As you may have heard by now, GPU prices have skyrocketed in the US due to cryptocurrency mining. And while AMD has not issued any official statement about this whole thing, NVIDIA has stated that retailers should prioritize PC gamers.
As NVIDIA’s spokesman Boris Böhles told ComputerBase:
“For NVIDIA, gamers come first. All activities related to our GeForce product line are targeted at our main audience. To ensure that GeForce gamers continue to have good GeForce graphics card availability in the current situation, we recommend that our trading partners make the appropriate arrangements to meet gamers’ needs as usual. “
Do note that this is a recommendation and nothing more. As such, retailers are free to sell their graphics card however and to whoever they want, despite NVIDIA’s suggestion. In other words, the green team does not force retailers to follow this statement.
Still, we believe it’s good news that NVIDIA has gone public with this. After all, and as consumers, PC gamers can be more loyal to a company than your average crypto-miner.
Here is hoping that prices will go back to normal sooner than later!
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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How exactly are they suppose to know who is buying them?
More so it’s easy for NVIDIA to say that. They already made profit.
This is some proper PR bulls*it. Yes NVIDIA, we love you now.
Miners buy in bulk. They go to stores and buy every card they have.
Risky investment.
“Ethical” AMD is going down.
Miners always stand out in terms of purchases. They buy up anything they can. Super easy to pick them out.
Easy one per customer and Nvidia can become a retailer themselves and sell customers cards directly
We all know Nvidia doesn’t give a crap as long as the money keeps coming in
Unless and until, NVIDIA tries to force or put some pressure on retailers, and other e-tailers/sellers, I don’t think this is going to pan out.
If retailers/sellers really care for more profit, then they are going to sell the GPUs at the highest price, if miners are ready to pay a premium for it.
This Mining craze has created much unrest amongst Gamers as of late, so I’m not that much optimistic about this move, but I hope something good comes out of it.
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Too late. The damage is done .
Agreed, but we all know this is just a PR move. If Nvidia was making more off of mining, they’d be using crickets to issue this statement.
Whoever at Nvidia’s headquarters thought that this bit of PR bullsh*t would mean anything should be fired.
If Nvidia cared anything about how mining was affecting gamers and wanted to do anything about it they could do it in their drivers just like they did when they excluded GeForce GPUs from being used in Data Center applications.
People would just use old drivers no?
Nvidia doesn’t have to go back to every old driver to make this exclusion. They do it in the EULA whenever a driver is installed. You agree to their TOS or you violate their copyright if you use their drivers for anything unacceptable by them. It’s not retroactive but obviously it affects any new GPUs being sold and drivers installed for the new GPU in the future.
Now they did this (concerning the data center exclusion) to try to curtail people from using relatively cheap Titans instead of expensive professional cards for business uses so I doubt there is any incentive for Nvidia to curtail miners from using GPUs for mining and leaving gamers to eat dust but they could if they cared. That’s the point and that’s why this PR blurb is horse sh*t.
That doesn’t matter either – there are third party open source drivers.
Businesses don’t want unnecessary baggage and the risk of viruses.
True. But when/if a virus comes along like usual when there’s money to be made doing it……..
Everything is backorder. Its annoying. Its going to be a bloodbath just to get a 2080ti.
God damnit.
There will never be a 2080ti.
But there will be a successor to the 1080 Ti this year and it will be a small step up from Pascal because…….no reason to bother with it from Nvidia’s point of view. They would only be competing with themselves at this point.
It also will be extremely overpriced by retailers if mining is still lucrative.
Whether we like it or not this is great business so far as Nvidia is concerned. Why would they even bother to do anything about that? You don’t look a gift horse in the mouth. Right?
Pretty sure retailers are going to prioritize whoever is standing in front of them at any given time with money to spend. This is just Nvidia trying to score some points with gamers while they try to ramp up production to service both markets.
But the problem is that they can’t ramp up production. TSMC (the foundry that manufactures Nvidia’s GPUs) serves Apple also and Apple takes priority on TSMC’s manufacturing capacity. Nvidia contracted with TSMC for a certain number of wafers and that’s all that they get. There isn’t any room to make more wafers and little incentive for TSMC to expand fab facilities to increase manufacturing because there’s little guarantee that miners will continue with present demands because of the instability of Crypto currency.
