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  • willis936 - Thursday, March 1, 2018 - link

    Is it possible that no GPU manufacturer openly supports cryptocurrency mining because they don't have to? No marketing has to be done to people buying cards for profit. They'll buy what's available that makes them the most money. Gamers are a fickle market and have a sour disposition towards cryptocurrency mining because they cause a scarcity and increased price in GPUs. So as a GPU manufacturer you'd want to say nothing or even publicly denounce cryptocurrency mining while actually doing nothing to prevent it. In reality the GPU manufacturers don't care who buys their cards as long as they're selling as many as possible.
  • zlandar - Thursday, March 1, 2018 - link

    Except the cryptocurrency craze stinks like an unsustainable bubble. Do you think Nvidia and AMD are going to gamble billions in capital expenses to increase production? What about their regular customers who are mostly PC gamers? Maybe some of those customers will get turned off by the sky-high GPU prices and switch to console gaming never to return.

    If they are smart they will care and protect their core consumer base instead of chasing after digital chits.
  • PeachNCream - Thursday, March 1, 2018 - link

    "Maybe some of those customers will get turned off by the sky-high GPU prices and switch to console gaming never to return."

    That's basically me in a nutshell. I can buy a $300-400 console for games and keep using my existing PC for non-gaming chores without worrying about upgrades for a number of years. In the future, I can buy the latest generation of console and a new and inexpensive laptop (which will still be used for whatever games happen to run on the IGP) for less than the price of a mid-range gaming desktop. It was already difficult to justify video games on a PC before the GPU, RAM, and SSD prices all surged last year. Now, I can't do it at all so I've given up and don't plan to revisit serious computer gaming in the foreseeable future.
  • Threska - Thursday, March 1, 2018 - link

    Till someone finds a way to turn a console into a miner.
  • WinterCharm - Thursday, March 1, 2018 - link

    DO NOT SPEAK OF SUCH EVIL!
  • haukionkannel - Thursday, March 1, 2018 - link

    Hmmm... Sounds a good idea! Consoles Are fast for the price! Because the makers hope that They will make money by selling games, so consoles would be excelent for bang for the bug crypto mining... and the price point of the consoles raise upp in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, 0....
  • Dragonstongue - Thursday, March 1, 2018 - link

    they are SLOW for crypto purposes, XB1 and PS4 are using 7870 generation graphics, if one bought one of these for ONLY this purpose, you would be lucky to break even at best (not to mention 7870 I know for a FACT is just not able to be used anymore for most crypto mining purposes)

    They "seem powerful" because it is a locked out system "tuned" to run what they run and nothing more, but, for base example, Phenom II x6 1035T (comparable considering performance of the cpu side current gen consoles use) and Radeon 7850/7870 (underclocked I might add) while one can still "game on" them, are NOT at all "powerful"
  • lmcd - Friday, March 2, 2018 - link

    At the moment it's probably cost efficient to buy an XBox One X for its graphics capabilities.
  • mode_13h - Sunday, March 11, 2018 - link

    You're thinking of the OG versions. PS4 Pro and XBox One X are like RX 570 and RX 580, respectively.
  • forgerone - Thursday, March 1, 2018 - link

    Why not? Console clusters certainly have been built before.
  • Dragonstongue - Thursday, March 1, 2018 - link

    they did this with PS3 quite awhile back actually (granted its performance was not the greatest) the only thing "preventing" them from doing the same thing with current gen consoles, no matter how powerful we think they are, they are vastly underpowered to accomplish "mining" considering the cost vs performance they can get (couple hundred watts couple hundred dollars per system and basically very little one can do to "tune it" to keep thermals in check and run it 24/7)
  • lmcd - Friday, March 2, 2018 - link

    What's that supposed to mean? The moment someone writes one using directcompute and UWP, it can be sideloaded quite easily. UWP's restrictions are in the store, by the way. Not in the programs. So there's a lot of power that can be harnessed there.
  • Lord of the Bored - Saturday, March 3, 2018 - link

    https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/9amknd/...
  • Dribble - Thursday, March 1, 2018 - link

