It seems NVIDIA prefers its customers to be mostly gamers, as the graphics processing unit (GPU) manufacturer has even asked its retail partners to sell their GPUs to gamers and not to cryptocurrency miners.
German site ComputerBase.de has reported that NVIDIA is currently not too happy with the current situation of GPU price inflation due to the bulk buying of cryptocurrency miners. This activity from the miners rapidly depleted the stocks of consumer GPUs which are also used for mining, leading to a consequential price increase to compensate for the low supply.
"For NVIDIA, gamers come first. All activities related to our GeForce product line are targeted at our main audience. To ensure that GeForce gamers continue to have good GeForce graphics card availability in the current situation, we recommend that our trading partners make the appropriate arrangements to meet gamers' needs as usual," according to the company. They are appealing to their original equipment manufacturer (OEM) partners such as Asus, Gigabyte, EVGA, MSI, and more, who modify the cooling solution of their GPUs and retail them.
That said, so far, no retail partners have responded to NVIDIA's plea for the sake of gamers. Some financial analysts have also made claims that the prices of GPUs will continue to increase in the near future due to the growing demand and exchange rates for cryptocurrencies which require GPUs to mine.
This is quite unfortunate not only for gamers but also for multimedia professionals who might be in the market for a new GPU since their options have already been limited due to the inflated price and decreasing supplies of graphics cards.
Also, it seems that mid-range GPUs, which are preferred by miners as the best hardware for mining, are not the only ones affected since there has also been a notable price increase of high-end GPUs such as the flagship NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 from $499 to $1250. NVIDIA's competitor, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), has also seen a much worse situation where their Radeon RX 480/580 GPUs are now elusive and expensive.