Because of this mining thing a GTX 1070 its 1000 eur if u are lucky to find one at this amazing price of 1000 eur
Miners i wish you aids,cancer and sick baby’s !!!!
I dont like miners because what they did to our hobby but to wish such calamities on them because of video games is a childlish behavior
am also happy my 970 continue running evrythign at max settings 1440p
even if not all of the games run at 60 fps so i dont have any reason to
upgrade it!!
Cheapest GTX 1080TI in my country right now(checked prices today) is Gigaybyte gtx 1080 ti for 850 euros. One of my frieds who bought GTX MSI GAMING X GTX 1080TI in July for 900 euros now the same card costs 1000+ euros. He also bought a 43” 4K HDR tv because he wanted best graphics!!
Whats the point of making games for PC when there is no GPU to find out there
developers slowly but surely will drop PC support for their games if this mining thing keeps its phase …mark my words.
This is my fear,I am PC Gamer for about two years and I am loving, I hope the mining finished or Nvidia and AMD make specific cards for mining.
It doesn’t matter. I’m sorry but it just doesn’t matter what Nvidia does. They don’t manufacture their GPUs. TSMC does and the number of GPUs at this point won’t increase anytime soon. That is Nvidia’s sole source for GPUs. Whether they allocate them to their card manufacturing partners for gaming cards or mining cards is irrelevant. They only get a certain number of GPUs from their contract with TSMC and that’s it.
The mining craze is ruining our hobby
I hope this is gonna settle or at least hardware makers gonna makes hardwares dedicated to miners
I got my 1070 for like 650$ and now its close to 900 here. I heard it might even get higher soo… yeah. 1070 was “supposed” to cost 400… GG.
But Nvidia isn’t a gaming company. Over 1/2 of their revenue comes from “gaming” GPUs but they aren’t nearly as profitable as what they make from their professional cards. That’s what companies care about. Profit.
Nvidia isn’t hurt by miners buying up every gaming card they can find. They are loving it. AMD is too.
Money is money to these companies either way.
I just got a 1080Ti in November. I’m not upgrading for at least 3-4 years, anyways.
We are all happy for you.
I get that a lot. I am pretty awesome.
am also happy my 970 continue running evrythign at max settings 1440p
even if not all of the games run at 60 fps so i dont have any reason to
upgrade it!
Just write “1080Ti” in marker on your 970. Same thing as upgrading.
it is not same. i will keep it at least until 8k hdr monitors are out
My next monitor will be a black and white CRT.
you are not awesome. in facr you are nothing compared to me the leader of foot ninjas!
? am also happy my 970 continue running evrythign at max settings 1440p even if not all of the games run at 60 fps so i dont have any reason to upgrade it.
I feel like a genius having bought my card before this whole thing took off, but it was really just luck.
The level of tech ignorance and experience on this comment section is a bit frustrating but I also find the level of gamer knowledge and experience on Tech Sites to be lacking as well. I guess it all evens out somehow.
Nvidia should pump more cards into the market instead of talking big
i’m sick of Nvidia under-supplying the market which causes artificial price markups for no f’ing reason whatsoever
Now probably a bad time for nvidia if they ramp up pascal production further. Also they will not want to oversuplying the market and then have to do official price cut later just to clear inventory.
there is a price cut planned? when?
nvidia usually try to play it the “smart” way so they don’t have to do official price cut. but sometimes it back fired. the price hike on retailers right now is one such example.
the way i see it, there will be only a price cut WHEN a new card enters circulation
it could be the Volta or it could be just discount if AMD steps it up a notch (which will never happen obviously)
as of now the price is sky high, and doesn’t seem to be going down anytime soon
though my 980TI pretty much suffices for 60 FPS 3440X1440 high to ultra settings
i feel like there is only one game that could actually warrant an upgrade
and that game is Metro Exodus (which comes in December 2018)
With nvidia even when new generation arrival it is rare to see them to do official price cut. We might see discount from retailer but not from nvidia themselves. Sometimes people that hoping to pick second brand new card for cheap (for SLI) end up giving up the idea because the card end up being more expensive than usual due to lack of stock.