    The bubble bursting means a market flooded with used gpu's. That's the danger for Nvidia/AMD - they might be selling lots today but when the market is flooded with used cards they'll loose out big time, especially if they haven't released a new gen of cards. For gamers it'll be great however - loads of very cheap 570/580/1060/1070's.
  • willis936 - Thursday, March 1, 2018 - link

    This isn't the first miner craze. This was a fear during previous bouts of mining and a flooded secondhand market was never a thing. Miners generally seem to hold onto cards. All that happens is that demand and prices normalize.
  • forgerone - Thursday, March 1, 2018 - link

    The used GPU market is a drop in the bucket. The few that d get sold on eBay do not impact the market at all. Since 2013 when Bitcoin first popped up on everybody's radar the whine has been watch out for used GPU's. It hasn't happened.
  • Dragonstongue - Thursday, March 1, 2018 - link

    it did "to a point" but, folks were not dumping thousands of gpu all at once, rather they seemed to sell some to buy FPGA and ASIC instead, I do not see the current situation as anything different.

    Not to mention (and no damn review site take this into account) by the time the "miner" usually sell the hardware they will have effectively "burned it out" or at the very least, it no longer has warranty, so it absolutely has no impact on AMD/Nv from making sales.

    Folks so take the wee bit of insight and scream the sky is falling huh?
  • forgerone - Thursday, March 1, 2018 - link

    "Do you think Nvidia and AMD are going to gamble billions in capital expenses to increase production?"

    That is exactly what they are doing. Dr. Su announced last month that AMD was increasing production of Vega. And NAVI was pushed back; why release a new GPU that nobody but miners will be able to purchase.
  • forgerone - Thursday, March 1, 2018 - link

    Neither AMD nor nVidia has ANY control over how OEM's sell they GPU AIB cards. All both companies do is fabricate GPU's and sell them to Add in Board makers. And the OEM's just want to sell product. They do not give a hoot about gamers.
  • sorten - Sunday, March 4, 2018 - link

    This is the approach I've taken. I used to favor PC gaming and would typically buy a high-mid (<$300) range card every two years or so to keep my performance solid on AAA titles. I skipped that upgrade last year and since then all AAA games I've purchased have been on my 3 (?) year old PS4.
  • tsk2k - Thursday, March 1, 2018 - link

    Watch that number drop when GTX20 series launches.
  • solnyshok - Thursday, March 1, 2018 - link

    When is that?
  • tsk2k - Thursday, March 1, 2018 - link

    March/April.
  • solnyshok - Friday, March 2, 2018 - link

    talking into account that 10xx series were introduced 20 months ago, Nvidia is already 8 month late, in my humble opinion.
  • mode_13h - Sunday, March 11, 2018 - link

    Probably May/June, in fact.
  • Stuka87 - Thursday, March 1, 2018 - link

    If mining continues and is going like this whenever the fabled GTX20 series launches, market share isnt going to change. When both companies are selling every card they make, they aren't going to suddenly see a jump in sales.
  • Alexvrb - Thursday, March 1, 2018 - link

    Well, they might see a bit of a surge if and when the GDDR supply loosens up but... that's not likely to happen by launch.
  • Threska - Thursday, March 1, 2018 - link

    Speaking of APUs. With the trend towards turning everything that has a CPU (intentional or otherwise) into a miner, even they will feel a slight demand.
  • HStewart - Thursday, March 1, 2018 - link

    Well I think this title is misleading, AMD's climb is not that significant
    1. It only climb actually 4%
    2. Most importantly this is only desktop Market share which is 33%

    I personally don't get this crypto mining craze - in my earlier days I would buy machines as render nodes - I guess people could do that in crypto mining also.
  • vanilla_gorilla - Thursday, March 1, 2018 - link

    That's because it's supply constrained. It jumped as much as possible. They are selling every card they make and people still want more.

