They are clearly marking the new models with a new suffix on the model number. As someone who has been trying for months to buy a 3080 and has zero interest in crypto, this is fantastic news... IFF it means I can actually purchase a card.
This doesn't make me angry, and I don't think it should make you angry either.
I'm personally angry that this whole crypto ponzi scheme has gotten so big. That miners are producing e-Waste is the least of its environmental impact.
The amount of e-waste seems like worrying about the trash created from discarded plastic bottles of windshield washer fluid as the environmental impact of cars.
Has anybody written about the opportunity cost to society of technological resources going to crypto mining instead of to consumers, creators, and scientists? I'd be interested in reading such an analysis of cost/benefit of crypto vs. creation with the limited supply of hardware and electricity.
randomhodler84, have you heard the phrase "last man holding the bag?" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bagholder This crypt ponzi scheme turned the natural progression of itself into a meme that reinforces itself. But GME is at $180, so you could be right. Stupidity could yet win and our future could be doomed to feed an ever increasing amount of resources into accounting. I hope it's just mania and we can go back to regular low energy databases to keep track of funds.
Yes, and also yes, it is a meme. Money itself is just a meme, we just don’t all agree to its definition. Bitcoin as a meme is self reinforcing, incentivizing meme, with so many self defense mechanisms — it’s crazy. Highly contagious too! Groundbreaking and game changing in its very existence. What I wonder about constantly “is it the greatest meme”? Bitcoin consumes the lives and speech patterns of its advocates far stronger than any religion. It’s easy from the outside to say “that’s not rational”. Can we ever go back to less?
Argument: money is a meme. Bitcoin could be the strongest meme ever, as demonstrated by its consumption of energy, a proxy for human perceived value. Arguing over energy is just arguing over human preference.
Today, a half-megawatt mine, Miehe says, “is nothing.” The commercial miners now pouring into the valley are building sites with tens of thousands of servers and electrical loads of as much as 30 megawatts, or enough to power a neighborhood of 13,000 homes. And in the arms race that cryptocurrency mining has become, even these operations will soon be considered small-scale.
For people clamoring for renewable energy, this is an obscene amount of energy needed to do a single task - mine bitcoin. Which should make it even more obscene that all of that energy is being used for what? The benefit of a few people. Staggering to think how common this is and the article even states a 30 megawatt system is small compared to some of the other sites that are out there.
What about the electricity cost for powering the card. Doesn’t that outweigh the e-waste part by a significant margin?
Just because a card can’t be used by gamers doesn’t mean the card must be tossed, there are plenty of non-gaming uses such as AI. You’ll probably see an aftermarket for both types of cards.
Also, like regular graphics cards, newer versions are highly prized so one might say that graphics cards as an industry is already all about e-waste. Unless you’d like to buy my Radeon 9800 or my GTX 1070? They’re still perfectly good for gaming… except everybody wants the new RTX ray tracing etc.
> Also, like regular graphics cards, newer versions are highly prized so one might say that graphics cards as an industry is already all about e-waste. Unless you’d like to buy my Radeon 9800 or my GTX 1070? They’re still perfectly good for gaming… except everybody wants the new RTX ray tracing etc.
This is highly inaccurate, particularly on the used market. People want cards that can handle whatever games they play within their budget. A lot of older cards run tons of games quite well still, especially if you accept lower framerates / resolutions.
RTX in particular isn't actually that coveted by gamers from what I've seen. It's seen as a nice-to-have at best.
This doesn't make me angry, and I don't think it should make you angry either.