China’s Used GPU Market Gets Flooded by GeForce RTX 30 Series GPUs Sold Under MSRP Following Mining Crackdown

[Tsing]

Image: NVIDIA



The Chinese government has recently been flexing some of its power by cracking down on the lucrative industry of cryptomining throughout the country. As initially reported by HKEPC, the effects of that have become abundantly clear in the used GPU market, which is now becoming filled with second-hand NVIDIA and AMD graphics cards that are being sold at prices lower than MSRP. These include one listing that’s offering a collection of 100 NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 GPUs for around $400 each, while others are selling GeForce RTX 3060 and GeForce RTX 3060 Ti GPUs in batches of 200 with each card priced at around $292 and $369, respectively. While no enthusiast should ever waste their time attempting to procure cards from overseas vendors that have gone through relentless, heavy mining usage, the listings do serve as a potentially positive sign that the GPU...

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[Dogsofjune]

A step in a different direction. Hopefully the used market might help bring the new cards down? We will see.

 

[noko]

I would like to know the avenue from Nvidia and AMD to the miners in China and elsewhere. The distributors having access to very large numbers of cards while a smidgen or totem quantities sent to retail sellers and at ridiculous prices. Why would large quantities of gaming cards from Nvidia be sent vice their mining cards that are available to the big mining farms?

Have to see how this plays out with numbers and if all of a sudden availability magically start to appear in the stores for AMD and Nvidia GPUs.

 

[Elf_Boy]

Pretty funny. Wonder when the used cards make it to Ebay for the US.

 

[Uvilla]

Pretty funny. Wonder when the used cards make it to Ebay for the US.

Never.
Didn't see it happen before. Don't expect it now either.

 

[Dogsofjune]

Pretty funny. Wonder when the used cards make it to Ebay for the US.

I wouldn't touch a used mining card.

"Such a price seems very cheap. Not only does the second-hand graphics card have no warranty, but the miners who play mining are running the graphics card with high load 24 hours a day. One month's use time may be equivalent to your use of several years. If you see graphics cards for sale in the second-hand market, remember to be careful not to buy mining cards."

Pulled from one of the sources listed from this story.

 

[Uvilla]

I would in theory buy a mining card no problem for the right low price. Eletronics have better chance of dying from long periods of no power than that of long periods of on power. Mining cards are probably underclocked too. The fan might wear out though.
Barring a flashed bios or some such the cards should be okay.
Now the now warranty stuff, yeah thats a lot of value lost.
Last time Bitcoin had a drop and mining operations were shutting too, there was never a 'flood' of anything. Used card still plenty overpriced then as far as I care, and that time I looked to buy (i ain't this time, pc gaming is just too expensive for me, doesn't look like its changing any time soon) .

 

[Brian_B]

were shutting too, there was never a 'flood' of anything.

You don’t recall the glut of new inventory when AMD and nVidia both tried to ramp up production and got caught with their pants down? Both had to take big stock hits based on inventory rightoffs, and there for a while they were almost giving away new lower tier cards.

Granted that wasn’t gray market - but there was certainly a glut and that’s part of the reason why, even if there had been fab capacity we wouldn’t have seen the GPU inventory recover, and the lip service about “mining only” cards had pretty much just been that - token lip service to appease the long term steady market with no intention of catering to a very fickle swing market.

 

[Grimlakin]

It's a gamble to take a ex mining card. From custom firmware that was undervolted to cards that were ran all out 24x7 for months on end. I would say cards after a point are generally safe, but really after having HBA cards eat it left and right after a few years.. I know that's not right

 

[kcthebrewer]

There are millions of 30 series GPUs being used by gamers as per the Steam survey.

Contracts with system integrators take priority over box sales and SIs have had backorders for months. That's where all the GPUs went.

 

[Brian_B]

There are millions of 30 series GPUs being used by gamers as per the Steam survey.

Contracts with system integrators take priority over box sales and SIs have had backorders for months. That's where all the GPUs went.

Millions? Hmm...

By may casual look: I see 5 different 3000 SKUs in the June '21 numbers, two of which are laptops - which total to 2.51%

Maybe Steam does have Billions in their hardware survey - they claim to have one billion accounts, but active users are only estimated at about 120 million.

So if I take 2.51% of 120MM, that does come out to around 3M cards across all of Ampere. Your math checks after I put in the work, but I admit on first read I didn't think it would.

Still.. 3M... we are approaching the first year of Ampere coming up in September. I wonder how that growth compares to previous generations... Given that console sales have reportedly been much higher (PS5 is up to almost 8M now, XB1SXWTFBBQ is supposedly about half that) it makes me wonder, I would expect nVidia to at least match console sales.

Yeah, Steam is a subset, and hardware survey isn't accurate and blah blah blah. But still. I would expect nVidia Ampere card sales to have at least matched console sales. I think what we are seeing is that they probably did match or exceed console sales, it's just that a lot of those went to miners and as such aren't showing up in gaming systems. I bet if one were so inclined you could probably tease out a sales figure based on Quarterly Reports.

And.. just a quick Google search:
https://www.hardwaretimes.com/nvidi...30-series-shortages-to-continue-thru-q2-2020/

Yeah.. 3M showing up in gaming rigs, over 20M sold. That is a pretty big disparity, even account for Steam Hardware survey gripes, the fact that nVidia will have sold GPUs to AIBs and etc that haven't put them into systems sold yet, etc.

You have led me down a rabbit hole. Now I'm pissed... either a large majority of nVidia GPUs have ended up in non-gaming systems (mining), or nVidia is lying about it's sales figures (possible, but not probable - at least by a large margin anyway), or most gamers simply have stopped running Steam (I still think that while not all gamers run Steam, a majority does and I do believe the SHS is at least representative to a point) .... Which leads me to one conclusion: F miners.