Nvidia sides with gamers

[Raffy98]

You may have noticed that right now it's incredibly expensive to build your own PC and you may think that companies like Nvidia, AMD etc. are benefitting a lot from this. Right now, yes... what about the future though?
As the title says, Nvidia has stated, through one of his intermediaries, that it wants retailers to prioritize gamers over miners when selling their GPUs; mainly because of the incredibly low stock of graphics cards due to miners buying noticeable quantities of them all at once for their mining farms, thus increasing the price for the real target of those products: gamers.
Secondly, miners are not a reliable source of profit for GPU makers: if miners find some better hardware from other competitors, they won't think twice about diverting their purchases. In other words, they're not loyal customers. Problem is that retailers have the final choice, they may or may not want to follow Nvidia's directions and it's not easy to blame them.
If that was not enough, here's a table which highlights the difference between the MSRP and the actual pricing:

Spoiler:

I think this is really damaging the gaming industry and making it difficult for people who want to build or upgrade their machines do so. I put together a build for a client that requested it last week with an i7, a GTX 1070 and 16 GB of RAM being the main components: final price was €1500 excluding VAT (which in my country is 22%).
This phenomenon is not only targeting GPUs but also RAM, think that 16 GB of RAM can easily surpass €160 at the moment, while last year you could easily find a pair of 8 GB sticks for €110-130 at max.
What are your thoughts on this?

(Source: https://www.eteknix.com/nvidia-asks-retailers-to-prioritize-gamers-over-miners/)​

 

[Arsenic]

I had to buy a different card than I originally wanted because it was always out of stock, and when it wasn't it was like 1.3k! Apparently MSI wasn't on the radar and it seems like a good card so far.

I hope you choke on your allcoins, miners. Stick to Titan series cards, that's what they fucking built them for. Server and farms and shit.

 

[KetsuekiR]

Maybe we should blame Nvidia for a profit-centric policy instead of miners who are just making a purcahse for their own use?

 

[Starry Windy]

For all this time I have no idea that graphic cards were also sought by cryptominers, and I was surprised when I heard that the prices of graphic cards went too steep nowadays. So I think, graphic cards should be easier to get for PC users/gamers who simply wants to buy one to upgrade their gaming PC or wanted to build one.

Now I'm wondering, given that Nvidia has taken a stance, will AMD take the same path as its rival regarding this?

 

[KetsuekiR]

For all this time I have no idea that graphic cards were also sought by cryptominers, and I was surprised when I heard that the prices of graphic cards went too steep nowadays. So I think, graphic cards should be easier to get for PC users/gamers who simply wants to buy one to upgrade their gaming PC or wanted to build one.

Now I'm wondering, given that Nvidia has taken a stance, will AMD take the same path as its rival regarding this?

I think graphics cards should be easier to get for everyone. I'm not a miner or a hardcore gamer - I couldn't afford a piece of plastic on the shape of a good graphics card - but I don't understand why either is more important than the other.

 

[Tsutarja]

Maybe we should blame Nvidia for a profit-centric policy instead of miners who are just making a purcahse for their own use?

What do you mean by that?

 

[KetsuekiR]

What do you mean by that?

From what I understood from the OP was that the price of cards is a result of Nvidia not liking the low levels of loyalty and continued income from the mining community. What I've been seeing is a lot of is negativity towards miners and much less towards Nvidia itself.

 

[Tsutarja]

From what I understood from the OP was that the price of cards is a result of Nvidia not liking the low levels of loyalty and continued income from the mining community. What I've been seeing is a lot of is negativity towards miners and much less towards Nvidia itself.

The negativity towards miners is the fact that they are talking up all of the stock on video cards from NVIDIA and their vendors, not using them and just storing them, taking photos/bragging online of the stock, all to prevent legit consumers who will need them for builds or customization from buying them.

As a result of the mining, NVIDIA has had to increase prices on their stock to keep them on store shelves, and it hits us hard as legit consumers because we wouldn't be able to afford the product.

It's Economics 101 here: supply and demand.

 

[KetsuekiR]

The negativity towards miners is the fact that they are talking up all of the stock on video cards from NVIDIA and their vendors, not using them and just storing them, taking photos/bragging online of the stock, all to prevent legit consumers who will need them for builds or customization from buying them.

As a result of the mining, NVIDIA has had to increase prices on their stock to keep them on store shelves, and it hits us hard as legit consumers because we wouldn't be able to afford the product.

It's Economics 101 here: supply and demand.

