<story><title>Why you can’t buy a high-end graphics card at Best Buy</title><url>https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/01/cryptocurrency-boom-creates-insane-global-graphics-card-shortage/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jakebasile</author><text>&amp;gt; Gamers are complaining about why can&amp;#x27;t nVidia just ramp up their production.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t see too much of that in gaming circles. It&amp;#x27;s understood that it would be risky as crypto will crash sooner than later. The anger in the PC community is almost exclusively directed at miners. Threads about it pop up on the daily, but what can we do? We could lobby NVIDIA&amp;#x2F;AMD to somehow implement restrictions on what the Gaming SKUs can be used for as they do with the Quadro&amp;#x2F;FirePro workstation cards, but it&amp;#x27;s unclear if that would work let alone if it&amp;#x27;s technically&amp;#x2F;legally possible.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s a bad time to be a PC gamer, and just months ago it was a great time to be a PC gamer.</text></item><item><author>fermienrico</author><text>Gamers are complaining about why can&amp;#x27;t nVidia just ramp up their production.&lt;p&gt;Having worked in a Fab and an assembly factory, there is a tremendous amount of coordination that needs to happen. Let&amp;#x27;s forget the business aspects for a moment - in order to ramp up production, it is not just building more lines. Silicon industry supply chains are mind bogglingly complex from oil-free-air supply hardware, etching chemicals supplier, automation equipment all the way to the copper mine. All of these interdependent supply chains have to scale in perfect coordination without an exception to be able to scale production.&lt;p&gt;Then there is the business side - building more lines could be foolish investment if the LRP (long range projections) is weak.&lt;p&gt;nVidia fabs their chips at TSMC. Say, TSMC has wafers ready but the assembly houses are struggling to keep up - the entire supply chain is broken and demand cannot be met.</text></item><item><author>jakebasile</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m legitimately worried about the long term future of my hobby (PC gaming) at this point.&lt;p&gt;Prices like this have a cascade effect because when less people can afford to build a PC and&amp;#x2F;or upgrade there&amp;#x27;s less incentive for developers and publishers to spend time on the platform. Consoles are shielded by the ability of Sony and Microsoft to take losses which will be absorbed by online fees and higher game prices but no such cushion exists for PCs (this is a strength to be sure, but a double edged sword in this respect).&lt;p&gt;PC gamers have spent years disproving the image of PCs as prohibitively expensive and now it&amp;#x27;s coming crashing down due to people in a faux gold rush wasting hardware and energy. I wish it would stop, but I don&amp;#x27;t know how much of the damage to the hobby can be repaired.&lt;p&gt;Of course there are other factors. Machine learning is eating up cards, smartphones and tablets are eating RAM, and I don&amp;#x27;t doubt there&amp;#x27;s price fixing. But ML is at least useful to humanity (sometimes), smartphones and tablets are tangible products, and price fixing can be investigated and punished.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m relatively shielded from this as I just built a high end machine (i7-7700, 1080ti, 32GB DDR4) that will last a while but the next time I want to build a machine might be painful. While I would probably pay the price, others will not, and the hobby will suffer.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>gaius</author><text>&lt;i&gt;could lobby NVIDIA&amp;#x2F;AMD to somehow implement restrictions on what the Gaming SKUs&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Infact the opposite has happened. NVidia has restricted consumer cards from DCs with an exception for blockchains! They are very much making hay while the sun shines</text></comment>
<story><title>Why you can’t buy a high-end graphics card at Best Buy</title><url>https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/01/cryptocurrency-boom-creates-insane-global-graphics-card-shortage/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jakebasile</author><text>&amp;gt; Gamers are complaining about why can&amp;#x27;t nVidia just ramp up their production.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t see too much of that in gaming circles. It&amp;#x27;s understood that it would be risky as crypto will crash sooner than later. The anger in the PC community is almost exclusively directed at miners. Threads about it pop up on the daily, but what can we do? We could lobby NVIDIA&amp;#x2F;AMD to somehow implement restrictions on what the Gaming SKUs can be used for as they do with the Quadro&amp;#x2F;FirePro workstation cards, but it&amp;#x27;s unclear if that would work let alone if it&amp;#x27;s technically&amp;#x2F;legally possible.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s a bad time to be a PC gamer, and just months ago it was a great time to be a PC gamer.</text></item><item><author>fermienrico</author><text>Gamers are complaining about why can&amp;#x27;t nVidia just ramp up their production.&lt;p&gt;Having worked in a Fab and an assembly factory, there is a tremendous amount of coordination that needs to happen. Let&amp;#x27;s forget the business aspects for a moment - in order to ramp up production, it is not just building more lines. Silicon industry supply chains are mind bogglingly complex from oil-free-air supply hardware, etching chemicals supplier, automation equipment all the way to the copper mine. All of these interdependent supply chains have to scale in perfect coordination without an exception to be able to scale production.&lt;p&gt;Then there is the business side - building more lines could be foolish investment if the LRP (long range projections) is weak.&lt;p&gt;nVidia fabs their chips at TSMC. Say, TSMC has wafers ready but the assembly houses are struggling to keep up - the entire supply chain is broken and demand cannot be met.</text></item><item><author>jakebasile</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m legitimately worried about the long term future of my hobby (PC gaming) at this point.&lt;p&gt;Prices like this have a cascade effect because when less people can afford to build a PC and&amp;#x2F;or upgrade there&amp;#x27;s less incentive for developers and publishers to spend time on the platform. Consoles are shielded by the ability of Sony and Microsoft to take losses which will be absorbed by online fees and higher game prices but no such cushion exists for PCs (this is a strength to be sure, but a double edged sword in this respect).&lt;p&gt;PC gamers have spent years disproving the image of PCs as prohibitively expensive and now it&amp;#x27;s coming crashing down due to people in a faux gold rush wasting hardware and energy. I wish it would stop, but I don&amp;#x27;t know how much of the damage to the hobby can be repaired.&lt;p&gt;Of course there are other factors. Machine learning is eating up cards, smartphones and tablets are eating RAM, and I don&amp;#x27;t doubt there&amp;#x27;s price fixing. But ML is at least useful to humanity (sometimes), smartphones and tablets are tangible products, and price fixing can be investigated and punished.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m relatively shielded from this as I just built a high end machine (i7-7700, 1080ti, 32GB DDR4) that will last a while but the next time I want to build a machine might be painful. While I would probably pay the price, others will not, and the hobby will suffer.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>aianus</author><text>I wonder if Nvidia et al could short Ethereum as a hedge while expanding production.</text></comment>