John Carmack’s solution to graphics card shortages – auctions

On Thursday, Nvidia presented a version of a potential solution to graphics card shortages – dedicated graphics cards for breaking cryptocurrency. The new product series will be named CMP, Crypto Mining Processor, and according to the company will be paired with measures that artificially limit hashrates on cards in the Geforce series so that both gamers and crypto-breakers can coexist on the market.

Nvidia later also lifted the lid on the methodology the company restricts cryptocurrency mining starting with Geforce RTX 3060. From next week’s launch of the upcoming graphics card, the cards’ BIOS and drivers will conspire with the graphics circuit at silicon level to limit performance in specific scenarios – and already launched cards in the RTX 3000 series may be updated to follow with the same philosophy.

This has made Id Software founder John Carmack look red – where The Verge reports that he took to Twitter to air his views. Carmack’s position is that consumers should be allowed to use their hardware for what they want – and furthermore, he believes that manufacturers, instead of selling through resellers, should auction off the graphics cards via “transparent auction systems”.

That Carmack’s ultra-liberal sales plan would solve problems such as scalping in the graphics card market is no big deal – in part two of the above Twitter posts he also announces that the whole thing would lead to fewer middlemen. An initial “outrage” over reported prices in an auction system would eventually be replaced by a system that is “better for consumers”.

With his statements, Carmack does not make any new friends in the distribution and resale of computer hardware – but a potential auction system is at least a fun game of thought.