Why are miners not legit consumers?

 

[Raffy98]

They are "legit" consumers, however, they're hoarding all the stock just for monetary gain, and are therefore creating a shortage that causes issues for everyone. In addition, they're probably only using it for mining, and they'll probably sell them off should their cryptocurrency of choice tank at any point in time (Which could be days, weeks, months, or years, depending on the strength of the currency) just to make back some of their loss (And it's more at a minimal loss, if they got enough crypto they might just be making more profit at that point). Gamers, on the other hand, purchase a graphics card/memory as a long-term investment. They're buying it for gaming/streaming/graphics/video and they'll use it for a number of years until it's obsolete or their game of choice doesn't run at the quality they want. Then they'll upgrade. That being said, miners don't care what graphics card they want as long as they can mine, they don't give a **** what features it has as long as it can compute fast. Gamers on the other hand use it and profile it and figure out its quirks, and they can recommend it and spread it by word of mouth or through online posts, which companies would rather have as they can get other long-term customers that way.

In addition, Raffy mentioned that they're not loyal customers. Wherever a miner can save money on a mass amount of GPUs, they'll go to that company, even if it means bouncing around between companies.

You couldn't have explained it better, nice job. :>

 

[Arsenic]

Not to mention they don't use any other parts of the Nvidia suite. No Gsync, no GeForce Experience, No using Nvidia's streaming service, etc. That's a whole lot of Nvidia stuff that's getting less traffic. Non-loyal customers.

They care not for the customer, only the cheapest product.

 

[KetsuekiR]

They are "legit" consumers, however, they're hoarding all the stock just for monetary gain, and are therefore creating a shortage that causes issues for everyone. In addition, they're probably only using it for mining, and they'll probably sell them off should their cryptocurrency of choice tank at any point in time (Which could be days, weeks, months, or years, depending on the strength of the currency) just to make back some of their loss (And it's more at a minimal loss, if they got enough crypto they might just be making more profit at that point). Gamers, on the other hand, purchase a graphics card/memory as a long-term investment. They're buying it for gaming/streaming/graphics/video and they'll use it for a number of years until it's obsolete or their game of choice doesn't run at the quality they want. Then they'll upgrade. That being said, miners don't care what graphics card they want as long as they can mine, they don't give a **** what features it has as long as it can compute fast. Gamers on the other hand use it and profile it and figure out its quirks, and they can recommend it and spread it by word of mouth or through online posts, which companies would rather have as they can get other long-term customers that way.

In addition, Raffy mentioned that they're not loyal customers. Wherever a miner can save money on a mass amount of GPUs, they'll go to that company, even if it means bouncing around between companies.

Right, but that's their right as a consumer. Blaming a seperate group of people for exercising their right to buy whatever they want, whenever they want, because it's inconvenient to us seems selfish. Pointing it out is one thing but there's a clear level of downright hate that isn't great.

 

[Tsutarja]

Right, but that's their right as a consumer. Blaming a seperate group of people for exercising their right to buy whatever they want, whenever they want, because it's inconvenient to us seems selfish. Pointing it out is one thing but there's a clear level of downright hate that isn't great.

How are we, the non-mining consumers, being selfish? It's the miners who are being selfish by buying all of these products up in the first place, posting to social media pictures of all the GPUs they're acquiring (like this one), and bragging about how they plan to use them all for personal use. Last I checked, one GPU is plenty for one individual for gaming PC needs.

 

[KetsuekiR]

How are we, the non-mining consumers, being selfish? It's the miners who are being selfish by buying all of these products up in the first place, posting to social media pictures of all the GPUs they're acquiring (like this one), and bragging about how they plan to use them all for personal use. Last I checked, one GPU is plenty for one individual for gaming PC needs.

They're not using it for gaming, instead using it for another purpose. You can't expect the market to cater to you and your needs only.

 

[Raffy98]

They're not using it for gaming, instead using it for another purpose. You can't expect the market to cater to you and your needs only.

Except we're not talking about only, say, Tsutarja's needs, but about the needs of millions of people who need just 1 or 2 graphics cards to play their games or do projects and seeing people bragging about their shiny new 50 GPUs that they'll use for everything but ther initial purpose makes me (and not only me) just a tiny bit mad. lol
I see your point though, the market is open and stopping a phenomenon like this is not easy, but it needs some sort of regulation.

