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I'm thrilled by this. This has been a common approach in I think almost every industry. What nvidia is doing is recognizing that the needs of existing long tim

I'm thrilled by this. This has been a common approach in I think almost every industry. What nvidia is doing is recognizing that the needs of existing long time consumers / clients / partners are not being met by the current situation. Yes, it inflates short term profits and increases their pricing power, but long run if you can't buy nvidia for your dev box, your game box etc, this reduces the long run nvidia ecosystem. Crypto folks come and go. Serve them on a short term basis with something at a higher price point or make them lock in long term orders Almost every business works this way. Long time regular customer - you get pricing option A. Rando runs in with lots of cash? You don't let them destroy your long term customer relationships, but sell them some extra / high margin stuff if they are willing to pay enough. Intel just went through this ecosystem pain with ARM. They said no to doing iphone chip. Now an ecosystem has built up around ARM with far more investment than would have been there without apple leading the way.

akersten 5y ago
If this works (spoiler: it won't, it will be cracked within a month), it will create more e-Waste as miners will toss their no-video-output-mining-only cards after they're no longer the latest tech, instead of being able to resell them to gamers, thinning the used graphics card market, forcing more gamers to buy new from nVidia instead of rebuying old cards online. That makes me angry, it should make you angry too.
- luma 5y ago
  They are clearly marking the new models with a new suffix on the model number. As someone who has been trying for months to buy a 3080 and has zero interest in crypto, this is fantastic news... IFF it means I can actually purchase a card. This doesn't make me angry, and I don't think it should make you angry either.
  - akersten 5y ago
    The e-Waste part is what should collectively anger us, but I'm glad you're able to buy your card.
    - joshuahaglund 5y ago
      I'm personally angry that this whole crypto ponzi scheme has gotten so big. That miners are producing e-Waste is the least of its environmental impact.
      - sokoloff 5y ago
        The amount of e-waste seems like worrying about the trash created from discarded plastic bottles of windshield washer fluid as the environmental impact of cars.
      - christkv 5y ago
        Not to mention the massive amount of electrical power consumed to perform the calculations.
        at-fates-hands 5y ago
        You aren't joking! From March 2018: Today, a half-megawatt mine, Miehe says, “is nothing.” The commercial miners now pouring into the valley are building sites with tens of thousands of servers and electrical loads of as much as 30 megawatts, or enough to power a neighborhood of 13,000 homes. And in the arms race that cryptocurrency mining has become, even these operations will soon be considered small-scale. For people clamoring for renewable energy, this is an obscene amount of energy needed to do a single task - mine bitcoin. Which should make it even more obscene that all of that energy is being used for what? The benefit of a few people. Staggering to think how common this is and the article even states a 30 megawatt system is small compared to some of the other sites that are out there. https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/03/09/bitcoin-mining-energy-prices-smalltown-feature-217230 https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/03/09/bitcoin-m...
      - randomhodler84 5y ago
        Keep being angry. It will be much larger in future, and use magnitudes more energy. Either make peace (with the drumbeat of human progression), or spend your days being angry at something you don’t understand. Your choice!
  - k12sosse 5y ago
    I got mine after a 6 months wait on EVGA.com. Worth the wait. Best of luck
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- earthtolazlo 5y ago
  Proof of work makes me angry. I have a difficult time getting too upset over any attempt to curtail it.
  - mrgordon 5y ago
    I’m not sure it curtails it rather than just generating new card types that can only mine coins and then are garbage
  - randomhodler84 5y ago
    Don’t be angry. Just try to understand it. It’s all we can ask.
- joe_the_user 5y ago
  I don't like Nvidia's approach for other reasons (mostly 'cause market segmentation raises prices in the end imo). But I'm pretty sure miners very price oriented. They'd sell rather than trash whatever cards they have. And it seems unlikely they'd be using any unsellable cards since those are energy inefficient. There's a shortage of Nvidia card/chips after all. Edit: Now I read the article, this is literally only being added to new cards and with a warning.
  - slownews45 5y ago
    Right - old cards will still work. And they would DEF sell 1,000 cards at $500/card even if that's a fraction of retail.
- slownews45 5y ago
  Being angry / outraged / upset is somewhat newer on HN. Not discounting it, but I tend to be more interested in the . well . interesting conversations and questions then to go down the angry / upset / outraged path. The no video out cards used in mining are already out of gamers hands. If they throw them away (they won't - existing product is working fine) they would no need to buy non-gaming product. Finally, I think you underestimate the value of the existing product, if they did want to resell into gaming market they would probably find success.