    >I personally don't get this crypto mining craze

    It's pretty simple. Every GPU you can buy generates money. People like money.
  • HStewart - Thursday, March 1, 2018 - link

    "It's pretty simple. Every GPU you can buy generates money. People like money. "

    Well I think this stuff will burst one day, when people realize it not real money - but generated by GPU. It got to have real value backing it. So if demand is based on it - this demand is imaginary and once it burst, people will excess machines hat do nothing

    Maybe one could give them to their kids to play games.
  • BenSkywalker - Thursday, March 1, 2018 - link

    Cryptocurrency is a fiat currency, it has nothing backing it besides what people think it's worth.

    Other notable fiat currencies are the Euro and the U.S. Dollar.
  • willis936 - Thursday, March 1, 2018 - link

    Uhh what cryptocurrecies are you looking at that are fiat? Fiat are what they replace.
  • willis936 - Thursday, March 1, 2018 - link

    Yeah it's 4%... in a quarter. In the past 10 years AMD has only seen positive change in market share that fast in Q1 2016 and Q1 2010. So yes it is something that raises eyebrows.
  • HStewart - Thursday, March 1, 2018 - link

    Keep in mind that 4% of 33% of entire market - so that like 1.3% or total mark and with Crypto stuff - a lot of that wasted and when Crypto stuff busted as it surely will one day, it will be all wasted.
  • forgerone - Thursday, March 1, 2018 - link

    Everybody is ignoring the obvious.

    Neither AMD nor nVidia has ANY control over how OEM's sell they GPU AIB cards. All both companies do is fabricate GPU's and sell them to Add in Board makers. And the OEM's just want to sell product. They do not give a hoot about gamers.

    The only way for AMD to give gamers a high performance GPU is to put it in a package with an 8 core Ryzen CPU. This is what they did by giveing Intel Vega chiplets for Kaby-G.

    AMD could also do this for miners by using a cheap 4 core CPU along with say 2 Vega GPU chiplets along with HBM2 in a single APU package. That would be good for maybe 100 megahashes per second.

    It would also cut the legs off the GPU AIB OEM's.
  • msroadkill612 - Wednesday, March 7, 2018 - link

    Its fun to speculate, but its not too hard to guess where amd are going from the foundations they have laid over 2017 - the apu was the grand finale.

    They are not made of money and have to use that excellent foundation.

    they have a platform for one die, with 2 processor units, which may both be cpuS, or now, a cpu unit and a gpu unit (apu).

    Next they have TR4 platform for 2x 2 cpu only processor dies as above.

    It seems quite possible they could simply use 2x apu die as above on the tr4 platform, to yield 2x vega and 8x cores, but I dont think so - too expensive for a perceived (arguable imo -an apu workstation?) entry level rig.

    The presence of video ports on am4 mobos almost a year before apuS hit the shelves, clearly announced am4 was to be the apu platform.

    Its fundamental to amd zen architecture that the basic cpu unit (the 4 core ccx), be 4 core.

    It allows each core to link to any other core in one step. Going beyond 4 cores would disrupt the whole architecture.

    IMO, You will only see single die ~am4 apus for some time, and you can only have one 4 core ccx and one gpu on am4.

    A modified tr4 mobo with graphics ports is possible for more cpu & gpu cores, and double memory bandwidth - a boon for apuS.
  • mode_13h - Sunday, March 11, 2018 - link

    This won't happen. People in that price segment will buy discrete GPUs, which are a much more cost-effective way of adding compute & memory bandwidth. The DDR4 supported by ThreadRipper and EPYC's socket can't begin to compete with GDDR5 or HBM2, and the coolers for that socket can't dissipate enough heat.
  • Dragonstongue - Thursday, March 1, 2018 - link

    yeh because they know for a fact that 3m+ graphics cards went to miners and miners alone, what about every other sector of the market who buys them, maybe individuals all decided to upgrade at once in the 4Q, or maybe the "data" about sales came through in 4Q from massive backorders.

