Miner exclusive cards like the Sapphire GPRO X080 and X060 aren't a solution: they're part of the global GPU supply problem

[Redaktion]

Spanish outlet El Chapuzas Informaticos recently discovered that Sapphire was selling RDNA2-based GPUs under its GPRO brand off retail channels. These are sold exclusively to high-volume crypto mining clients at a time when consumer GPU prices remain sky.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Miner-exclusive-cards-like-the-Sapphire-GPRO-X080-and-X060-aren-t-a-solution-they-re-part-of-the-global-GPU-supply-problem.582112.0.html

[Peeved]

Consumers are not forced to do anything. It is inconvenient but not life-altering to not have a graphics card for nonessential tasks.

I suggest consumers remember this moment and show no care when supply returns to normalcy. Let them beg you to buy and still refuse.

[Felipe]

Here's another one: Game studios should say that they will not build games that take advantage of the newer hardware until the supply issue stops and people can reasonably easily get newer cards. Until now, make stuff decently playable with a 1660/2060 and nothing that makes the 3080 exceptional, so people don't HAVE to find a 3080 to really be able to enjoy games.

[Erik]

@notebookcheck: There's an issue with the hyperlinking of the El Chapuzas Informatico's website.

I suggest consumers remember this moment and show no care when supply returns to normalcy. Let them beg you to buy and still refuse.

Unfortunately plenty of consumers are paying obscene prices for the overpriced GPUs available right now, I kind of doubt that when supply will reach an equilibrium GPU companies will suffer any backlash of this kind.

Here's another one: Game studios should say that they will not build games that take advantage of the newer hardware until the supply issue stops and people can reasonably easily get newer cards. Until now, make stuff decently playable with a 1660/2060 and nothing that makes the 3080 exceptional, so people don't HAVE to find a 3080 to really be able to enjoy games.

Triple A game studios appears to receive some kind of support from either AMD or Nvidia and at any rate they probably can't openly antagonise them like that, because they need their collaboration in patching up the drivers in order to make the games enjoyable.
At best as consumers and players we can just hope that they will not forget that there's plenty of people out there who can't upgrade because of the inflated prices of GPUs.

[L]

People seem to be riding the rage wave while forgetting that the shortage is a combination of various factors and not just the cryptocurrency mining craze and OEMs creating mining GPUs. If you want to be mad at anyone focus on the cryptocurrency creators who require horrendous amounts of GPU/CPU cache power or drive amount to create something which is not backed by any real value except that someone will give you money for it while expecting to get even more fiat currency out of it. The ETH proof of stake initiative may help a bit but it's just one coin..

[Hubcumb]

I think you are missing a major piece about these mining cards, they are almost exclusively cards that did not pass testing to be one of the mainstream GPus. For example, that cmp hx 170 you have as the cover photo is made from the same die as the A100 data center gpu from Nvidia. One that is not made for gaming. Except it has a tiny fraction of the memory compared to the a100, as it is on die memory hbm2 which is super expensive but super high bandwidth. My point is that these mining cards are often made from GPUs that would otherwise be scrapped due to too many cores being disabled or memory bus issues etc.  Resulting from silicon errors. They don't even come with display capabilities and thus have reduced BOM which saves more components for the gaming cards