Bitcoin Bloodbath Brings Cheer to Gamers as Graphics Card Prices Plummet

[R0H1T]

Most of the COVID19 demand spike was in the 40nm or 65nm older processes, for cars and washing machines.

Was it?

Desktop CPU Sales Suffer Biggest Quarterly Decline In History But AMD Grabs Record Share

The desktop PC market took it on the chin in the first quarter of 2022, as excess inventory and normal seasonal downturns jointly contributed to a steep drop in x86 CPU shipments.

hothardware.com

Not to mention the move to 7/8nm or better nodes only just begun during that time back in 2019/20 period. TSMC has increased capacity massively from back then, better yields & now moving on to 4nm or smaller nodes. So no I don't see how Covid wasn't a major factor in that, remember the spike in "work/study from home" PC's or other related hardware sales?

 

[dragontamer5788]

Was it?

Yes.

GM to halt production at nearly all North America assembly plants due to new chip problem

General Motors will idle plants starting Monday for two weeks due to COVID-19 affecting the production of semiconductor chips

www.freep.com

Ford idles, cuts output at 8 plants with chip supplies still tight

The factories produce some of Ford's biggest sellers and most popular vehicles, including the Ford-150, Ranger, Bronco, Explorer and Mustang Mach-E.

www.autonews.com

Toyota idles five factories, citing chip shortage

Car makers facing increasingly tough times until supply catches up

www.theregister.com

Global Microchip Shortage Worsens Appliance Delays, May Last Until 2022

Microchips don’t just run your smartphones, cars and computers. They help control appliances and are one of the reasons that refrigerator deliveries are holding up kitchen...

www.proremodeler.com

So no I don't see how Covid wasn't a major factor in that, remember the spike in "work/study from home" PC's or other related hardware sales?

I'm not saying that Desktops / Laptops demand weren't elevated last year.

I'm saying that when you have these talking heads talking about CHIP SHORTAGE, they're talking about the idle factories and disrupted supply chains that reverberated across America for nearly a year. The CHIP SHORTAGE (40nm-class) was epic, on a level almost never before seen.

The "chip shortage" (7nm class) was... a bit worse than normal but within the realm of reason. And I cite DDR4 / NAND Flash as proof of this, which really wasn't affected.

7nm factories are different than 40nm factories, and both are "chips". The fact that Presidents / Prime Ministers moved to secure more chips was more about the 40nm and 28nm classes used by the automotive industry (and other manufacturing firms), rather than the high-tech stuff like 7nm or 5nm stuff that we techies like to use.

--------

As such, I blame "GPU Shortages" on the cryptocoin community, as profitability was through the roof for all of 2021. Again, who builds computers with 8x GPUs per computer, but the same amount of RAM / NAND Flash as before? Cryptocoin miners. And the supply-chain disruptions (for us high-tech 7nm users) were almost entirely centered upon GPUs, not on DDR4, Flash, or other components.

 

[R0H1T]

And I cite DDR4 / NAND Flash as proof of this.

How so? The biggest sales on those nodes were from Apple, MediaTek, Qualcomm & then probably AMD. The first 3 have all long term supplies secured, for NAND & DRAM, with reasonable pricing (fixed) in place for their key markets. Not to mention hiking prices of these components would only lower their overall sales in a vicious market with low visibility & lots of other issues to deal with, this was during several quarters of Covid. Samsung, SK Hynix, Micron, YMTC et al are greedy but not stupid.

 

[napata]

Right. Noobs and folks who prefer the 100% LHR unlock.

So noobs? It took one day for other devs to cicumvent it after NH did it.

 

[dragontamer5788]

How so? The biggest sales on those nodes were from Apple, MediaTek, Qualcomm & then probably AMD. The first 3 have all long term supplies secured, for NAND & FLASH, with reasonable pricing (fixed) in place for their key markets. Not to mention hiking prices of these components would only lower their overall sales in a vicious market with low visibility & lots of other issues to deal with, this was during several quarters of Covid. Samsung, SK Hynix, Micron, YMTC et al are greedy but not stupid.

I was watching $1 voltage-controllers get sold out in 2021. Completely gone, 6-month, 9-month, 21-month lead times. The price of these chips tripled to $3 (which is a big deal, since you need hundreds or even thousands of these chips to make a EV battery).

"Chip shortage (40nm+ class)" is different from "Chip shortage (7nm class)". That's my point. Low-tech chips ran out completely, to the point where Ford / GM / Toyota just closed down their factories temporarily, and appliance makers also shut down.

--------

You're talking about "Chip shortage (7nm class)", which... was negligible in comparison. We never saw a disruption to DDR4 RAM or NAND Flash supply. Or hell, even CPU supply was 100% fine all of last year. Only GPUs were in a shortage. As usual, the CPUs would sell-out upon release, but after a week or two things were fine again.

