Why Are There No Graphics Cards To Be Had?

[Vern1961]

If it's MSI, they'll probably eBay it and say it was lost in transit and offer a partial refund.

A refund isn't much good when the only people who have GPU's are those held by the vendors for RMA or new builds...
Titles like the new Flight Simulator aren't even worth trying to run on a 1050.

 

[JediFragger]

If it's MSI, they'll probably eBay it and say it was lost in transit and offer a partial refund.

Don't. Give. Them. IDEAS!!!!

 

[Angelwolf]

That maybe true for the average joe blogs miner with a handful of Gpus but your forgetting about the large corporate mining farms especially in places like China that are buying huge amounts of cards directly from the manufacturers.

If they could get cards direct from the manufacturer then they'd sell them for instant, big profit. Miners are about money, and selling the cards would yield much larger gains than simply mining.

 

[BlueInf]

If they could get cards direct from the manufacturer then they'd sell them for instant, big profit. Miners are about money, and selling the cards would yield much larger gains than simply mining.

This is not true for all miners, some mining operations are optimistic about the mining.

They will buy 3070s up to a certain high figure and mine them and they already bought pallets, it just that they want to reach a target mining in hash.

 

[Angelwolf]

This is not true for all miners, some mining operations are optimistic about the mining.

They will buy 3070s up to a certain high figure and mine them and they already bought pallets, it just that they want to reach a target mining in hash.

It doesn't make sense to me. If they had cards by the pallet, why, from a profit point of view, wouldn't they scalp them for a considerable profit, then repeat, keeping a few cards from each purchase for their mining operation?

If you had access to that many cards it would be far more efficient to simply keep a few cards, scalp the majority of them, then buy another pallet, surely?

 

[BlueInf]

It doesn't make sense to me. If they had cards by the pallet, why, from a profit point of view, wouldn't they scalp them for a considerable profit, then repeat, keeping a few cards from each purchase for their mining operation?

If you had access to that many cards it would be far more efficient to simply keep a few cards, scalp the majority of them, then buy another pallet, surely?

It depends if your goal is to hold GBP or crypto. There are people who believe that they should mine at the moment and stock crypto for the next bull market.

Having pallets of cards does not mean you reached your target in mining speed, they may just have not enough cards to complete their objective.

You may have a different view, but some people may have a different view than yours as well …

 

[Haggisman]

It doesn't make sense to me. If they had cards by the pallet, why, from a profit point of view, wouldn't they scalp them for a considerable profit, then repeat, keeping a few cards from each purchase for their mining operation?

If you had access to that many cards it would be far more efficient to simply keep a few cards, scalp the majority of them, then buy another pallet, surely?

Say a card costs you £500 (when bought direct from the manufacturer in bulk) and sells for £1k, or mines ~£100/month*, it would take ~10 months of mining to make back the profit you could have made selling it. At which point you a) can carry on mining for more profit, and b) still have a card which (in the current market) you could still sell for at least what you paid for it, even 2nd hand.

Of course mining is a more risky prospect, since the coin you are mining could crash, the resale value of cards could drop significantly, etc., but at the same time, there is also potential for plenty more profit to be made (e.g. if the coin doubles in value then you're laughing)

* which given the hash rate of my 6800 is fairly realistic

** well, more like 11-12 months if you take into account electricity costs

 

[HangTime]

If they could get cards direct from the manufacturer then they'd sell them for instant, big profit. Miners are about money, and selling the cards would yield much larger gains than simply mining.

Would it though? The reason card prices are inflated is in part because people are paying those prices to yield mining profits.
You could make a counter argument that selling the cards immediately would be foolish, because then they are losing the opportunity to earn mining revenue. It's like if you bought a printer that could print perfect forged bank notes, do you just sell it straight away for a profit or do you print a wad of cash first and then sell it for a profit?

Obviously there are some assumptions in play like the price of GPUs not plummeting, but you'd imagine they will get enough warning to offload, prices will drop gradually not halve overnight.

 

[Angelwolf]

I guess my thought process is that if these mining operations are getting cards "by the pallet load", then selling them for big profits and buying crypto with those profits, yet keeping some cards, then getting the next pallet load and repeating would just make more sense.

As for a money printing machine, well, it's a machine that costs a lot to run and isn't guaranteed to actually turn a profit given the numbers game that's played when mining. No block, no reward, of course.

But yes, that's just my two cents. I personally feel that miners are not actually as big of an issue as some people believe them to be

 

[HangTime]

I don't see why they would adopt a hybrid approach of both selling cards and mining unless they were hitting some other constraint like space, power or whatever. If selling cards and buying crypto is more profitable, why even mine at all? Just sell everything as they will get more profits.