- eropple 5y ago
  This can be just as easier, and probably more truthfully, read as "miners can no longer make the used market a minefield by selling overtaxed consumer cards without disclosing their provenance." Because, yeah, having ex-miner cards burn out is a pretty common thing on the used market. Great! Cryptocurrencies are not inherently good or valuable and cryptocurrency people aren't special and their world-burning habits and desires need not be privileged.
  - dijit 5y ago
    > Because, yeah, having ex-miner cards burn out is a pretty common thing on the used market. This is mostly a myth, miners cards are usually undervolted, and only a subset of the card is used. If your CPU only used it's floating point unit then it wouldn't be as intense as if you were using the whole thing. The only potential issue is thermal damage, but that's hard to place and has to be close to, or in excess of 90-110c.
    - eropple 5y ago
      It's not a myth. These things get racked in stacks of GPUs in what may or may not be actually-cooled data centers. Undervolted or not, when you couple that with constant load you're stressing devices manufactured to consumer specs. The excusemaking is pernicious.
      - corndoge 5y ago
        None of this disproves GP's claims.
    - krapht 5y ago
      ? My CPU actually underclocks itself if I am running a heavy AVX-512 workload. Actually, back when I had it in a cheaper motherboard, my system would crash because the MB couldn't deliver enough power to the CPU. But I agree with the first sentence. Lots of miner cards are undervolted because what matters is performance per watt, just like many server cpus.
- skjoldr 5y ago
  ...Why would you toss a perfectly working piece of equipment that brings you profit? If anything, there is a second hand market for mining cards for those who want to set up a mining farm for cheaper with a bit more risk.
- paulmd 5y ago
  there's no such thing as a "mining-only" card, they are still good for compute tasks like grid compute. what you are looking at is a future that is very, very bright for BOINC and folding@home scores. the cards will never be worthless, if nothing else someone will buy them up for 25 bucks and store them until the (inevitable) next mining crisis, and any reasonable miner is going to chose 25 bucks versus having to pay to dispose of them properly (ahahah, sorry, we all know if it comes to that they're going in the nearest creek). anyway you get the point though, the value is never going to actual zero, people will buy them for development work, for grid compute, or just as a bet on the next mining crisis. A hundred bucks for a card is better than nothing.
ChoGGi 5y ago
Nvidia isn't doing it for their customers, it's to reduce the aftermarket price drop next time crypto drops.
vladvasiliu 5y ago
I suppose the "long term customers" for these GPUs are gamers, right? Don't they also come and go? I don't particularly follow this as I'm not really into games, but it seems to me that AMD has had quite an impressive growth recently. Does that mainly come from people new to the market? I'm actually a "new to the market" buyer, and I bought an AMD mostly because I'm mainly a Linux user and didn't want to take any chances with nvidia given the horror stories I've seen floating around these parts. The issue with the GPU market is that since it's a duopoly, customers don't really have anywhere else to go. My impression is that people mostly bounce between the two. I'm not sure how many people have that much of a "brand loyalty", especially since this is the "enthusiast sector", so I guess people don't just buy whatever they find at the corner store. To me, this looks more like market segmentation, the same way that you can't run virtualization on their consumer products, and you can't have ECC RAM on consumer intel chips. I really don't think they're doing this from the goodness of their hearts towards those poor gamers who are priced out of the market, but because they figured that miners would be ready to pay more. Which is pretty obvious, since scalpers are managing to sell those at outrageous prices, someone has to be buying them, right?
- slownews45 5y ago
  The ecosystem nvidia has built and maintains is a KEY differentiator. Basically, for machine learning, AMD is nowhere - the ecosystem is on nvidia (provided you can buy their stuff). If they can't deliver, then whatever crazy thing AMD is trying in this space (been a few tries) may take hold more. Getting developers access to nvidia becomes key then - games / machine learning tooling etc all then gravitates that way. For gaming you do end up with some options. Nvidia / AMD / Intel. Wide range here, but been pretty steady need for graphics including top end and lower end options. The OEM's are also customers in this space, everyone going to remote work with virtualized workloads as well if they need a graphics option there and more. Yes, they are segmenting, but in short run they are giving up $ they would get by selling all stuff with full Eth enabled and perhaps auctioning cards. They'd make a ton in short run, but a few user bases would abandon them. It really is not going to be good for their business if they have another 6 months of supply issues.
- lacker 5y ago
joe_the_user 5y ago
I don't think this is "recognizing customers", I think this is just sectioning markets. I'd dreading Nvidia crippling deep learning for all those not paying X more dollars (as the situation already is for server farms). Long term, the aim has to be selling cards by usage rather than by cost of production (obvious with the aim of prices higher than the cost of production by different amounts). How many people like Adobe's creative suite? Student software versus professional software, etc.
