back to article Nvidia shrugs off crypto-mining crash, touts live ray-tracing GPUs, etc

Here's your quick roundup of AI news beyond what we've already written about this week. Crypto-mining is bust for Nvidia: Nvidia reported strong growth in its second quarter financial results, emitted this week, in areas expected like the data center and gaming – but not for cryptocurrency mining. Here is a quick snapshot of …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    'Could - while they’re Sleeping'

    "When he was asked about how much the gaming industry was impacted by crypto in the earnings call, Huang said: “A lot of gamers at night, they could - while they’re sleeping, they could do some mining. And so, do they buy it for mining or did they buy it for gaming, it’s kind of hard to say."

    -------

    1st: This all rings of corporate spin, gamers don't sleep sleep is for wimps.

    2nd: Didn't meet many gamers that gave much of a shit about Crypto tbh.

    3rd: Spin: Lets not alienate our core market now that we need them again!

    1. Teiwaz

      Re: 'Could - while they’re Sleeping'

      Most gamers I know, would forego sleep to game longer, if they could.

      No point mining on Windows during short as possible Gamer sleep breaks, if you could, get Windows to do it's update thing while you sleep, not while you game (although I think, like most option on Windows, that's pretty much out of your hands now).

      No point mining on Nvidia hardware on 'Linux, their prop driver sucks balls, and they've passively aggressively hampering the Nouveau project for years.

      A good Ryzen chip handles Nvidia Iray fairly well, not maybe as fast as a Nvidia GPU, but if your scene overloads the GPU onboard available memory, you're going to drop back to CPU anyway.

      1. Mark 110

        Re: 'Could - while they’re Sleeping'

        "if you could, get Windows to do it's update thing while you sleep, not while you game (although I think, like most option on Windows, that's pretty much out of your hands now)."

        Err no - to quote the Windows update settings page . . .

        "Set active hours to let us know when you typically use this device. We won't automatically restart it during active hours and we won't restart without checking if you're using it."

        I agree that there's use cases for not having it auto restarted at all which would be my preference but its not entirely out of your hands.

        1. Pascal Monett Silver badge
          Trollface

          Re: "to quote the Windows update settings page"

          Because you trust Microsoft to read that ?

        2. Richard 12 Silver badge

          Re: 'Could - while they’re Sleeping'

          I've set that "active hours" at work and at home.

          Windows 10 ignores both.

          It might work better if I left my machines running 24x7, but I pay the electricity bill so I don't do that.

          Extremely pissed off that it doesn't even warn that it's going to install updates when shutting down anymore. Not even on a laptop. Not even when on a laptop on an empty battery.

          One wonders how many installs have been bricked by depleting the battery during updates.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: 'Could - while they’re Sleeping'

            Certainly made Windows Server 2016, which is on the laptop for now, eat itself. It also can't seem to comprehend only having a one or two hour window of inactive use. Windows 10 here is nicer. It just flat f---ing ignores you and does at it pleases rather than seeming to consider your usage.

            1. Boothy

              Re: 'Could - while they’re Sleeping'

              Even when you are given the option to do updates on shutdown, it doesn't actually seem to do what it says!

              I had one of the big updates recently, at the end of the day I went to shutdown down, and was given the options of applying patches as it shutdown, or on next start up (no option to delay, or not apply!).

              I pick to apply during shutdown, then walked away, thinking it would actually apply the patches during shutdown, and so expected switching on the next day should be a normal boot up.

              Nope. Next day, booted up, to be greeted by a progress bar at load time, no skip option. Usual 'Don't power off your PC' comment. This took a good 40 minutes or more before I finally got to a Desktop!

              If you state 'Apply patches during Shutdown', then bloody apply them during shutdown! It's not like Windows update can't trigger restarts if it does need to apply something at boot up, then just shut down again.

              The most you should see during boot up, is perhaps a notification just to let you know what was applied, not 40 more minutes of patching! Especially when you need to use the machine!

  2. Ogi
    Go

    Nvidia never was much good for mining

    From what I remember from the Cryptomining community, the preference was for AMD GPUs. Something about their architecture made the hashrate better per watt than anything Nvidia could do.

