California-based NVIDIA has urged GPU resellers to put gamers first, rather than those who use them to undermine digital coins. These would be one of the causes of the recent surge in prices of these graphics adapters
Rush to graphics cards
Even if the markets are grim mine, the demand for crypto-miners for graphics cards seems far from running out of steam. This had increased significantly in 2017, causing a considerable increase in the price of these adapters.
An example ? The GeForce GTX 1080, priced at $ 499, can now be priced at over $ 1000:
And we can find packs of 6 GTX 1080 for nearly 6700 dollars:
Enough to provoke anger gamers - they are many fear that the minors prevent them in the future to indulge their passion, and hope that NVIDIA can find a solution.
But for some observers, two other factors could explain this outbreak. They cite the rise in the price of RAM that equips these graphics cards, but also a too low degree of competition between NVIDIA and its rival forever, AMD.
Boris Böhles, spokesperson for the company, explained his decision in an interview with ComputerBase:
"Gamers are the priority of NVIDIA. All activities related to our GeForce range are aimed at our core target. [...] In order to ensure that GeForce gamers continue to benefit from an adequate supply of GeForce graphics cards in the current situation, we recommend that our partners put in place the necessary measures to meet the demand of gamers "
Amazon had recently made the decision not to allow customers to afford multiple graphics cards per order.
One may wonder, however, whether NVIDIA's recommendations will really be followed, and whether it is not primarily a question of appeasing gamers' anger. Indeed, resellers have no doubt that these price increases will continue - increases that allow them to enjoy comfortable margins. And they probably do not have the opportunity to go to the home of their customers to make sure of the use they make of their graphics cards ...
In June 2017, there were rumors that NVIDIA was about to develop a graphics card exclusively for cryptocurrency mining. Since then, no additional information has been provided on this subject.