Nvdia "Turing" cards

[Max]

Doesn't bode well for the gaming industry.

[Gman]

Skuzzy, I'm in the same boat, I typically refresh/upgrade whenever a new GPU series comes out from nVidia, and I have a number of family gaming systems to take care of.  Whenever/whatever the new GPU line is, when it comes out I'm not looking forward to the gouging that'll likely still be a reality.  Even PSUs - as much of an increase in cost and decrease in availability here in Canada as there is for RAM. 

I do hope that the "Turing" codenamed stuff from nVidia is a dedicated mining unit, as that could help take stress off the gaming market a bit - or it could make no difference and both mining and gaming gpus will be similarly gobbled up by the cryptocrazies.

Terrible time for gamers, builders, and businesses trying to survive in this economy and still service gaming customers needs...

There are options, but they still cost more $ than before, and involved purchasing bundles, wait times, or having to buy an entire system instead of just the components you really need/want.  Boooo.

[Reschke]

I find myself agreeing with Skuzzy on the $$$ to build versus the $$$ to buy a new system from someplace like Dell or any other mass builder. The savings isn't there like it was just 2-3 years ago. This is a bad thing for business as a whole.

[Gman]

My dealer had a larger number of their in house pre builts, from which they've now begun to scavenge PSU, RAM, and GPU, and for the last week sold them at a very fair prices(old MSRP for former cutomers, and new customers buying an entire system).

Checking out the local Staples, they had a number of systems with 1080 and 1080ti systems as well still in stock that had various higher end GPU/Ram/PSU-sort of/etc components.  It won't last long though, I have a feeling they'd been holding these back, and have put them out for sale as newer stuff is on the way shortly.

Once the existing "reserve or emergency" stock is exhausted out there, and the new line of nVidia and arguably AMD GPU platforms come to market - it's going to be a vicious free for all for everyone in "our" boats, holding off on upgrading, yet needing to.  I already have a buy order of sorts with my agent at my dealer for when they start getting stock numbers/etc for the new GPUs, but it's no guarantee. 

[Mister Fork]

I’m stuck- both sons wants a Rift but I don’t think it’s fair to buy video cards required to run it that is almost 2.5X the price before the stupidity of the crypto currencies began mid last year.

So I’m stuck. Waiting for the currency to collapse again or maybe decide that gaming PC’s are no longer an affordable toy. But it doesn’t just stop there - it’ll drive up prices of all gaming consoles eventually. Especially when the stock of PC’s and consoles need the newer highly priced cards, chips and memory.

[Bizman]

I just got an ad to my email from a Chinese webshop I randomly use. They had a bargain for a 2000 W PSU supporting eight (8) graphics cards. Eight!!! And of course there was links to related products such as "Crypto Coin Open Air Mining Frame Rig Graphics Case For 6-8 GPU ETH BTC Ethereum". A further search using only the key words related to crypto mining revealed more cases, frames and PSU's. Crazy!

[Max]

Would someone explain in simple plain English, what crypto mining is? The following description turned up and makes very little sense in terms of what happens, why so much  electricity is required, and why GPU vs CPU is needed.
 Most cryptocoin mining is all about solving mathematical problems, which in turn act as raffle tickets.

 Each problem solved is called a 'proof of work' result, and counts as one raffle ticket. Every time a predetermined quantity of proof-of-work results is generated, the system draws a raffle number, and one proof-of-work result is awarded a block of new cryptocoins. 

Every miner who contributed to solving that particular block will get some kind of proportionate share of the rewards.

[Skuzzy]

All that computational power is just going to waste.  They may as well be racing to find out who can add 2+2 the most times per second.

None of the math problems cryptocrazies are solving are useful in the real world.  It is all arbitrary.

It is a massive waste of electricity and computational power.

Someone, somewhere has decided to make those worthless math problems have value in the form of coin.  The more of those problems you solve or help solve, the more coin you get.  It is all virtual until you decide to cash it in.

It is mind boggling to me it still exists, given the amount of electricity being wasted.

[Bizman]

@Max: As Skuzzy said, someone has decided to make some math problems have value in fictional money. Although meaningless, the calculations are very complex so solving one may take the efforts of several computers who then share the reward. 

Why GPU? Well, a GPU is a computer by itself. Unlike a PC, it has much more processor cores to take care of the calculation of said math problems. So instead of the 16 cores of an AMD Ryzen you can use the 2560 cores of a GTX1080. As my previous post stated, you can have 8 of them in a single computer, juiced by a 2500W PSU!

