A mini rant - then a question about GFX cards (and mining)

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A mini rant - then a question about GFX cards (and mining)

Post by Rapier » Fri, 22. Sep 17, 18:52

Two weeks ago, I ordered a new graphics card (Nothing special an nVidia 1050 ti [Zotac]). After some problems with my payment card details, which took a week to sort out, the sellers were out of stock. So, I placed an order with another seller. That was last Saturday and the order was 'processed ' on Monday. With delivery advertised at 3-5days I should have received it today - or tomorrow if we're being generous. instead, I've just had an email saying that they don't have any in stock (they had more than 10 ast weekend) and offering me an alternative (an ASUS version of the same card). Both companies had decent reviews from a decent number of people, so how can they be so crap?
[/rant]

In looking at reviews and comparisons of various cards, I keep seeing people referring to mining - which I assume to be Bitcoins or other similar currency. I've seen media reports of people setting up 'farms' (not sure how that analogy works with mining - but still) to mine and buying up cheap graphics cards for them, but I'd passed it off as more hype than substance. I'm sure it's happening, but is it really happening to the extent that it's having the impact on availability of graphics cards that I see people suggesting? I just want to play some 2-3 year old games instead of 4-7 year old ones. Is it mining making that difficult, or am I just unlucky?
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Post by CBJ » Fri, 22. Sep 17, 19:05

I think you just got unlucky with your suppliers. Try Scan or Overclockers. Their stock indicators are usually fairly accurate, at least in my experience.

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Post by Rapier » Fri, 22. Sep 17, 19:13

Unfortunately, OcUK are on my blacklist for abuse of personal data and Scan don't have the Zotac in stock. Still unlucky - but thanks!
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Post by Alan Phipps » Fri, 22. Sep 17, 20:12

I don't know if this card-buying experience of mine is relevant to your question, but here goes.

A while ago I bought an AMD Radeon RX480 8 GB card from Amazon at a much reduced price compared with that through other vendors at the time. Amazon also said, however, that they could not guarantee when it would be in stock but assured of frequent periodic deliveries to reserved stock at the guaranteed low price. These were new cards and not reconditioned or returned ones.

I wondered at the time if Amazon somehow had an exclusive batch price deal directly with a Radeon manufacturer, or perhaps was somehow otherwise stockpiling them when the price was right.

The card arrived a week or so from order and was (and is) an excellent buy.
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Re: A mini rant - then a question about GFX cards (and mining)

Post by Morkonan » Fri, 22. Sep 17, 20:18

Rapier wrote:...Both companies had decent reviews from a decent number of people, so how can they be so crap?
There is no advantage to them to have just-in-time stock level reporting for consumers. None. In fact, it's detrimental, as it drives customers away.

So, they'll update it when the receive a shipment or at some other period or, perhaps, never... And, if they don't really have it in stock, there's nothing to say that they weren't expecting it.

So, you're a victim of bad business practices and/or a crappy inventory model, at best.
In looking at reviews and comparisons of various cards, I keep seeing people referring to mining - which I assume to be Bitcoins or other similar currency. I've seen media reports of people setting up 'farms' (not sure how that analogy works with mining - but still) to mine and buying up cheap graphics cards for them, but I'd passed it off as more hype than substance. I'm sure it's happening, but is it really happening to the extent that it's having the impact on availability of graphics cards that I see people suggesting?
It "could." Bitcoin mining from home just isn't viable anymore. You need what amounts to a server farm. And, if someone is putting one together, it's quite possible they ate every desired model of card that was currently on the market in a region.

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Post by red assassin » Fri, 22. Sep 17, 22:30

I built my girlfriend a PC a couple of months ago, and I had a lot of trouble tracking down somewhere that had a GTX 1060 in stock. I didn't have any issues being messed around once I'd ordered, it was just that most places were out of stock of everything.

