GPU shortage. A solution for mining problem?

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@wendell Maybe you could share this with Ed Crisler from Sapphire. I've been thinking recently about how mining has caused such a shortage in the gpu market and felt that Ed was such a good guest, he might be interested to hear some community feedback about the issue.

Mining has caused a problem for gamers that want to get cards that can't. Often loyal customers like myself that want to upgrade or buy/build for friend/family and would be thrilled to get a new card, then are stifled because the sale price is $$$% over retail markup or just plain out of stock.

I thought of an idea that I feel could be beneficial for everyone. Let me know what you think about this.

A GPU should have the ability to record some basic information to a special chunk of rom that a consumer cannot write to. But that anyone could read.

This should record the following
name of operating systems the card was operating on
Date of first and last power cycle
Number of power cycles
hours of uptime
The average load
[edited} Average temperature

This inormation would be beneficial in the prevention of RMA abuse and 2nd hand market.

RMA Abuse:
An inexpensive device (pci express slot, 8 pin power connectos, and LCD) could be provided to retailers that they can use to inspect the card for a return. LCD would display Hours of uptime and % of load average.

The seller could create their own rules to reject return in consideration of some of this information

Example 1: Customer return. Card has 5 power cycles, 10 hours, pretty high load. Maybe he ran benchmarks or mined but the usage is minimal so shouldn't affect resale

Example 2: Customer return. Card has 20 power cycles, 120 hours, average load of 70%. Probably just a gamer that didn't like the card claiming some default or change of mind. Parameters look normal, return seems rasonable.

Example 3: Customer used card for 3 power cycles, 480 hours, average load was 90%. Pretty reasonable assumption that this person was mining. Suggest not accepting return.

Example 4: Customer used card for 10 power cycles, 50 hours, first power cycle date is 3 days before purchase date on receipt. Looks like customer is trying to return same sku that they purchased from another vendor.

These examples don't even take the OS into account. Reasonably, if the operating system used is explicitly for mining that could be a flag for the seller to conside.

All of this could significantly deter RMA abuse because store sellers can design rules or use guidelines manufacturers provide for reasonable use case before accepting return.

2nd Hand Supply
2nd hand supply issue not only harms the sale of new cards, but it is also potentially bad for consumers. How do we know the card hasn't been running for 24/7 for months straight before we get it. A customer new to Brand 1 could get the impression that this card is just poor quality and they jump ship to another brand because they experience some issues. However, it might be reasonable that the problem is due to the card reaching end of prematurely because it was used for mining.

This is data a gamers could advertise when reselling their card

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Problem with that is that there are regions where a vendor is required to take back an item if it's within a legally specified timeframe, regardless of usage (if it's damaged). One such region being basically all of the EU.

The idea sounds good on paper (or in a forum), but it would require legislation that explicitly excludes certain types or usage. Politicians don't even know how the internet works, I don't expect them to even grasp the idea of a digital currency, let alone how mining works (because frankly even people in the "appropriate" age and interest have difficulties understanding that system).

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I betting on the globalists and Central Banks forcing a closed ledger one world crypto-currency on the planet.
Hoping to pick up a 1080 in 3 years for a C-note :slight_smile:

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Do we really need even more domestic spying? That and how should the card know which operating system was used?

Mining is not GPU abuse. The card is used for massively parallel computations that benefit from high memory bandwidth. That just so happens to be exactly what GPUs are meant for. So RMAing a dead GPU is really just a regular RMA. The card should be able to survive under mining conditions and frankly it's the vendor's fault when they don't.
Besides, when mining the cards temperature is more or less constant. Repeated head/cool cycles are not exactly beneficial to hardware either.

Those things aside, where I live the manufacturer is responsible for the hardware for two years. Rejecting an RMA would be illegal.

Present mining algorithms are memory-limited. Don't expect to see much GPU utilisation.

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Prob wont take more then 2.5 years to find that deal, wont be common but def something you should be able to find.

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Why wait. Here you can borrow mine. Pay me back later.

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Exactly correct. If a card cannot handle a year of almost solid use under 80% load and good temps it's a bad card from the start. Honestly I have no reservations about buying a used mining card.

If anything I'd know what to expect. It handled 24/7 load and still works.

And of course, no more telemetry is needed in hardware AT ALL.

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Guys, examples are just examples. I'm not claiming to be an expert as to recommend what "normal usage" should be. I've never mined so I don't know what utilizations are. But certainly someone smarter than I could come up with reasonable variables. And the reason for having more metrics than simply load is what gives someone a glimpse as to what might have gone on during the cards life between purchase and return or 2nd hand market.

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Sounds nice but I doubt that miners rmaing cards is that big of an issue or manufacturers would have done something about it already.

Miners don't want these things going down, that's lost profit. The problem is that demand is outstripping supply.

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@Skelterz GamersNexus posted a good video sharing anonymouse insider opinions on this issue.

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U got sum link?

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Yep. Great video as usual.

@Skelterz There ya go :smile:

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Gpu makers didn't plan for mining to be a thing, suddenly the market for gpus blew up and with the volatile nature of mining I think manufacturers will be reluctant to scale up production in any significant way (at least not enough to alleviate gamers any time soon).
The addition of mining skus won't translate to more gpus for gamers but less.

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Vendors sure are in a difficult position. Any cards they sell now are cards that will enter the second-hand market later. So the best thing to do for them might be to not ramp up production.

The problem here is of course coordination - even when most vendors don't ramp up production a single one could come along and do so, cashing in big time at the cost of others.

And that is why you want competition. Because consumers always profit from manufacturer's misery :laughing:

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"anonymous", if you listen to the arguments you can guess rather well what the vendors are :stuck_out_tongue:

2nd vendor is evga, 90% sure.

On a side-note. I'm in no way knowledgeable in mining (and please someone correct me if I'm wrong on this), but as I understand a lot of miners underclock their cards for better power/performance ratio. So running them 24/7 isn't even that big a deal since they're not actually running 100% when they say they ran 100%. They may have run 100% of the current capability/clock, but not 100% of the cards capability.

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Underclock core clock and overclock RAM typically.