Nvidia's RTX 3000 series graphics cards offer high performance at a very competitive price. Nvidia was somewhat forced to improve the price-to-performance ratio of its cards because its competitor AMD is quite formidable with its new generation RX 6000 XT . Is this one of the reasons why Nvidia RTX cards sold out within minutes of their launch?
Cryptocurrency miners are also implicated
Customers were somewhat frustrated that GeForce RTX 3000 series graphics cards sold out within hours of going on sale. Nvidia has repeatedly explained that this was due to unusually high customer demand. According to RBC Capital Markets analyst Mitch Steves, cryptocurrency miners played a significant role. Nvidia reportedly sold a large quantity of the 3000 series cards to cryptocurrency miners, with nearly $175 million in sales attributed to these buyers. This surge in demand led to a shortage of the GPUs in recent weeks. Nvidia confirms that this shortage will continue into the first quarter of 2021.
Analysis of sales and demand for RTX 3000 cards
Nvidia's quarterly gaming sales figures show revenue of $2.27 billion , a 37% increase compared to the same period in 2020. This growth includes sales of GPUs, SoCs for game consoles, and PCs equipped with RTX 3000 series . Analysts estimate that, excluding the $175 million in sales of cards to miners, Nvidia's revenue would have increased by over $500 million. Sales of cards to cryptocurrency miners account for more than 30% of this revenue. This figure could have increased exponentially if there were sufficient inventory to meet all demand.
It's worth noting that the Ethereum blockchain will be changing to version 2.0 starting in December. The new algorithm will prioritize proof of stake rather than proof of work, effectively displacing miners. This new algorithm will take approximately one year to fully implement. Ethereum miners have thus taken advantage of Nvidia's new graphics cards to rapidly accelerate mining before the stake change. Once this scalability is implemented, this system could be applied to other cryptocurrencies using the Ethash algorithm. Mitch Steves estimates that profitability with an Nvidia RTX 3080 would be achieved after 233 days of mining, with an average daily return of $3.
It should be noted that Nvidia is currently facing several lawsuits filed by its shareholders for failing to be transparent about previous sales of mining-related cards. We are therefore awaiting the outcome of these lawsuits.
The mining capabilities of GeForce 3000 series cards
The RTX 3080 card is rated at 73-74 MH/s with the DaggerHashimoto algorithm. When overclocked, this card can achieve 84-89 MH/s . In this case, the card is using 100% of its power.
For your information, the AMD Radeon RX 5700 achieves a hash rate of 50-54 MH/s in Ethereum mining. This is roughly equivalent to the performance of the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti (at 54 MH/s). Historically, Dagger-Hashimoto is the initial version of Ethereum Ethash, an ASIC-resistant algorithm.
The specifications of the RTX 3080
This surge in popularity for mining stems, among other things, from the performance of these Nvidia 3000 series cards. The RTX 3000 series cards are highly sought after because they offer significantly enhanced mining capabilities. These graphics cards are based on the Ampere architecture, which transitioned from a 12-nanometer to an 8-nanometer manufacturing process. The RTX 3080 has a €719 , but due to constant stock shortages, its price is steadily increasing online. Its relatively competitive MSRP, despite offering double the performance of its predecessor, the Nvidia RTX 2080, led to the card disappearing from the market just hours after its launch.
The GeForce RTX 3080 has 8704 CUDA cores 10 GB of GDDR6X memory running at 19 GHz . The memory transfers data on the 320-bit bus with a bandwidth of 760 Gbps. In boost mode, the GPU reaches a frequency of 1.71 GHz . In normal mode, the card operates at 1.44 GHz. The GPU contains 28.3 billion transistors . In terms of performance, this card is 93% of the same as the AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT .
The RTX 3080 graphics card is 28.5 cm long and has four video outputs: one HDMI and three DisplayPort. The card has a TDP of 320 watts . Therefore, it is recommended to use a power supply with a minimum power rating of 750 watts.
On Fortnite, at 720p resolution, the RTX 3080 provides a frame rate of 285 FPS, at QHD 1440p we get an average frame rate of 125 FPS and at 4K 2160p resolution, the card delivers images at 28.5 FPS.
When comparing the performance of the RTX 3080 with cards in the same category, the Radeon RX 6800 is at +5.08% while the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti is at -8.8%.
In short, Nvidia's 3000 series graphics cards, particularly the RTX 3080, were highly sought after by cryptocurrency miners. They alone purchased cards worth $175 million. This enthusiasm was amplified by the fact that these cards were sold at a very attractive price. Nvidia has announced a stock shortage until the first quarter of 2021.