There's been quite a lot of reporting since the Ethereum boom that it's been causing GPU shortages, and I don't have any particular reason to disbelieve that. Cryptocurrency is really big business now, and Ethereum is deliberately designed to be difficult to mine with ASICs (which is what all the Bitcoin miners have been using for years). For context, estimates of the electricity consumption of the Bitcoin network (which should give a reasonable idea of the scale of resources invested in it) currently sit somewhere between a medium-sized city and a small *country*. Ethereum is a lot smaller than Bitcoin, but that's still a lot of GPU purchases.
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Post by gunman127 » Fri, 22. Sep 17, 22:37

Good news everyone!
Once this malware is widespread enough, demand for GPUs will go down again!
https://www.extremetech.com/internet/25 ... pirate-bay

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Post by BigBANGtheory » Sat, 23. Sep 17, 16:22

Scan pulled the same crap on me a few months ago, their attitude was "we've refunded your money, now go away", great service :roll:

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Post by Morkonan » Sat, 23. Sep 17, 16:49

gunman127 wrote:Good news everyone!
Once this malware is widespread enough, demand for GPUs will go down again!
https://www.extremetech.com/internet/25 ... pirate-bay
Ah... So, the "Information is Free" prophets don't mind exploiting followers for profits. Whoda thunk it? I'm shocked!

At least there's a price-tag on a DVD box.

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Post by Rapier » Sat, 23. Sep 17, 21:44

BigBANGtheory wrote:Scan pulled the same crap on me a few months ago, their attitude was "we've refunded your money, now go away", great service :roll:
To which I believe the correct response is, "Fine, I will, and I shall never come back - and I shall tell all my friends to avoid you too."
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Post by Sorkvild » Sat, 23. Sep 17, 22:11

Yeah...Good luck on mining on a single 1050 unless you have a full battery of them. I don't see a sense of mining with only a single budget card, 4-5 AMD RX's on a mining rig (that's minimum) or don't bother.
Calm down, you just heard things. Visit mining forums on reddit and read analyses on mining, mining 101's and it will pass.
If you want to make some money better invest in bitcoin and do some simple daytrading, it's fun.

Speaking of 1050ti - great card for both older games and new ones too. Runs super silent (semipassive fans) and very cool as well. For example you have 30C on desktop and 50-60C under stress, depends on a model.
Zotac 1050ti (be sure to get Ti OC model) not bad, but if you can find get Gigabyte G1 Gaming or littler cheaper Gigabyte Windforce OC 4G.
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Post by Redvers Ganderpoke » Mon, 25. Sep 17, 13:48

CBJ wrote:I think you just got unlucky with your suppliers. Try Scan or Overclockers. Their stock indicators are usually fairly accurate, at least in my experience.
Used both of those and even used OCUK tradecounter on one occasion as it's reasonably local. The other two I use are Amazon and Ebuyer. Ebuyer have two Zotac 1050 ti in stock. (mini and low profile).

I recently bought a Zotac 1060 from amazon and the price of that one varied by £50 over a few weeks - currently £30 more than I paid for it (£/$ exchange rate has something to do with it but not all of it) - some cards seem to have got very expensive or very rare!
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Post by korio » Mon, 25. Sep 17, 14:15

The fast change on prices is totally reasonable, now all the Low-Mid tier nvidia cards are going to raise in price, miners are starting to look at them because they depleted the AMD equivalent stock.


Also you need to take care about the price of RAM memory, its going to have a huge increase at winter, and that will probably raise the price of other components that use "that kind" of memory.


If you want to buy a new GC do it ASAP, as all the market seems to be increasing prices in the following months.

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Post by Rapier » Mon, 25. Sep 17, 15:13

I did read a few attempts to explain how mining and these kinds of currencies work. I tried to avoid those aimed at getting people to take part or trade which seemed to predominate. It does make a bit more sense now, but it also seems like it's a potential 'bubble' of inflated value (mind you, that's better than the Ponzi scheme it can look like from some angles).
Company wrote:I've spoken with my boss with regards to the issues you've experienced with your order and, if you'd be happy to receive it, we can upgrade your order to the Asus Strix GTX 1050 Ti which is a far more powerful card than the one you originally ordered. We can also upgrade your delivery to DPD free of charge so that it arrives with you tomorrow with a 1 hour delivery window provided in the morning.
I'm not sure I'd agree with "far more powerful" - it looks a little better, but not much. At least I should get it tomorrow.
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Post by red assassin » Mon, 25. Sep 17, 23:53

