Nvidia wants to limit sales of video cards



01/25/2018 2:34 PM


One of the world's leading manufacturers of video cards for computers and laptops, Nvidia, is extremely unhappy with the high demand for its products and the fact that its prices in 2017 almost doubled. This dissatisfaction is caused by unprecedented boom in the video card market, related to "crypto-currency fever". The miners are buying up almost all the goods in stores, because of which the target audience of the company, gamers, get almost nothing. However, the manufacturer seems to have found a solution to this problem.



Raysonho via flickr
Nvidia asked its trading partners not to sell more than two video cards in one hand. The manufacturer believes that this is only way to cope with the acute shortage of its products in the market. Representatives of the company told this to ComputerBase. The manufacturer is dissatisfied with the fact that now almost all the range of video cards, especially the more powerful ones, is bought by those who are trying to earn on the crypto-currency mining: "Gamers always come first for Nvidia. All our activities related to the GeForce product line are aimed at our target audience. And we recommend our trading partners to make the appropriate corrections to continue to meet the needs of gamers so that gamers still had access to GeForce graphics cards in the current situation."

One will need not just a powerful video card, but a whole "farm" of them to mine crypto currency. Often a single miner can run 10-20 video cards at once, or even more. Number of those wishing to earn crypto-currencies for the past year has become many times greater, and they are blamed for the sharp increase in the rate of all major digital currencies. For example, Bitcoin has risen in price from $ 1 thousand to $ 20 thousand for a year. Other crypto-currencies have also jumped in price.

As a result, a significant deficit in the video card market occurred somewhere in the middle of the year. Producers cannot keep up with the constantly growing demand, and store shelves are empty, as the cards are sold out even before they reach the counter. Everything that comes to the mass consumer is sold at greatly inflated prices. Nvidia representatives also said this - most of the company's video cards are now sold at a price that is twice the manufacturer's recommended retail price.

However, the company cannot directly influence the situation on the market - only the sellers can limit the sale of video cards in any way, and the released statement of the manufacturer is only recommendatory.

source: cnbc.com


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