 

[KetsuekiR]

Except we're not talking about only, say, Tsutarja's needs, but about the needs of millions of people who need just 1 or 2 graphics cards to play their games or do projects and seeing people bragging about their shiny new 50 GPUs that they'll use for everything but ther initial purpose makes me (and not only me) just a tiny bit mad. lol
I see your point though, the market is open and stopping a phenomenon like this is not easy, but it needs some sort of regulation.

No it doesn't, though. It annoying you doesn't mean we should infringe on the right of any consimer to buy any amount of the product for whatever use. The point I'm trying to push is the ubderlying principle that miners have the right to do what they do and they should always have that right, as you and I do.

Like I said, there's a difference between pointing out hoe prices have gone because of them and outright cursing and spewing hate and considerong forcefully stopping them from enjoying their rights.

 

[Raffy98]

No it doesn't, though. It annoying you doesn't mean we should infringe on the right of any consimer to buy any amount of the product for whatever use. The point I'm trying to push is the ubderlying principle that miners have the right to do what they do and they should always have that right, as you and I do.

Like I said, there's a difference between pointing out hoe prices have gone because of them and outright cursing and spewing hate and considerong forcefully stopping them from enjoying their rights.

I'm not hating on them in any way! I'll say that the company I work in does have some small mining rigs, should be 8 video cards in total (R9 290s), 2 for each rig, they also got them 4-5 years ago when this mining thing was all new, so I should basically hate my colleagues :p (not very though, they're just 8).
I also think that your right to do something ends when you're putting at risk the right of someone else (in this case, gamers), this is gonna hurt everyone, even the miners themselves. If they want to change their investments, good luck selling some video cards that will be old, abused to the extreme and that have sustained incredible amounts of heat from the other cards and components around them, I wouldn't buy such a card because it could drop dead on me very soon! Oh well, I guess they just won't tell you what it was used for, hence why I almost never end up buying used components in the first place. :>

 

[Arsenic]

Raff said most of what I wanted to

I want to just reinforce that isn't mass purchase of card, especially when not used for intended purpose, infringe on gamer's right to purchase via lack of stock/skyrocketing prices? I mean some miners are just being assholes about it too taking selfies with their 50 cards and making jokes about how they wiped out store stocks. I mean I think it was already stated that miners even have made tons of resources put in place to circumvent purchase limits put in place to make the playing field fair for everyone

It hurts even more because they are choosing not to buy the product made for farms or server banks or whatnot, The Nvidia Titan series. The Titan, Titan X, etc. Go buy those, they're designed for it. Not gaming cards that aren't made for raw calculating power.

 

[Melody]

It's bad that miners are hogging the stock. They have no right to buy as many as they do. Worse is going to be the flood of trashed, used GPUs hitting the market when cryptos crash out due to market correction. That too will significantly hurt manufacturer's bottom lines as well as their reputations, as the OEM will be blamed even when the cards are resold as used.

I think it's very sensible for them to warn retailers of the issue and encourage them not to promote this behavior, especially preventing resellers from hoarding stock due to demand to make a quick buck or letting customers buy more than a matched pair of the items not intended for mining.

Furthermore those buying to resale at scalper prices ought to be prosecuted to the full extent of the law, and forced to give all their stock back to the manufacturer and eat an additional 2x MSRP per unit fine. (Use this to fully refund minus MSRP those who already bought a card at elevated prices and pay the remainder to the manufacturer as damages

 

[Desox]

Miners have the right to buy if they wish but the actual situation is ludicrous. They are not buying one, two or three cards, they buy by the dozens or more! And I've heared people blaming NVIDIA and AMD. Give it a rest, unless they control how much they sell to who there's no way they can do anything. I read an article saying they're at full capacity and still can't meet demands, because the moment they touch retail the cards are instantly sold.

I was planning to replace my graphics card and install more memory but can't because prices have doubled. It's ridiculous that we've gotten to the moment where pre made builts are cheaper! And now some miners are buying those, taking the cards out and selling them at the same price! Do they think us "lowlife" no-miners are some kind of pleb or something?

It's greed without limits. I understand if someone wants to make a living out of this but it's ridiculous and egotistical at this point.

Everyone went crazy with these coins. How can it be, HOW CAN IT BE that the mining consumes more ammount of energy than my country? Do we really need to be this low, just for a magic digital coin? It's pure speculation, I seriously can't figure out myself how some people became so aggresive and greedy over this.

I disagree with this deregulated thing, it only has showed it brings the worst of most people. If this trend continues for 5 years without it I can only fear the worst.