Oh so now it’s nvidia under-supplying the market? I’m not sure you’re even serious man.
This site is a Circus of Fools when it comes to Tech.
It’s not the only site, even tech sites are like that most of the times
Well, it’s an Idiot’s Circus here I guess.
But I like all of you guys here anyway…….well……maybe not so much the Kim Kardashian West character…….but there’s hope for him I guess………maybe……….probably not
Do you have a spare $5 billion to build a new fab plant?
If you give it to them I am sure they would love to pump out more wafers for those gpu’s.
It’s not Nvidia, It’s the silicon wafer manufacturers such as TSMC or Global Foundries that can only produce so many a day to a certain quality.
Nvidia feels much better now.
Nice to see Nvidia making a statement even if, as others have commented, it’s ultimately a PR exercise.
Let us know how your plan to eventually upgrade your GPU goes. When/Ever?
Okay but they won’t.
Businesses don’t care. They sell to whoever buys something first.
Looks like it will be a real case of PC Master Race, Only those dedicated enough to pc gaming are still going to buy the cards.
These miners are not going to deter me as much as I don’t like spending the extra $100+
Bring it on, For me I expect to lose money when I buy a card in depreciation. This is my hobby so there is no price limit on it, For them(miners) it’s all risk as market can tank at any moment and they expect a profit for the investment in gpu’s.
Some people waste tens of thousands on silly overseas holidays each year, Others on car mods, And now mining and good for them, each to their own.
Gamer for life!
Oh Piss right off Nvidia. Stop offering up this white knight lip service to your devoted adoptees knowing full well that retailers will do what ever the hell they please, which is to sell as much as possible, as quickly as possible, to make as much $$ as possible. Geezuz. SMH.
Nvidia, dont bother trying to ingratiate yourself to us, really dont, just shut the F up, step away from your little podium, hang up your little leather jacket, and go make some more F-ing gpu’s…the “2080-ti” specifically. Go on, beat it! …. git!
And that is why Nvidia’s Press Release is horse sh#t so far anyway.
Nvidia, If you give a d*mn about gamers then why don’t you exclude miners in your drivers? It’s not that hard to do.
Could it be for profit?
Crypto currencies are causing more problems that advantages, the good thing is that soon the crypto currency market will be so crowded that the value of itself will fall down drastically.
1 per customer would be a nice edition or how about Nvidia sells them directly?
Some retailers do say Limit 1 Per Order but who knows if they really enforce that and you could always make multiple orders over several days. Nvidia does sell cards directly but even they are out of stock on everything but the $1,200 Titan Xp. If 1080 Ti prices stay out of control then that Titan Xp price might start looking good to gamers and miners. Not to me though. I can afford it but I refuse to be taken advantage of. If my 980 Ti dies anytime soon then I will just buy a 1050 and play older games for a while. The 1050 (non Ti) is the only card that’s still widely available at a decent price because miners don’t want them.
That’s what i would do as well but your 980 ti should be fine hell OC its better then a 1070.
Ram prices and this it just sucks for all of us
Sucks. Nvidia sides with Gamers but their prices on release were still a joke, due to no competition.
In the end it is business as usual, profit before everything, but they shouldn’t drown out their loyal base that has been there for years versus the short year bursts of miners.
best time to get PS4
I just had a look at a chart and it showed bitcoins were worth about 6 cents back in 2012 and they almost hit $20,000 this month. It’s no wonder there are so many people mining crypto. They stayed pretty flat at under $1,000 up until about a year ago and then they skyrocketed. Looks like they are back down to around $10,000 now.
I was talking with a person who has been mining for several years and his opinion is that because so many people are mining now the value is going to drop this year to more normal levels but he’s not sure how this will affect GPU scarcity because he thinks many miners will just keep mining in hopes that bitcoins will skyrocket again and they can sell off.