- slownews45 5y ago
  Def doing it for themselves, I see it in this case as customer base preservation. Most of their other approaches have tried to move users off their lower end products. This time they are trying to preserve lower end product availability (smart).
- knz_ 5y ago
  > I'd dreading Nvidia crippling deep learning for all those not paying X more dollars (as the situation already is for server farms). This already changed years ago when NVIDIA removed the last non-crippled double and half precision GPUs from their product lineup. The cheapest GPU you can buy for ML now is the titan v, which was $3000 at launch.
  - narism 5y ago
    They have been going the other way recently: Titan V ($3000) -> Titan RTX ($2500) -> RTX 3090 ($1500). The 3090 beats the Titan RTX in double precision and is close to 2x in single precision.
  - joe_the_user 5y ago
    I'm only planning at this point - so I don't know but am very interested. I see the RTX 3080 reviewed as the most cost effective chip you can get for deep learning. I have the impression a lot of research is moving to lower precision also. https://timdettmers.com/2020/09/07/which-gpu-for-deep-learning/#Additional_Considerations_for_Ampere_RTX_30_Series https://timdettmers.com/2020/09/07/which-gpu-for-deep-learni...
Justsignedup 5y ago
To add on: none of it is malicious. its just the market stabalization problem a) let's keep consumer grade stuff stable in price b) let's charge miners 3x, because they willing to pay 3x, and destroy the scalping market which is VERY anti everything. Scalpers hurt literally everyone. c) let's not de-stabalize nvidia's income again when eth drops in value. They don't want to be beholden to a coin's gamble either. Basically as it stands Nvidia is far invested into eth's value and if it drops their sales drop sharply because of a massive influx of cheap supply.
- slownews45 5y ago
  nvidia could take advantage of eth craze in short run and auction cards or chips. They would make a ton more in short run. But crypto folks would be only customers (in short run) and rest of market would risk migrating away from them. Crypto is very very frothy, so preserving some supply to bread and butter / ecosystem supporting sales makes a lot of sense to me.
- savant_penguin 5y ago
  Except that miners will simply workaround the downgrade software (as they did in the past) and regular consumers will be the only ones with crippled hardware
  - Deukhoofd 5y ago
    Reading the Nvidia announcement it's not a software upgrade, but a change in hardware. It only affects cards made after late May.
    - mrb 5y ago
      Nvidia did not say it will be a hardware limitation. In fact, they will almost certainly implement it in software. For example a "Lite Hash Rate" card will probably have a bit permanently set to 1 in the firmware/eeprom. The driver will read the bit, and arbitrarily enforce the restriction on such LHR card. This solves potential legal issues of retroactively crippling cards already out in the market, since only new cards sold from now on as "LHR models" will have the bit set to 1. But miners will find another software hack (just like they did for the RTX 3060 earlier) to bypass the restriction.
amelius 5y ago
Meanwhile, Nvidia doesn't allow you to use your graphics card in a datacenter/machine learning setup. You need a special license for that. https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/nvidia-updates-geforce-eula-to-prohibit-data-center-use/ https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/nvidia-updates-ge... So let's not pretend that Nvidia is acting in the interest of their clients at all times.
- creato 5y ago
  One could argue this is the exact same thing: protecting their long-time customers from a small number of big customers (datacenters) that can afford to dramatically out-price their gamer customers temporarily, but might disappear (if they develop their own hardware?) not too long from now.
  - babypuncher 5y ago
    I think it's more that Nvidia knows datacenter customers have the money to pay a premium for "datacenter grade" products.
    - InvertedRhodium 5y ago
      Isn't that kind of the point? If consumers and enterprises were competing for the same product, we would probably see a similar situation as we are with consumers and miners.
      - babypuncher 5y ago
        We would also see higher prices for consumers, since Nvidia would need to crank up higher profit margin a bit on their RTX cards to make the same average profit per chip sold without their high margin Quadro cards going to enterprise.
flyinghamster 5y ago
I guess the issue is, let's say you're doing something in CUDA, and the program uses $FOO, something commonly used by miners. Never mind that you're not mining any kind of cryptocurrency, the card or driver will decide that because you did $FOO, you're mining and gimp your work, or, let's say that they doubled down further, shut it down completely.
m463 5y ago
I thought the miner cards were cheaper. They are set up for mining and don't have video out.
minsc__and__boo 5y ago
Yep, this is designed products for specific markets that are currently being untapped. It's allows for a premium charge on crypto-enabled cards while still capturing the consumer market. It's a great solution.
ajmurmann 5y ago
> Crypto folks come and go Do they more than gamers? Complaints about miners buying all the graphics cards have been going on for years now