    I don't know the details, because I never really got into GPU mining, but if the majority use AMD GPUs, it does not surprise me that Nvidia doesn't have much presence in the space, nor that they attach much importance to it.

    It isn't like they are going to completely revamp their architecture just for the Crypto miners, it isn't worth the investment, especially if it results in worse performance in other sectors where they are making wads of cash as well.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Nvidia never was much good for mining

      hash/watt is an important metric in mining. When it came to Ethereum, AMD made sense as it had a massively greater hash/watt than Nvidia. That isn't true of all coins though, for example ZCash and the other Equihash coins have a much higher hash/watt on Nvidia cards.

      However, with the recent release of Ethereum and Equihash ASIC miners, the value of mining with graphics cards is dissappearing, meaning the prices should finally start coming down a bit.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Nvidia never was much good for mining

        meaning the prices should finally start coming down a bit.

        I'm pleased you said should, the problem is that if they do it hits the bottom line of the accounts. All I can say is don't hold your breath while you wait.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    No Quadro RTX 5000 for me!

    Not at those prices, about 1/5th my disability for a year, although they aren't really out of line from when I bought my first Quadro, a 5000. Looks like it and the Tesla have to stay running for my sanity.

  4. David Roberts
    Windows

    Prices finally coming down?

    Along with SSD/RAM prices?

    Or is this just a tease?

    1. Boothy

      Re: Prices finally coming down?

      Can't comment on RAM, but SSD (or more specifically the memory chips in an SSD) are expected to drop in price quite a lot over the coming months. This assuming all the tech press and tech analysts are correct of course.

      The switch to higher density 3D memory, from tri to quad cells, and some new FABs coming on line, all contributing to a predicted flood into the market of much cheaper flash memory into early next year.

      So if you are looking at buying an SSD, especially if it's in the 1TB+. I'd give it a few more months.

      This site has some nice graphs showing price trends for SSD and HDD (based on actual sale prices, rather than recommended retail etc:

      https://pcpartpicker.com/trends/internal-hard-drive/

      (They also have graphs for RAM and GFX cards on the same site).

    2. phuzz Silver badge
      Meh

      Re: Prices finally coming down?

      Graphics card prices are definitely coming down a bit, but you might not be able to tell if you just want to buy an affordable GPU.

      Also, beware ebay, it looks like there's still plenty of people trying to sell graphics cards for the inflated prices they were going for six months ago, even though you can buy them cheaper brand new. eg Scan have a GTX 1080 Ti for £630, but most of the 'new' cards on ebay are in the £700+ range and even the used ones are only just cheaper than brand new.

      Especially fun is this person selling their mining rig and they want £6500 for eight cards. That's about £800 per card, ie about 30% more than buying brand new. (you do get a motherboard and two PSUs I suppose, but that's still way over the odds). Good luck shifting them for that price mate! :)

      tl/dr new GPU prices are coming down a bit, second-hand prices are staying high

      1. StargateSg7

        Re: Prices finally coming down?

        Damn! I LIKE working for a company where I can send a PO to the CTO for 500 of the $6000 (CAN) AMD Workstation or Server GPU cards and the next day it will be approved for send-out! We don't buy NVIDIA AT ALL! We use either AMD Workstation-class/Server-grade GPU's or we go REALLY high end using multiple FPGA's on blade cards all racked up into multiple cabinets.

        My personal friend who has his computer research company a few KM down to road from me is even luckier! He gets to print his own custom combined CPU/GPU chip designs onto GaAs/GaN/Silicon-on-Sapphire or GaAs/GaN/Silicon-on-Diamond substrates. His computer setup is WAY BEYOND the imagining of even the Fortune-500 and military bigwig CTO types!

  5. Dick Emery
    Alien

    Ayy

    https://www.reddit.com/r/nvidia/comments/98so7e/videocardz_zotac_geforce_rtx_2080_ti_amp_edition/

  6. 89724102172714182892114I7551670349743096734346773478647892349863592355648544996312855148587659264921

    Looks like very limited real-time ray tracing followed by highly effective noise reduction... very very impressive noise reduction which I wish nVidia would release as a standalone program or photoshop plugin I could use in GIMP.

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