There is a crypto boom, that is for sure, value of crypto has gone sky rocketing of recent combined with more and more people getting on that bandwagon, add on top a global silicon shortage and the inability to produce cards fast enough. What is nVidia (or AMD for that matter) to do about it.
With the ongoing shortage of GPU’s, you’d think that splitting the market up into crypto vs gaming would be good… right? I’m not convinced. There is more information appearing about the newer generation of crypto cards which appear to make it look like they are over priced and under performing.
nVidia appears to be thinking about that market split by producing a set of crypto cards – graphics cards without the output options. On paper, it sounds great, give miners something they want that doesn’t then inpact on other users, however what happens when those already quite limited use cards have run out of useful life due to other actual gaming graphics (higher speced ones or newer generation) cards being more suited… they’ll go straight to e-waste, they have no resaleability what so ever. At least if miners take the gaming graphics card stock, that will (eventually?) become computer gaming stock. The problem is, when?
So far prices have been published online that would indicate that the crypto cards are set at a level higher that of a normal gaming graphics card for a similar spec point, while a lot of those in crypto will pay extra for their hardware when it comes to looking at the ‘hash rate’ (or how many crypto calculations) these cards do, they are put along side cards 2-4 years old, not really matching their price point at all. This will then push crypto miners to buying gaming cards anyway… or is that all part of the plan – make them not really viable to prove “no-one wants them”?
Whats clear at the moment, it is proving hard to purchase graphics cards from both nVidia or AMD and there is no sign of that improving.