akersten 5y ago

If this works (spoiler: it won't, it will be cracked within a month), it will create more e-Waste as miners will toss their no-video-output-mining-only cards after they're no longer the latest tech, instead of being able to resell them to gamers, thinning the used graphics card market, forcing more gamers to buy new from nVidia instead of rebuying old cards online. That makes me angry, it should make you angry too.

luma 5y ago
They are clearly marking the new models with a new suffix on the model number. As someone who has been trying for months to buy a 3080 and has zero interest in crypto, this is fantastic news... IFF it means I can actually purchase a card. This doesn't make me angry, and I don't think it should make you angry either.
- akersten 5y ago
  The e-Waste part is what should collectively anger us, but I'm glad you're able to buy your card.
  - joshuahaglund 5y ago
    I'm personally angry that this whole crypto ponzi scheme has gotten so big. That miners are producing e-Waste is the least of its environmental impact.
    - sokoloff 5y ago
      The amount of e-waste seems like worrying about the trash created from discarded plastic bottles of windshield washer fluid as the environmental impact of cars.
    - christkv 5y ago
      Not to mention the massive amount of electrical power consumed to perform the calculations.
      - at-fates-hands 5y ago
        You aren't joking! From March 2018: Today, a half-megawatt mine, Miehe says, “is nothing.” The commercial miners now pouring into the valley are building sites with tens of thousands of servers and electrical loads of as much as 30 megawatts, or enough to power a neighborhood of 13,000 homes. And in the arms race that cryptocurrency mining has become, even these operations will soon be considered small-scale. For people clamoring for renewable energy, this is an obscene amount of energy needed to do a single task - mine bitcoin. Which should make it even more obscene that all of that energy is being used for what? The benefit of a few people. Staggering to think how common this is and the article even states a 30 megawatt system is small compared to some of the other sites that are out there. https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/03/09/bitcoin-mining-energy-prices-smalltown-feature-217230 https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/03/09/bitcoin-m...
    - randomhodler84 5y ago
      Keep being angry. It will be much larger in future, and use magnitudes more energy. Either make peace (with the drumbeat of human progression), or spend your days being angry at something you don’t understand. Your choice!
- k12sosse 5y ago
  I got mine after a 6 months wait on EVGA.com. Worth the wait. Best of luck
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
earthtolazlo 5y ago
Proof of work makes me angry. I have a difficult time getting too upset over any attempt to curtail it.
- mrgordon 5y ago
  I’m not sure it curtails it rather than just generating new card types that can only mine coins and then are garbage
- randomhodler84 5y ago
  Don’t be angry. Just try to understand it. It’s all we can ask.
joe_the_user 5y ago
I don't like Nvidia's approach for other reasons (mostly 'cause market segmentation raises prices in the end imo). But I'm pretty sure miners very price oriented. They'd sell rather than trash whatever cards they have. And it seems unlikely they'd be using any unsellable cards since those are energy inefficient. There's a shortage of Nvidia card/chips after all. Edit: Now I read the article, this is literally only being added to new cards and with a warning.
- slownews45 5y ago
  Right - old cards will still work. And they would DEF sell 1,000 cards at $500/card even if that's a fraction of retail.
slownews45 5y ago
Being angry / outraged / upset is somewhat newer on HN. Not discounting it, but I tend to be more interested in the . well . interesting conversations and questions then to go down the angry / upset / outraged path. The no video out cards used in mining are already out of gamers hands. If they throw them away (they won't - existing product is working fine) they would no need to buy non-gaming product. Finally, I think you underestimate the value of the existing product, if they did want to resell into gaming market they would probably find success.
eropple 5y ago
This can be just as easier, and probably more truthfully, read as "miners can no longer make the used market a minefield by selling overtaxed consumer cards without disclosing their provenance." Because, yeah, having ex-miner cards burn out is a pretty common thing on the used market. Great! Cryptocurrencies are not inherently good or valuable and cryptocurrency people aren't special and their world-burning habits and desires need not be privileged.
- dijit 5y ago
  > Because, yeah, having ex-miner cards burn out is a pretty common thing on the used market. This is mostly a myth, miners cards are usually undervolted, and only a subset of the card is used. If your CPU only used it's floating point unit then it wouldn't be as intense as if you were using the whole thing. The only potential issue is thermal damage, but that's hard to place and has to be close to, or in excess of 90-110c.
  - eropple 5y ago
    It's not a myth. These things get racked in stacks of GPUs in what may or may not be actually-cooled data centers. Undervolted or not, when you couple that with constant load you're stressing devices manufactured to consumer specs. The excusemaking is pernicious.
    - corndoge 5y ago
      None of this disproves GP's claims.
  - krapht 5y ago
    ? My CPU actually underclocks itself if I am running a heavy AVX-512 workload. Actually, back when I had it in a cheaper motherboard, my system would crash because the MB couldn't deliver enough power to the CPU. But I agree with the first sentence. Lots of miner cards are undervolted because what matters is performance per watt, just like many server cpus.
skjoldr 5y ago
...Why would you toss a perfectly working piece of equipment that brings you profit? If anything, there is a second hand market for mining cards for those who want to set up a mining farm for cheaper with a bit more risk.
paulmd 5y ago
there's no such thing as a "mining-only" card, they are still good for compute tasks like grid compute. what you are looking at is a future that is very, very bright for BOINC and folding@home scores. the cards will never be worthless, if nothing else someone will buy them up for 25 bucks and store them until the (inevitable) next mining crisis, and any reasonable miner is going to chose 25 bucks versus having to pay to dispose of them properly (ahahah, sorry, we all know if it comes to that they're going in the nearest creek). anyway you get the point though, the value is never going to actual zero, people will buy them for development work, for grid compute, or just as a bet on the next mining crisis. A hundred bucks for a card is better than nothing.

