I think cryptocurrency is a scam and I'll be glad if/when it goes away and graphics cards become cheap again. However, I will never support hardware manufacturers infringing on the idea of general purpose computing for the sake of their business model.
If they want gamers to get more graphics cards then make so many graphics cards that everyone will be able to afford them. Don't try to artificially limit what the hardware can do.
If there are poor people why don't they print more money? But seriously, I addressed this in my reply: there is an ongoing chip shortage in the industry (besides the fact that it may not make sense to scale a production line for a demand surge).
What is the principle you are defending and at what point does it become less important than other principles?
In this case though the choice is between restricting hardware to give gamers more affordable GPUs. The benefit doesn't match the cost.
The principle is something like freedom or ownership. Arbitrary restrictions are bad because freedom is good. By definition arbitrary restrictions aren't needed (arbitrary) and reduce freedom (restriction).
Of course, it's not really the big value-producing activities getting hit here, it's gaming.
The argument in this subthread has been over whether we should be mad at Nvidia on principle. For example, as capableweb puts it:
> What worth is a principle if you don't still have it when it get challenged? Then it's just a opinion, which is fine by itself and it's ok to change opinion, smart people do it all the time. But don't call it a principle.
You seemingly agreed with a "principled" reading of the situation: "That strikes me as almost morally wrong. I tell the computer what to do. It doesn't tell me what to do."
istorical is arguing, by giving an extreme case, that we don't have a consistent principle against limiting the capabilities of a product when it will benefit a customer who matters more.
After all, if we've agreed that it's morally wrong to "cripple" a product, then what worth is that principle if we abandon it during a crisis? Let the people starve! You're rightly repulsed by that idea, and so you're retreating to the position that we're just going with a cost/benefit analysis. Preventing food from being burned has a cost and a benefit. Preventing GPUs from being used for crypto has a cost and a benefit.
The thing is, this gives up the supposed moral high ground that many in this thread have tried to promote as a reason to be mad at Nvidia. From the perspective you present, it's perfectly reasonable to look at the situation and say that preventing GPUs from being used for crypto will have more benefit than cost. (I certainly think so!) There's no inconsistency you can draw out of someone weighing the various benefits and costs differently than you do.
This is not abandoning a principle but rather picking a higher principle to follow when two or more principles conflict. The point I was making is that we are not currently in this situation. We aren't starving people by denying them access to the latest and greatest graphics cards for cheap.
Not really. The intent is to get graphics cards in the hands of gamers and professionals, instead of in the hands of crypto miners.
That is the end goal here. If you have a better solution, of how to do this without people getting around it via reselling, ect , please suggest it.
Perhaps I'm missing something, but why doesn't nVidia just make the best cards they can, and sell them for the highest price they can? What does nVidia care if their customers are using their cards for gaming or mining?
Because it makes a lot of business sense to prioritize the long time gamer customer base, as opposed to the crypto market, which could disappear very quickly.
Prioritizing certain customers, that will be around in the future, makes a lot of sense.
It also helps build a gaming ecosystem. If gamers don't have graphics cards, then the gaming ecosystem as a whole suffers, and could hurt their future business.
What if you want to raise prices only to crypto miners, and not raise them for gamers/professions, in order to support your long term customers?
There are lots of very good business reasons to provide preferential treatment to a specific customer base, and to raise prices on a different customer base.
It is called price discrimination, and is very useful.
Do you not support companies making obvious business decisions like this, with their own company, that have large benefits to their existing customer base, as well as being perfectly rational from a business perspective?
Having crypto miners subsidize an existing customer base, makes a lot of business sense, and helps out a lot of people.
And it is all done, with people making voluntary decisions with the products that they choose to sell. Don't buy the product, if you don't like it.
I don't support companies making the choice to limit their compute. I think companies should sell general purpose computers.
No, this doesn't solve the problem.
Because what they want to do is ensure that the cards are not resold to miners, and instead stay in the hands of long term customers.
> You don't need to cripple the devices
First of all, they aren't crippled for the existing customers. They are only limited, for this other use case that the company doesn't care about.
And they do need to limit that functionality, if they want to prevent those cards from being resold to crypto miners.
> I don't support companies
Then don't purchase their product, if you don't like it. That is kind of the point of all of this. They don't want you as a customer. And it is their company, that they can do what they want with.
If you need to run millions of hashes per second then buy one of the non-LHR models. No one is forcing you to buy one of these chips and Nvidia is not taking anything away from you.
This is like saying that Intel limits what people can do with their hardware because they make both i3 and i9 chips. There is a spectrum of options to fit more people's needs.
How would you feel towards Intel if they didn’t allow you to run Microsoft Office on an i3 chip because it’s a “consumer grade processor” - you have to upgrade to an i5 or higher to run “business programs”.
I agree with you, you should for sure listen to criticism against your principles, and challenge them yourself too. But if they change because "if we didn’t have such a dire X", I wouldn't call it a "principle" anymore. A principle (for me) would mean that you don't compromise on it "in emergency" but rather that it's something fundamental you believe in, without much reason in many cases.
> because the intent displayed by Nvidia does matter
Yeah, agree again that it matters, but as a gamer myself, I'm afraid it doesn't solve the problem for me. I want to be able to buy graphic cards myself too, and these "fixes" from NVIDIA looks (to me) like posturing without actually try to address the core problem (low supply). I'd love for them to come up with a real solution, that doesn't try to decide how people use their computers, even though I don't want to mine anything myself.