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Comment by mtgx | Hacker News Reader

I think the main problem is that both Nvidia and AMD miss the cycles of bull runs. They start pumping out GPUs for the crypto market when the market is almost at its peak. Then, the market crashes and they're left with a factory full of unsold GPUs. Then another bull run happens, and they're left without any card for a couple of months.

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It takes months to ramp up GPU production. Crypto booms-and-busts before the production cycle is even over.

The only way to stop that is to stockpile GPUs, which is a very, very bad idea because new GPU technology is inevitable. Even ignoring GPUs, there's also new mining equipment (see Antminer's Ethereum miner).

The GPU boom is over because Antminer made an Ethereum rig. The end, GPUs will never be as good as the ASICs. So holding onto lots of old GPUs isn't a strategy either.

But this is something you that they never really had to deal with before. Previously, graphics cards were not really correlated with any kind of market. And sales ramped up and down predictably. They had no reason to put money into being able to quickly ramp up production within a few weeks or a month. And now it’s no surprise that they can’t keep up with the fast paced crypto ups and downs.

Other than games, 3D visualization, modelling that is.

But if EA’s stock goes up it doesn’t mean that all of the sudden people are going to go out and buy graphics cards. Where with bitcoin, they actually do it.

No, but when something like Crysis with minimum requirements for a DX 10 class GPU, yes.

Feel free to update example to Fortnight or something similar more recent.

The interesting thing here is all the "big" games in the past few years have had fairly modest requirements(MOBA stuff, fortnite, etc). It's been a while since there was a huge blockbuster game everyone was buzzing about that was especially taxing. PUBG sort of sucks power but it runs like crap even with a ridiculously beefy machine, and not because it's graphically intense.

Yeah, but aren't margins on chips insanely high, i.e. unit cost of production is 'nothing' whereas the IP going into it and 'setting up the run' are the big charges?

So I think that if they are making new chips for this dead market, then they have a problem.

But inventory I think is a different story.

Feel fee to correct me if I'm wrong.

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