You’re making a huge assumption that they could be resold, even if they’re the same chips. This could be an entirely new market for chips that have yield defects in the graphics units, that will not ever work for games, and were previously already put in the trash.

And your theory doesn’t explain two things: - how this hurts gamers now, and - why if Nvidia just wanted profit and the chips are useful for games, why wouldn’t Nvidia simply do nothing and let the miners buy all the 3060s. Wouldn’t that be the most profitable thing here?

In fact, why wouldn’t Nvidia just hike the price of the 3060? They could make a lot more money on miners if they wanted to, and really screw gamers. But that’s not what’s happening. So from a gamer’s perspective, I just don’t get being mad at Nvidia rather than being mad at the miners who caused this to happen, again.

> And your theory doesn’t explain two things: - how this hurts gamers now, and - why if Nvidia just wanted profit and the chips are useful for games, why wouldn’t Nvidia simply do nothing and let the miners buy all the 3060s. Wouldn’t that be the most profitable thing here?

No it is not. If they mis-predict when the mining craze ends, they will be stuck with a huge inventory and no way to deal with it. The reason they will be stuck with the inventory is because the miners will be able to sell the second hand cards at a rate that NVDA simply can't compete with, so they end up as the bag holders just like it happened with the 1xxx series.

Infact, I'd wager that DLSS and RTX were used as a hacky solution to drive people away from the 1xxx series because the 1xxx series was more than sufficient for 1080p gaming - which is the most common resolution. The 3xxx series, even the 3060 is an overkill even for 1440p let alone 1080p.

This, to me, suggests that had NVDA not gimped the hashrate of the 3060, once the craze was over and the market was flooded with 2nd hand 3060, people would not be incentivised to buy anything above a used 3060 because it is a) an overkill for 1440p@120hz and b) it has much higher perf/$ than anything NVDA could offer with the 3xxx or 4xxx series and it wouldn't make any sense to go with anything higher anyways because 4k gaming doesn't seem worth it unless you are playing on a TV.

Strange theories on top of strange theories. The GTX 1080 is good enough forever? People are using 1080p forever? Games are staying put with the fidelity and textures and poly counts they had 5 years ago, and not improving any more? Last time I checked, there weren’t all that many games that run at 60Hz 1080p and never dip.

You're taking his words out of proportion. Just by looking at the steam hardware survey you'll see that the majority of gamers buy mid range cards and own 1080p monitors. The most popular games aren't the latest AAA titles either.

There isn't a game option survey but I'd bet most gamers with mid range cards run AAA games on medium as they value being able to play over a beautiful slideshow.

An Ampere mid-range card is different than a Pascal mid-range card, 3 or 4 generations older depending on how you count.

> I'd bet most gamers with mid range cards run AAA games on medium as they value being able to play over a beautiful slideshow.

Exactly, I agree. That statement supports what I said and contradicts parent's comment "the 1xxx series was more than sufficient for 1080p gaming".

The GTX 970 is just borderline whilst the GTX 1080 is "pretty much sufficient" for modern games according to this benchmark: https://youtu.be/bhLlHU_z55U

What are you talking about here? My argument is rather simple and you are wilfully misinterpreting it to make your statement. If you want to game, at 1080p, there is very little reason to spend money on a big upgrade, even going with 3xxx series is an overkill.

> Last time I checked, there weren’t all that many games that run at 60Hz 1080p and never dip.

CITATION NEEDED.

The 3060ti is benchmarked at 4k hitting mid to low 50s in high settings in Shadow of the Tomb Raider and hitting 100fps at 1440p with 0.1% minimums at 90fps.

> even going with 3xxx series is an overkill.

Then why do you care at all about the 3060 segmentation into CMP cards?

I dislike companies that pay lipservice or are pretentious like NVDA. On the positive side, I own shares, so I am making money off of it.

> I dislike companies that pay lipservice or are pretentious like NVDA. On the positive side, I own shares, so I am making money off of it.

Finally, the truth of the matter. ;)

> You’re making a huge assumption that they could be resold, even if they’re the same chips. This could be an entirely new market for chips that have yield defects in the graphics units, that will not ever work for games, and were previously already put in the trash.

Chip binning is nothing new, the article even explains this phenomenon.

Fully agree. Didn't suggest otherwise. That doesn't mean that the CMP cards are binning in the exact same way. I mean, isn't it a guarantee that the binning criteria change here to accommodate CMP? Isn't it entirely possible that the new bins are opportunities to sell wafers that couldn't be sold to gamers at all? Nvidia already has market segments for compute cards with no video. Yes, I'm speculating. So is parent & the article. I'm not sure it even matters. What matters is that gaming supply is less destroyed by mining demand.