When people talk about "COVID19 chip shortage", they aren't talking about us techies. They're talking about low-tech chips for manufacturers.

 

[R0H1T]

I was talking specifically about GPU prices, which you said was primarily(?) because of cryptocoins? There's no such evidence because they could also have been due to the lack of adequate capacity, for both AMD & NVidia, & competing interests in the CPU(x86) & mobile markets which have traditionally a much larger share of capacity as well as sales in the overcall chip market. Think of it like this ~
AMD buys X amount of wafers from TSMC, Covid strikes & demand spikes up at least 20% across the board, you don't remember the 5xxx series availability in the last two years? So what does AMD do ~ invest more in securing higher capacity for their dGPU or just sell every CPU they can make, especially EPYC, & then try their hand at IC version of Russian Roulette?

It's relatively easier for Nvidia because dGPU is their bread & butter, shifting or apportioning capacity between their consumer & enterprise lines is much easier for them as compared to AMD who have what 10 different major product lines?

Basically I'm blaming (both) manufacturers & OEM's more for this (pricing) mess than the cryptocoin bubble which seems to have popped.

 

[dragontamer5788]

because of cryptocoins? There's no such evidence because they could also have been due to the lack of adequate capacity,

Its not like we ran out of Apple M1 chips, Apple iPhones, Samsung phones, Qualcomm Snapdragons, Intel x86 chips, network-adapters, NAND Flash or DDR4 / DDR5 RAM last year.

What did we run out of? GPUs. And GPUs only. Why would we run out of GPUs only? Is there any particular customer who was beyond-the-norm profitable in 2020 and 2021 that would have gobbled up every GPU they could get their hands on?

----

If this really was a broad-market 7nm shortage, like you allege, then we would have run out of laptops, phones, and desktops last year. But we didn't. We only ran out of GPUs. You need to explain why the GPU market was specifically in high-demand, and no other market (CPU, NAND Flash, or DDR4 RAM) was in high-demand.

 

[ThrashZone]

Hi,
Just checked local micro center
There is no plummet only new thing is reserve is live on instock gpu's so fake news on the plummet bit

 

[dragontamer5788]

Hi,
Just checked local micro center
There is no plummet only new thing is reserve is live on instock gpu's so fake news on the plummet bit

I've been watching the 3070 Ti drop from $1000 at Microcenter (a few months ago) to $800 about two weeks ago to $699 just right now. This is still $100+ over MSRP, but much better than before.

AMD 6900xt cards in particular are nearly MSRP at my Microcenter at $950 right now.

 

[R0H1T]

What did we run out of? GPUs. And GPUs only. Why would we run out of GPUs only? Is there any particular customer who was beyond-the-norm profitable in 2020 and 2021 that would have gobbled up every GPU they could get their hands on?

Not exactly true is it, like I said for 5xxx chips & their pricing or the consoles?

 

[dragontamer5788]

Not exactly true is it, like I said for 5xxx chips & their pricing or the consoles?

5xxx chips can be simply explained by AMD not having enough money to buy up more TSMC space (as well as expecting better competition from Intel. I think we were all surprised to see just how well Zen3 performed relative to Intel).

But its not like Intel ran out of chips last year.

I think you have a point on the consoles, which could be explained by the COVID19 situation (more people indoors, fewer people on trips). But the Nintendo Switch (NVidia-made chips) didn't run out. Since its "just" AMD who ran out of chips in this example, the common-thread / occam's razor is that AMD didn't buy enough chip capacity from TSMC.

 

[R-T-B]

Hahaha, joke's on you then.

I use stablecoins with actual currency backing, not crypto backing. That was always going to be a bad idea. You can't back air with more air.

USDC is holding steady, as always.

 

[dragontamer5788]

Not exactly true is it, like I said for 5xxx chips & their pricing or the consoles?

Just thought of this one, if this is your argument.

Why did Rx 6900 xt graphics card prices drop by $500 over the past few weeks? PS5 and XBOX are still sold out everywhere. The only thing that has changed is that Ethereum has gone from $3500 to $2000ish highly suggesting a change in miners. Gamers are still buying up PS5 / XBOX consoles at the same rate.

GPUs are suddenly available at MSRP. This sudden supply glut coincides with a historic Ethereum crash.

 

[R0H1T]

In other news the usual (at least) once in a decade stock market bust is probably upon us! Should've happened somewhere around 2019-20 if it weren't for Covid. Yes I remember that crash but I'm talking bigger like 2008 or 2000 levels.

 

[Vya Domus]

Nobody with the know how to put a 12GPU rig together is then pointing it at NH.