 

[BlueInf]

I guess my thought process is that if these mining operations are getting cards "by the pallet load", then selling them for big profits and buying crypto with those profits, yet keeping some cards, then getting the next pallet load and repeating would just make more sense.

As for a money printing machine, well, it's a machine that costs a lot to run and isn't guaranteed to actually turn a profit given the numbers game that's played when mining. No block, no reward, of course.

But yes, that's just my two cents. I personally feel that miners are not actually as big of an issue as some people believe them to be

It’s a simple optimisation problem, you can pretty much write equations to solve it depending of your assumptions about mining difficulty and future prices.

Selling half the stock of GPUs would only make sense to reduce risk. If you know the future you will know if mining or scalping is optimal. Doing things halfway cannot be optimal if you have full knowledge of future events (by definition): you only do it to hedge your risk partially mostly because you have some risk aversion and you have imperfect knowledge of future events.

 

[Haggisman]

I guess my thought process is that if these mining operations are getting cards "by the pallet load", then selling them for big profits and buying crypto with those profits, yet keeping some cards, then getting the next pallet load and repeating would just make more sense.

So you sell 100 cards at £500 profit each and end up with £50k profit total, buy £50k of Ethereum and then... Nothing

Or

You mine with 100 cards for a year, end up with £100k* worth of Ethereum = £50k profit total, and then.... Carry on mining, or sell the cards for a further £50k** (ending up with £100k profit). These figures are obviously simplified for ease of calculation, but are ballpark accurate.

Or

Some combination of the above, but then every card you sell for £500 profit is a card that isn't mining.

Obviously if you don't have the facilities for mining, can't be bothered with the hassle, want the money now, or think the risk is too high then selling is the better option, but longer term (to a point) mining will "probably" be more profitable. (of course no-one can predict the future, and in theory, eth could drop to $1 overnight, leaving you with £50k of cards that are now useless for mining and only worth £10k because the market is flooded by miners offloading)


* at current value, risk is it could have course go down, but equally it could go up

** again, at current prices, depending on the GPU situation in 12 months this may or may not be accurate

 

[Vern1961]

Follow up to the saga...
I finally heard back from the vendor who has stated the card cannot be repaired and they cannot replace it as the GTX1650 is end of life. They have offered an alternative up to the original price paid, which was £130 before VAT.
All well and good, but as their site doesn't list any prices against the GPU's, Nvidia or AMD (no doubt due to the ongoing scalping issues) not much to go on. I have also pointed out that value needs to reflects the prices before the scalping/datamining hikes, likewise if I opt to pay for a slight upgrade that needs to be at a fair price and nothing outrageous.
TBH, supply issues aside, there's not a vast array of cards that match the GTX1650, AMD maybe a 580 or 5500 but I'm not a huge fan of Radeon. If the Nvidia 16xx range is dead then that leaves an entry level RTX20xx as a possibility but from what I can see, they are singing around the £300 mark, if available.
So I have a horrible feeling this is going to end up with a refund and me running my PC with a GTX1050 for the foreseeable future. We shall see...

 

[Legionaire68]

There are now various cards in stock at online shops, especially Rx 6700 XT but also higher level AMD and Nvidia ones.

The prices are still eye-watering but a couple of months ago they would be gone within an hour whatever the price.

I don't know if it's crypto downturn or supply leveling out as AMD cpus are now in stock and can now be bought at a discount. PSUs are now available again too after them being like hens teeth.

 

[Vern1961]

Yes I see OCUK are selling GTX1050 for nearly as much as I paid the other vendor for my GTX1650 a year ago. There’s no point the seller offering me a GTX1050 as that’s what I’ve already put in the PC from my backup spares box. I can see me getting royally shafted on this, despite not being my fault the card failed.

 

[Vern1961]

Final postscript to the adventure, then.
Replacement graphics card arrived today, a MSI GTX1650 which is fair enough, almost like for like replacement actually a very slight upgrade as the original was 4Gb MSI GeForce GTX 1650 VENTUS XS OC 4GB GDDR5 Graphics Card, 896 Core, 1485MHz GPU, 1740MHz Boost. The new one is 4GB MSI GeForce GTX 1650 VENTUS XS OCV2 GDDR6 Graphics Card, 1280 Core, 1620MHz Boost.
So hopefully I will get a slightly better performance, at least until the RTX2060's become available at a sane price and I can upgrade (or buy a new PC).
And the old 1050 has not been consigned to the garage again, it's sitting in a box under the PC desk, just in case...