Computer giant Asus says demand for consumer graphics cards from crypto miners is “disappearing,” even though it expects its desktop PC shipments to fall 10%, motherboard and graphics card shipments 10%. -15% compared to the previous quarter.
As reported by The Register, Asus co-CEO SY Hsu said on the company's QXNUMX earnings call that the drop in demand was likely caused by the crypto industry's intention to move away from mining. GPU-based for Ethereum, the second most important. popular cryptocurrency in the world behind Bitcoin.
"As the demand for cryptocurrency mining in GPU shipments is slowly declining, the demand for graphics cards in the market is normalizing," he said.
The lack of miner interest is likely to have very little to do with the current crypto market slump (Ethereum price fell to €1770 this week from €4600 in November 2021), though it may also provide some benefits for gaming. of PC and the creation of communities.
Existing mining farms might be looking to sell their existing hardware to recoup some cash, so we can expect an influx of cheap, used graphics cards to flood the market, though this is generally a risky purchase given the intensity of their operation during mining. .
Still, even without used GPU flood sites like eBay or Facebook Marketplace, we can expect PC gamers to find less competition from crypto miners in the coming months, which should help get the GeForce RTX 3080 that could be searching.
Graphics cards are back on the shelves
Mining Ethereum using trading cards is not as viable as it used to be now that the cryptocurrency has started to transition to proof-of-stake, from the previous proof-of-stake method previously used by Bitcoin.
In a nutshell, proof of work is a validation method where computers compete to be the first to solve complex puzzles, which left room for miners to use warehouses full of consumer graphics cards to solve these puzzles. The winner can update the blockchain with the latest verified transactions and is rewarded with cryptocurrencies as payment.
Instead, Proof of Stake uses validators to find a block based on the number of tokens they hold, eliminating the need to solve these “puzzles”, so where it was previously profitable to mine Ethereum, it will soon be inefficient to do so.
micro_center_stock from r/pcmasterraceBig improvements have already been seen in the global GPU market in recent months, with stock available on shelves and often around MSRP. That's a far cry from last year, when people had to line up for several blocks if they wanted to try and buy a card at a physical store.
With the market stabilizing, we could see a flood of used GPUs and the anticipation of next-gen Nvidia Lovelace and AMD RDNA3 graphics cards driving prices down even further, so you may find cards like the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 that are even more expensive than they should be, are becoming more and more affordable with each passing month.
Analysis: We're not quite out of the woods yet
It's been nearly impossible to find most of the best graphics cards available to buy in recent years due to global chip shortages, a broader supply chain crisis at ports around the world, and demand for consumer technologies that they put even more pressure on the availability of semiconductors that AMD and Nvidia need for their products.
Crypto miners have certainly not been the biggest problem, but they have caused competition for the little stock available, with some buying the available stock in bulk using bot software. Ultimately, Team Green has implemented measures to make its consumer graphics cards less desirable to those hoping to use them to mine currencies like Ethereum.
The biggest risk here is that there are still other coins available that use a proof-of-work system, and while these don't share the same value as ETH last year, it's enough for one of them to skyrocket for mining to become viable. again.
Earlier this week, we saw that the LHR (low hash rate) versions of Nvidia's RTX 30 series graphics cards were finally fully unlocked using mining software called Nicehash, restoring each card's respective mining capabilities. . with the limiter as a deterrent.
For now, however, many of the previous issues that caused the great GPU drought have been resolved, with production and supply improvements reducing the need to fight for a small pool of available stock. If you want to pick up a graphics card at its expected retail price (or, in some cases, lower), now seems like a good time to do so, before the next generation of GPUs sees a spike in demand again.
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