Ekstrand: Introducing NVK [LWN.net]

Ekstrand: Introducing NVK

Posted Oct 5, 2022 16:45 UTC (Wed) by flussence (guest, #85566)
In reply to: Ekstrand: Introducing NVK by jhoblitt
Parent article: Ekstrand: Introducing NVK

I agree that we shouldn't reward the company, but at the same time we ought to acknowledge NV's current users are people too and not everyone can afford to exit on a whim; it's no better laying the blame on them for owning a GeForce than it is to blame all of someone's misfortune on living in Texas or Florida. It's going to be next to impossible in coming months to convince someone to buy a used NVidia card, what with Intel routing them with a better proposition at the mid-range and the second-hand market being tainted with a flood of hastily abandoned burned-out cryptomining trash.

Besides I think anything this does to improve NV's public image will be negated by the new 4-digit 4-slot cinderblock of death they recently announced. It seems obvious from their actions that the company is only interested in an audience with more money than sense. Caveat emptor to anyone who decides to buy NVidia *now*, but this effort will at least let existing owners weather their unfortunate situation, and it'll reduce the rate of e-waste in the long run.

And there's the most important motivation of all, having a FOSS driver humiliate the proprietary one in benchmarks.

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Ekstrand: Introducing NVK

Posted Oct 5, 2022 20:12 UTC (Wed) by NYKevin (subscriber, #129325) [Link] (1 responses)

> and the second-hand market being tainted with a flood of hastily abandoned burned-out cryptomining trash.

You understate this problem in two different ways:

1. Miners probably tend to take better care of their GPUs than gamers (because miners are operating out of datacenters and gamers aren't), so the miners are actually selling a superior product compared to the average person.
2. Miners all abruptly stopped buying new GPUs at the same time, so now there's a supply glut of new GPUs that were "supposed to" go to mining, but were never even opened. On top of that, the 40x series just came out, so at least some retailers will probably try to sell off their remaining 30x cards quickly (IMHO a mistake, because nobody wants the 40x cards at current prices, but meh, inflation could obviate that problem, so we'll see what happens), which in turn implies discounts on unopened 30x cards.

The net result of these things is that 30x NVidia cards are currently a buyer's market, regardless of whether you buy new or used.

Ekstrand: Introducing NVK

Posted Oct 6, 2022 11:22 UTC (Thu) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link]

Also on 1, there isn't even good evidence to think ex-mining cards are less reliable than ex-consumer (i.e. gaming) cards. There's a tech channel on Yt who did some comparisons I think, between ex-mining and new and found no difference in reliability.