    Easy to pick a simple "reason" because that is the word of the year "miners are screwing us all over" what about "pro users" who see these awesome performance gaming cards and convinced their bosses, financial institutions, school CAD workshops etc, nope, it is ONLY miners that bought every single one of those multi million dollars worth of inventory

    (I call major BS on that theory. yes there is some massive mining farms (many of which no longer use GPU because FPGA/ASIC are far more cost effective and higher performing..not ALL coins can be mined properly with them, that is a given.
    yes it is an "issue" but is also making a mountain out of a molehill IMO..awesome products throughout 2016-2017 with ram shortages, not enough flash memory available etc etc..

    one problem easily stacks on another, if MSI as an example only "ordered" x thousands of units and they were selling instantly when there is only X total chips off each wafer, does not automatically mean specific corners of the market are the buyers, unless JPR has access to look at credit card bills and walk into everywhere that bought them, it is a gross assumption at best.

    I call this clickbait article from JPR (like barnes, and I cannot tell you how many other usually investor sites spitting all kinds of BS just because some certain mass media do the same damn thing)

    they track "sales" but JPR does not have access to ALL the selling information from AMD, Intel, Nvidia etc, very much like the "age of the universe" theorists, they take one iota of information no matter how obtuse and "play the numbers"

    Years ago Intel, AMD, Nvidia to name a few of the larger tech companies announced they were STOPPING 3rd party "sales figures" because it was detrimental to their business operations, so either this "number" they are using is bloated, or they are piecing together BS figures from many places and compounding the data.

    Not first time miners are blamed for this, I guess we might as well blame "business" for ludicrous things such as Windows 10 being the way that it is because "they screwed the casual user and gamer alike"
  • Hurr Durr - Friday, March 2, 2018 - link

    You were right to put pro users in quotation marks. Real professional will never buy an overpgiced gaming GPU when cheaper Quadro can run what's needed two times faster.
  • mode_13h - Sunday, March 11, 2018 - link

    You're nuts. Or trolling. Or a trolling nut.

    Quadros are slower than gaming cards, except when crippled by drivers. Which Nvidia had to disable on Titan Xp, after Vega Frontier launched with uncrippled workstation drivers.

    Quadros also have worse cooling, since most are single-slot. Sure, some pros will buy Quadros, but many will do quite well with gaming cards, particularly on Linux, where Nvidia can't get away with crippling their drivers.
  • Reflex - Sunday, March 4, 2018 - link

    Yes, graphics cards that had been on the market for 9 months all of a sudden sold like insanity during a quarter when traditionally sales have slowed down because gamers all of a sudden realized they existed. Totally didn't have to do with the completely unrelated massive spike in cryptocurrency prices that happened simultaneously. Yup, just a total mob reaction by games. Pure coincidence!

    /sarcasm
  • novastar78 - Monday, March 5, 2018 - link

    I see your thinking but you don't need fancy numbers or statistics to figure this out.

    Currently with the huge retail markup of AMD cards there is honestly no legitimate reason to buy an AMD card for gaming, when you can get a similarily priced nVidia card that will give you much better performance and is more likely to be available. In Canada, I can buy a 1060 or 1070 for the same price as an RX 580, there is no way someone would do that, unless I was mining...

    So how is the world is AMD gaining 4% market share with super overpriced\underperforming hardware that you can't even buy at the store because they are all sold out? The main reason nVidia hardware is getting scarce too is because they have run out of AMD supply, so they turn to the next best thing.

    It's just common sense...
  • mode_13h - Sunday, March 11, 2018 - link

    A lot of people are buying GPUs for AI. Not just training, but inferencing, where the desktop Pascal cards really come into their own (thanks to int8 dot product instruction).
  • msroadkill612 - Wednesday, March 7, 2018 - link

    Some contrary interpretations:

    So it really means amd managed to MAKE 33% of the globes gpus, since its an absolute sellers market - ~if you can make it you can sell it.

    so kudos to amd production,

    OR,

    It really comes down to who can bid most for the scarce ram that must accompany each gpu.

    Since crypto and other deep pockets strongly want what vega offers, amd can bid high for a disproportionate share of available gpu ram, and increase market share.
  • mode_13h - Sunday, March 11, 2018 - link

    In related news, it seems to me that GPU prices are definitely starting to dip back towards normal levels.

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