ChoGGi 5y ago

Nvidia isn't doing it for their customers, it's to reduce the aftermarket price drop next time crypto drops.

vladvasiliu 5y ago

I suppose the "long term customers" for these GPUs are gamers, right? Don't they also come and go? I don't particularly follow this as I'm not really into games, but it seems to me that AMD has had quite an impressive growth recently. Does that mainly come from people new to the market? I'm actually a "new to the market" buyer, and I bought an AMD mostly because I'm mainly a Linux user and didn't want to take any chances with nvidia given the horror stories I've seen floating around these parts. The issue with the GPU market is that since it's a duopoly, customers don't really have anywhere else to go. My impression is that people mostly bounce between the two. I'm not sure how many people have that much of a "brand loyalty", especially since this is the "enthusiast sector", so I guess people don't just buy whatever they find at the corner store. To me, this looks more like market segmentation, the same way that you can't run virtualization on their consumer products, and you can't have ECC RAM on consumer intel chips. I really don't think they're doing this from the goodness of their hearts towards those poor gamers who are priced out of the market, but because they figured that miners would be ready to pay more. Which is pretty obvious, since scalpers are managing to sell those at outrageous prices, someone has to be buying them, right?

slownews45 5y ago
The ecosystem nvidia has built and maintains is a KEY differentiator. Basically, for machine learning, AMD is nowhere - the ecosystem is on nvidia (provided you can buy their stuff). If they can't deliver, then whatever crazy thing AMD is trying in this space (been a few tries) may take hold more. Getting developers access to nvidia becomes key then - games / machine learning tooling etc all then gravitates that way. For gaming you do end up with some options. Nvidia / AMD / Intel. Wide range here, but been pretty steady need for graphics including top end and lower end options. The OEM's are also customers in this space, everyone going to remote work with virtualized workloads as well if they need a graphics option there and more. Yes, they are segmenting, but in short run they are giving up $ they would get by selling all stuff with full Eth enabled and perhaps auctioning cards. They'd make a ton in short run, but a few user bases would abandon them. It really is not going to be good for their business if they have another 6 months of supply issues.
lacker 5y ago

joe_the_user 5y ago

I don't think this is "recognizing customers", I think this is just sectioning markets. I'd dreading Nvidia crippling deep learning for all those not paying X more dollars (as the situation already is for server farms). Long term, the aim has to be selling cards by usage rather than by cost of production (obvious with the aim of prices higher than the cost of production by different amounts). How many people like Adobe's creative suite? Student software versus professional software, etc.

