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Nvidia announces RTX 3060 for $330 in late February, also RTX 3000 series laptop GPUs
The GeForce RTX 3060 will be rated at 13 TFLOPS, or a little less than 2/3 that of the RTX 3070. Interestingly, though, it will include 12 GB of GDDR6 memory, as compared to 8 GB on the RTX 3070.
That would lend some credibility to the rumors that Nvidia is going to launch increased memory versions of the higher end cards, such as a 16 GB version of the RTX 3070. That wasn't announced today, though. It probably would be easy for Nvidia to offer an increased memory version of the RTX 3070. For the RTX 3080, however, it would be harder, as GDDR6X memory still isn't in full production, so very limited quantities of it are available.
Nvidia also announced laptop versions of the RTX 3060, 3070, and 3080. The top one will have 16 GB of memory, which means it's probably a laptop version of the desktop RTX 3070, not the 3080. The GA102 die has a 384-bit memory bus, and 16 GB is a power of 2, so it probably means a 256-bit memory bus.
That would lend some credibility to the rumors that Nvidia is going to launch increased memory versions of the higher end cards, such as a 16 GB version of the RTX 3070. That wasn't announced today, though. It probably would be easy for Nvidia to offer an increased memory version of the RTX 3070. For the RTX 3080, however, it would be harder, as GDDR6X memory still isn't in full production, so very limited quantities of it are available.
Nvidia also announced laptop versions of the RTX 3060, 3070, and 3080. The top one will have 16 GB of memory, which means it's probably a laptop version of the desktop RTX 3070, not the 3080. The GA102 die has a 384-bit memory bus, and 16 GB is a power of 2, so it probably means a 256-bit memory bus.
Comments
3060 — 13.0
3060 Ti — 16.2
3070 — 20.4
3080 — 30.0
3090 — 36.0
Ethereum is the big one pushing miners to buy up GPUs. Ethereum requires a lot of memory, and the exact size that it requires slowly increases with time. As such, today, it requires just over 4 GB of memory. If a GPU has exactly 4 GB of memory, then that's no longer interesting to Ethereum miners. But for Ethereum mining purposes, the difference between 6 GB and 16 GB won't matter for at least several years, and likely never if they manage to convert it to proof of stake.
All time classic MY NEW FAVORITE POST! (Keep laying those bricks)
"I should point out that no other company has shipped out a beta on a disc before this." - Official Mortal Online Lead Community Moderator
Proudly wearing the Harbinger badge since Dec 23, 2017.
Coined the phrase "Role-Playing a Development Team" January 2018
"Oddly Slap is the main reason I stay in these forums." - Mystichaze April 9th 2018
Now does someone have a serious answer?
All time classic MY NEW FAVORITE POST! (Keep laying those bricks)
"I should point out that no other company has shipped out a beta on a disc before this." - Official Mortal Online Lead Community Moderator
Proudly wearing the Harbinger badge since Dec 23, 2017.
Coined the phrase "Role-Playing a Development Team" January 2018
"Oddly Slap is the main reason I stay in these forums." - Mystichaze April 9th 2018
Gamers are a big market, who are willing to pay high margins, and are very vocal with a lot of influencers and brand loyalty.
Miners are also a big market. They have no brand loyalty, and apart from their buying power, are relatively silent. SO long as their coin is riding high, they don't care about value or aesthetics or anything else - they just really care about hash rate / electric costs vs coin value, and if the ROI is there, they buy, no matter what the price.
So you market to the gamers, and you put out plenty of statements to support your vocal market, but you are right, you don't really care who buys the cards so long as they sell, and you certainly don't to anything to harm or really deter either of those markets.
The odds are much against us when it comes to surviving ourselves.
"Be water my friend" - Bruce Lee
I wonder what their margins are for these new expanded memory cards and if they are > than the original ones. If so, that would make rational sense to me.
All time classic MY NEW FAVORITE POST! (Keep laying those bricks)
"I should point out that no other company has shipped out a beta on a disc before this." - Official Mortal Online Lead Community Moderator
Proudly wearing the Harbinger badge since Dec 23, 2017.
Coined the phrase "Role-Playing a Development Team" January 2018
"Oddly Slap is the main reason I stay in these forums." - Mystichaze April 9th 2018
I think that AMD and Nvidia genuinely would prefer that their cards go to gamers rather than miners if they get the same amount of revenue either way. Suppose in the extreme case that miners buy all of company A's cards and gamers buy all of company B's, and that this continues for several years. And then the mining bubble bursts. At that point, nearly all gamers are using company B's cards, so game developers put huge amounts of work into optimizing for company B's cards but don't care if their game works well on company A's. Meanwhile, lots of used company A cards show up for sale after having spent years mining around the clock, and people who buy the cards often find that their reliability isn't great--and then blame company A. If it doesn't affect your revenue, would you rather be company A or B?
https://forums.mmorpg.com/discussion/492967/nvidia-announces-new-cmp-hx-series-of-mining-cards
I don't think the cards are out yet, but even once they are, miners will buy all of the mining cards and then try to buy all of the gaming cards with over 4 GB of memory, too.
Boutique builders are 60+ days out on builds, they are struggling as well, and even many of the bigger builders (Dell, etc) are several weeks out on builds.
Does something have to give? Hmm... that's an interesting question.
On one hand - the supply is all it's going to be for some time. Every fab that's capable is at capacity, and it takes a long time to get a new one online. So we aren't going to magically see more production happen, at least in the near term.
The gaming industry is one that has revolved around an upgrade cycle: Newer hardware = newer tech = fancier games = newer hardware. This certainly threatens that upgrade cycle... if people can't get the newer hardware, and just settle with what they have, what happens? I would say, we have seen the answer to this question when we had a 9 year long console generation, and most every game was stuck at DX9 for a really long time. It didn't kill the industry, but we didn't really move forward much either.
And mining is one of those bubble industries, or at least it has been so far. When it's high, it sucks up everything like a parasite and there is no way to possibly produce enough when the profit potential is "infinite", and when it's low, the floods the market with used and abused second hand gear.
Add in external influences: COVID, economies and personal welfare, etc. That really throws a curve ball at this question.
So, does anything have to change? In the near term, I think the answer is no. I don't see any change in the next 5-6 months, at least barring the crypto bubble bursting again or something going really whacky with exports.
I think looking longer term, you are going to see developers (AMD, etc) looking to diversify their fab requirements - everyone getting log jammed on TSMC 7nm and Samsung 8nm hasn't been great for anyone. And I think fabs are struggling to get online as fast as they can, but that process takes time and money.
There will continue to be anti-scalper and anti-bulk buyer blowback, but all of that will only exist so long as a supply problem exists: as soon as some availability gets out there, everyone will forget about it being a problem; at least until the next time it pops up. SO in short, I don't think manufacturers or retailers will change much, if anything, about how they are selling their products.
John Carmack has an interesting answer for the problem: auctions run by OEMs and first party retailers, rather than third parties via ebay. I don't know that that would necessarily fix anything, nor that you could entice those parties into the technical hassles of running an auction site, but it's an interesting conversation starter. I had high hopes for the EVGA queuing system, not perfect, but a step in the proper direction, but it appears they have abandoned it, or at least ignored it into obsolescence.
Brenics ~ Just to point out I do believe Chris Roberts is going down as the man who cheated backers and took down crowdfunding for gaming.