You can always check their subreddit and convince yourself that many do in fact own and run that many GPUs.

A long as a mining card was given fresh air and not hot recirculated air then it's probably in better shape than most gamers cards who get heat cycled and put on pull full power in their tempered glass hotboxes.

Nice joke, that's not how this works. Even if the GPU is kept cooled components have a limited lifetime, a GPU that has run 24/7 even in perfect conditions will categorially still have a lower lifetime than one used for gaming maybe 3-4 hours a day on average.

 

[Vayra86]

I use stablecoins with actual currency backing, not crypto backing. That was always going to be a bad idea. You can't back air with more air.

USDC is holding steady, as always.

Solvability was the problem underneath Terra's collapse though, right? How certain are you those dollars are real? Its not unlike bank runs, when the money isnt in the safe and faith collapses, I wonder how many of those dollars are actually available.

Its not like we ran out of Apple M1 chips, Apple iPhones, Samsung phones, Qualcomm Snapdragons, Intel x86 chips, network-adapters, NAND Flash or DDR4 / DDR5 RAM last year.

What did we run out of? GPUs. And GPUs only. Why would we run out of GPUs only? Is there any particular customer who was beyond-the-norm profitable in 2020 and 2021 that would have gobbled up every GPU they could get their hands on?

----

If this really was a broad-market 7nm shortage, like you allege, then we would have run out of laptops, phones, and desktops last year. But we didn't. We only ran out of GPUs. You need to explain why the GPU market was specifically in high-demand, and no other market (CPU, NAND Flash, or DDR4 RAM) was in high-demand.

Its a tiny market compared to other consumer product, responding quickly to trends. And... we did run out of lots of other stuff too.

 

[R-T-B]

How certain are you those dollars are real?

USDC is run by circle consortium and despite the evil name they are far more transparent than anyone else books wise. This isn't tether and the like.

I wonder how many of those dollars are actually available.

IIRC, 60% is the goal in immediate liquidity. Or maybe 40, I forget. Either way it's a sizable liquid chunk.

 

[Vayra86]

USDC is run by circle consortium and despite the evil name they are far more transparent than anyone else books wise. This isn't tether and the like.


IIRC, 60% is the goal in immediate liquidity.

And yet its unregulated unprotected and relies on faith. You just picked a different story to believe in. But its a story, exactly like other stablecoins can provide very smooth looking papers and websites.

 

[looniam]

Nice joke, that's not how this works. Even if the GPU is kept cooled components have a limited lifetime, a GPU that has run 24/7 even in perfect conditions will categorially still have a lower lifetime than one used for gaming maybe 3-4 hours a day on average.

no joke, components' lifetimes are based on temps and time that have a negative correlation; decreased temps/increase time - at a rate of doubling it for every -10C in most examples.

that post has more creditability.

 

[Icon Charlie]

Was it?

Desktop CPU Sales Suffer Biggest Quarterly Decline In History But AMD Grabs Record Share

The desktop PC market took it on the chin in the first quarter of 2022, as excess inventory and normal seasonal downturns jointly contributed to a steep drop in x86 CPU shipments.

hothardware.com

Not to mention the move to 7/8nm or better nodes only just begun during that time back in 2019/20 period. TSMC has increased capacity massively from back then, better yields & now moving on to 4nm or smaller nodes. So no I don't see how Covid wasn't a major factor in that, remember the spike in "work/study from home" PC's or other related hardware sales?

Agree with you. 100%

 

[R-T-B]

And yet its unregulated unprotected and relies on faith. You just picked a different story to believe in. But its a story, exactly like other stablecoins can provide very smooth looking papers and websites.

I'm unsure how it's entirely faith. I mean, there is something backing it. But yeah it's not FDIC insured or anything (neither is paypal btw)

 

[Vayra86]

I'm unsure how it's entirely faith. I mean, there is something backing it. But yeah it's not FDIC insured or anything (neither is paypal btw)

Paypal is backed by the US dollar in a real world economy which in turn is a regulated currency and a vast intertwined system of tried and tested checks and balances.

People have enough faith in that to assign US dollar as the world's primary coin to determine value and trade assets. They work and earn dollars directly too.

Everything in the economy is about faith.

 

[R-T-B]

Paypal is backed by the US dollar

About as much as circles usdc I'd wager. If you think 100% of their deposit assets are liquid, well, I can promise you they aren't.

 

[caroline!]

Most of the COVID19 demand spike was in the 40nm or 65nm older processes, for cars and washing machines.

Millenials discovered they could wash their clothes at home. 2020 was indeed a terrible year for laundromats.

 

[plastiscɧ]

Millenials discovered they could wash their clothes at home. 2020 was indeed a terrible year for laundromats.

u must be a boomer with that kind of knowledge....