Rapier wrote:I did read a few attempts to explain how mining and these kinds of currencies work. I tried to avoid those aimed at getting people to take part or trade which seemed to predominate. It does make a bit more sense now, but it also seems like it's a potential 'bubble' of inflated value (mind you, that's better than the Ponzi scheme it can look like from some angles).
I mean, like any currency it has value because we agree that it has value. Cryptocurrencies have the interesting property that anyone can verify how that value is distributed and moved around between users, rather than relying on a regulatory system where a bunch of large organisations agree to keep track of value. But the amount of value we ascribe to it relative to other forms of currency or actual goods and services is as arbitrary and subject to spikes and crashes as anything else.
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Post by Morkonan » Tue, 26. Sep 17, 00:55

Just a resource article for discussion consideration:

Bummed that Bitcoin doubled video card prices? Manufacturers are upset too

It's a broad article, covering most of subject.

In essence: The supply of mining-specific cards can't keep up with the spikes in demand.

Manufacturers have to compete for the overall market and they devote a lot of resources towards releasing directly competing video cards, cards aimed a the general PC gaming audience.

But, they do offer cards directed at currency-miners. But, that demand is spikey and really ramps up due to factors outside of the card's major market. IOW, mining currency has nothing to do with the upcoming release of a major AAA gaming title, which is one of the traditional drivers of the market.

So, cards that are aimed at mining get bought up in spurts, according to non-traditional market demands. And, once those are gone, the miners turn to traditional retail cards, buying those up in similar quantities, squeezing the supply further.

In time, the manufacturers will respond better. BUT, these product types do not diverge into separate products, themselves. IOW, if a manufacturer creates a mining card with no video-out, they will still not manufacture enough of those cards to meet demand-spikes caused by miners during high-spike periods.

ie: It will get better, but the gamer card market will not be immune to such market forces for a very long time.

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Post by Rapier » Tue, 26. Sep 17, 12:09

red assassin wrote:I mean, like any currency it has value because we agree that it has value.
I agree that's pretty much true of the modern economy, but most national currency systems were originally linked to a specific reserve of something tangible that was held by a central bank - typically gold. Whilst I got my head around how the currency and the mining works, what I couldn't see was the source of the initial capitalisation. Whilst it's not essential to have such a thing for a currency to function, it does leave the possibility of it being decided that a particular currency has no value. Strictly speaking, that's true of most nationally backed currencies, but there are certain securities in place there that aren't in Bitcoin et. al.
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Post by red assassin » Tue, 26. Sep 17, 22:51

Rapier wrote:I agree that's pretty much true of the modern economy, but most national currency systems were originally linked to a specific reserve of something tangible that was held by a central bank - typically gold. Whilst I got my head around how the currency and the mining works, what I couldn't see was the source of the initial capitalisation. Whilst it's not essential to have such a thing for a currency to function, it does leave the possibility of it being decided that a particular currency has no value. Strictly speaking, that's true of most nationally backed currencies, but there are certain securities in place there that aren't in Bitcoin et. al.
Well, cryptocurrencies are based on a finite/scarce resource too, in a sense - effectively, computing power. (That this is a grossly wasteful use of that resource is another matter...) But the relationships between the amount of computing power invested and the amount of cryptocurrency you get out are pretty arbitrary, so it's hard to say how stable they're likely to be until we've had a few more iterations of cryptocurrencies.
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Post by Morkonan » Tue, 26. Sep 17, 23:41

If I understand cryptocurrency correctly, its ultimate value is entirely based on "use." It takes power and such to produce, but what produces it, in some sort of sense of distinct units, has nothing to do with its value.

It's the principle of "moving money makes money" taken to its fundamentals. Units are representative of implied value based on use (Frequency or share?) and nothing else.

I don't know if all cryptos are valued on equal terms, such as "use." They certainly can't be exchange for any base-value. (ie: 1 Crypto doesn't equal 1 set of computing cycles. Though, if such an exchange mechanism could be worked out, that would be friggin' awesome!)

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