slownews45 5y ago
Def doing it for themselves, I see it in this case as customer base preservation. Most of their other approaches have tried to move users off their lower end products. This time they are trying to preserve lower end product availability (smart).
knz_ 5y ago
> I'd dreading Nvidia crippling deep learning for all those not paying X more dollars (as the situation already is for server farms). This already changed years ago when NVIDIA removed the last non-crippled double and half precision GPUs from their product lineup. The cheapest GPU you can buy for ML now is the titan v, which was $3000 at launch.
- narism 5y ago
  They have been going the other way recently: Titan V ($3000) -> Titan RTX ($2500) -> RTX 3090 ($1500). The 3090 beats the Titan RTX in double precision and is close to 2x in single precision.
- joe_the_user 5y ago
  I'm only planning at this point - so I don't know but am very interested. I see the RTX 3080 reviewed as the most cost effective chip you can get for deep learning. I have the impression a lot of research is moving to lower precision also. https://timdettmers.com/2020/09/07/which-gpu-for-deep-learning/#Additional_Considerations_for_Ampere_RTX_30_Series https://timdettmers.com/2020/09/07/which-gpu-for-deep-learni...

Justsignedup 5y ago

To add on: none of it is malicious. its just the market stabalization problem a) let's keep consumer grade stuff stable in price b) let's charge miners 3x, because they willing to pay 3x, and destroy the scalping market which is VERY anti everything. Scalpers hurt literally everyone. c) let's not de-stabalize nvidia's income again when eth drops in value. They don't want to be beholden to a coin's gamble either. Basically as it stands Nvidia is far invested into eth's value and if it drops their sales drop sharply because of a massive influx of cheap supply.

slownews45 5y ago
nvidia could take advantage of eth craze in short run and auction cards or chips. They would make a ton more in short run. But crypto folks would be only customers (in short run) and rest of market would risk migrating away from them. Crypto is very very frothy, so preserving some supply to bread and butter / ecosystem supporting sales makes a lot of sense to me.
savant_penguin 5y ago
Except that miners will simply workaround the downgrade software (as they did in the past) and regular consumers will be the only ones with crippled hardware
- Deukhoofd 5y ago
  Reading the Nvidia announcement it's not a software upgrade, but a change in hardware. It only affects cards made after late May.
  - mrb 5y ago
    Nvidia did not say it will be a hardware limitation. In fact, they will almost certainly implement it in software. For example a "Lite Hash Rate" card will probably have a bit permanently set to 1 in the firmware/eeprom. The driver will read the bit, and arbitrarily enforce the restriction on such LHR card. This solves potential legal issues of retroactively crippling cards already out in the market, since only new cards sold from now on as "LHR models" will have the bit set to 1. But miners will find another software hack (just like they did for the RTX 3060 earlier) to bypass the restriction.

amelius 5y ago

Meanwhile, Nvidia doesn't allow you to use your graphics card in a datacenter/machine learning setup. You need a special license for that. https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/nvidia-updates-geforce-eula-to-prohibit-data-center-use/ https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/nvidia-updates-ge... So let's not pretend that Nvidia is acting in the interest of their clients at all times.

creato 5y ago
One could argue this is the exact same thing: protecting their long-time customers from a small number of big customers (datacenters) that can afford to dramatically out-price their gamer customers temporarily, but might disappear (if they develop their own hardware?) not too long from now.
- babypuncher 5y ago
  I think it's more that Nvidia knows datacenter customers have the money to pay a premium for "datacenter grade" products.
  - InvertedRhodium 5y ago
    Isn't that kind of the point? If consumers and enterprises were competing for the same product, we would probably see a similar situation as we are with consumers and miners.
    - babypuncher 5y ago
      We would also see higher prices for consumers, since Nvidia would need to crank up higher profit margin a bit on their RTX cards to make the same average profit per chip sold without their high margin Quadro cards going to enterprise.

flyinghamster 5y ago

I guess the issue is, let's say you're doing something in CUDA, and the program uses $FOO, something commonly used by miners. Never mind that you're not mining any kind of cryptocurrency, the card or driver will decide that because you did $FOO, you're mining and gimp your work, or, let's say that they doubled down further, shut it down completely.

m463 5y ago

I thought the miner cards were cheaper. They are set up for mining and don't have video out.

minsc__and__boo 5y ago

Yep, this is designed products for specific markets that are currently being untapped. It's allows for a premium charge on crypto-enabled cards while still capturing the consumer market. It's a great solution.

ajmurmann 5y ago

> Crypto folks come and go Do they more than gamers? Complaints about miners buying all the graphics cards have been going on for years now