("scalpers hurt literally everyone") can just be made and treated as gospel by most people. Not only is the statement not self-evident, but to your point, just a small amount of thought on the issue makes it obvious what the value is. People love to get mad at a scapegoat rather than a root cause. So you blame the scalper rather than realizing that the conce…

Do you have any data on that ‘majority of people buy from scalpers’ claim? One reason for anti price gouging laws is that it is not uncommon for people to buy out all supply, then turn around and charge more/sit on a stockpile to solve the artificially created shortage they themselves created - a term for that being ‘cornering the market’. I haven’t generally seen too much anger at someone legitimately opening up sup…

There’s no shortage of people who tried to pull that and ended up with tens of thousands of dollars worth of toilet paper and hand sanitizer last year. If there’s not an actual shortage, merely a demand shock, trying to corner a market will not go well for you.

Re: Nvidia cripples cryptocurrency mining on RTX 3080 and 3070 cards

#627
post #470
post #444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not the point: the point is that Nvidia want to still have regular customers who, when they think "I need a gaming rig" think "Nvidia". If Nvidia becomes "GPUs are cryptominers", then once demand dries up, their marketshare is zilch, and no one's writing games optimized for Nvidia cards anymore, and there's a big pile of bugs they've not fixed with new games trying to use Nvidia cards.

Even worse, consoles aren't having these availability problems. If you buy a console, and you start building a games library, making friends who you play with on a daily basis (and you usually cannot crossplay between consoles and PC due to skill differences between controller/m+kb, sometimes it works with a controller on PC but most of the time it doesn't) then you are now locked into that ecosystem. You aren't buyi…

To be honest, I used a Telegram alerts group (Brobot) for 3090s and 5950Xs and was able to get both within a week of trying. There were only a couple opportunities but I managed to get 2x3090s and a 5950x within those windows. It's definitely doable, just very annoying. I'd rather get a spot in line than race to be through the door every time.

Re: Nvidia cripples cryptocurrency mining on RTX 3080 and 3070 cards

#628
post #592

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I make $7-8 per day, after electrical costs, letting my 2080ti (normally used for flight sim, but when not in use…) run nicehash’s miner software. My electricity costs $0.0816 per kWh. Not a ton of money but it adds up after a month and the GPU was a sunk cost since I got it for gaming. It literally is profitable, for my situation anyway.

So at around $2500 a pop, you'd be looking at a year just to amortize your costs, and that's assuming BTC stays at its current insane levels. (A mighty assumption, since it's dropped 30% in the last week.)

Or looked at another way, with only a year of mining you cover your costs, and everything after that is profit. I don't GPU mine, but I can certainly see why people do.

Re: Nvidia cripples cryptocurrency mining on RTX 3080 and 3070 cards

#629
post #470
post #444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not the point: the point is that Nvidia want to still have regular customers who, when they think "I need a gaming rig" think "Nvidia". If Nvidia becomes "GPUs are cryptominers", then once demand dries up, their marketshare is zilch, and no one's writing games optimized for Nvidia cards anymore, and there's a big pile of bugs they've not fixed with new games trying to use Nvidia cards.

Even worse, consoles aren't having these availability problems. If you buy a console, and you start building a games library, making friends who you play with on a daily basis (and you usually cannot crossplay between consoles and PC due to skill differences between controller/m+kb, sometimes it works with a controller on PC but most of the time it doesn't) then you are now locked into that ecosystem. You aren't buyi…

[deleted]

Re: Nvidia cripples cryptocurrency mining on RTX 3080 and 3070 cards

#630
post #470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even worse, consoles aren't having these availability problems. If you buy a console, and you start building a games library, making friends who you play with on a daily basis (and you usually cannot crossplay between consoles and PC due to skill differences between controller/m+kb, sometimes it works with a controller on PC but most of the time it doesn't) then you are now locked into that ecosystem. You aren't buyi…

To be honest, I used a Telegram alerts group (Brobot) for 3090s and 5950Xs and was able to get both within a week of trying. There were only a couple opportunities but I managed to get 2x3090s and a 5950x within those windows. It's definitely doable, just very annoying. I'd rather get a spot in line than race to be through the door every time.

Sounds pretty exactly like PS5 availability
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