As for how time consuming a computer calculation can be, decades ago I met a student in Chemistry who would have liked a more silent rig. His dual processor (!!! ultra high tech back then!!!) system could take several days to solve one single operation and the hum kept the guy awake in the small room he lived in.

[AAIK]

All that computational power is just going to waste.  They may as well be racing to find out who can add 2+2 the most times per second.

None of the math problems cryptocrazies are solving are useful in the real world.  It is all arbitrary.

It is a massive waste of electricity and computational power.

Someone, somewhere has decided to make those worthless math problems have value in the form of coin.  The more of those problems you solve or help solve, the more coin you get.  It is all virtual until you decide to cash it in.

It is mind boggling to me it still exists, given the amount of electricity being wasted.

I agree skuzzy. That is why the only currencies that will survive this boom are the ones which leverage computer resources for scientific problems/research. This crypto craze serves as a means to create the proper culture in which worldwide distributed systems which actually sell their hardware resources will exist in.

[Gman]

It is all arbitrary.

Agreed, that's it in a nutshell.

The official party line for Bitcoin as I've understood it is that Bitcoin offers an effecient way to transfer value(money) over the internet via a decentralized network under a transparent and agreed upon set of rules.

It's all based on assumptions - that Bitcoin will have value based on it being used a a method of exchange, and that it is a "store of value".  Bitcoin's utility as a store of value is therefore dependent on its utility of being a method of exchange...

While many Bitcoin and other crypto currency fans and defenders point out that the US petro-chem dollar isn't based on anything of real value anymore (the gold standard/etc), IMO the difference is that the world's banks have come to the decision of exactly WHAT is a store of value to them.  They haven't given this blessing to Bitcoin, and they never, ever, will. 

Pretty good explanation of cryptocurrency IMO here, I paraphrased and simplified it a bit, but there is more info there that is important, and it's interesting that the author despite pointing out all the negatives/assumptions about Bitcoin, still seems to portray it in a positive light. 

https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/100314/why-do-bitcoins-have-value.asp

[Max]

When I said "simple" I was hoping for something more like this 

[Chalenge]

Max, it amounts to throwing your money down a well, until it reaches the top and you can then draw some of your wealth out. However, if no one thinks the coins in the well are worth anything at the time you draw them out, then it's your loss. Think comic books, or coin collection. If you can't find a buyer, then you can't sell your collection. Except now with everyone running mining operations, it resembles a Ponzi scheme more than anything else. Initially each coin was relatively simple to mine, but now the massive miners can claim the majority of work and your little home operation only gets credit for 0.00000000000001% of each coin produced.

Good luck with that.

[Skuzzy]

That's the whole thing.  About 1,000 miners control over 90% of the cryptocrazy market.  These miners have tens of thousands of systems mining for them.  They work together to 'pump and dump' cryptocurrency.  In any other form of investment, what they are doing would be illegal, but almost nothing is illegal with the cryptocrazies.

The scary part is they are trying to get this to be the defacto standard in monetary exchange for the Internet.  What is really driving this is criminals need a transparent way to move money around which is difficult to trace.  That is the one thing which will keep it alive, no matter what.

Regulating it is going to be difficult because it is a moving target with no tangible value.  Taxing it is even more difficult because it has been designed to be difficult to trace what is really going on.

The big players are now using train cars for mobile data centers so they can move them when the electric rates go up in an area.  Leaving behind increased rates for everyone.  Neat, huh?

[Mister Fork]

That's the whole thing.  About 1,000 miners control over 90% of the cryptocrazy market.  These miners have tens of thousands of systems mining for them.  They work together to 'pump and dump' cryptocurrency.  In any other form of investment, what they are doing would be illegal, but almost nothing is illegal with the cryptocrazies.

The scary part is they are trying to get this to be the defacto standard in monetary exchange for the Internet.  What is really driving this is criminals need a transparent way to move money around which is difficult to trace.  That is the one thing which will keep it alive, no matter what.

Regulating it is going to be difficult because it is a moving target with no tangible value.  Taxing it is even more difficult because it has been designed to be difficult to trace what is really going on.

The big players are now using train cars for mobile data centers so they can move them when the electric rates go up in an area.  Leaving behind increased rates for everyone.  Neat, huh?

...of course, we're not even going to touch the fact that most web/hacking criminal element all deal and work with Bitcoins...and that most money laundering now can be washed with them as well...