Just had a thought:
If GPU manufacturers want to control miner GPU purchasing volumes, couldn't they just do a non-editable firmware or hardware change to their products that makes cards non-functional over connections that are electrically less than PCIe x4? Nvidia already does exactly this by making SLI function at only x8 or above when Crossfire makes it obvious that an x4 connection can effectively manage this kind of parallelization between GPUs.
If I am not mistaken, forcing a PCIe 3.0 x4 minimum would leave gamers completely unaffected while breaking the functionality of the many x1 connections that miners currently rely on. At the very least, this would drive a broader assortment of hardware purchases as miners would require more motherboards, CPUs and RAM to run their rigs (good for the entire tech industry) while likely driving out enough miners to significantly reduce GPU demand.
Another angle is that for manufacturers like Zotac and EVGA that don't provide the other hardware that miners rely on (mining motherboards specifically) this could be a particularly good way to secure brand loyalty as the company that took significant action to help the gamers. By eliminating miner demand and thereby third party reselling of their cards for which they likely see no additional profit, their cards specifically would return back to MSRP moving an absolute TON of stock to their stable and long term customer base.
Alongside this, the manufacturers that want to produce cards for the admittedly riskier mining market could release mining-centric cards that allow x1 connections. Prices could reflect the current market as this is obviously what miners are willing to pay. Rather than allowing third party sellers to double the price of cards, the AIBs could simply price them very high to start with with the justification being that they require higher prices to produce cards for a riskier market. These inflated prices would in turn provide a large enough margin that GPU manufacturers could afford to be stuck with a bunch of spare GPUs if mining tanks. If mining continues to be strong quarter over quarter, this gamble would pay off massively for the companies that decided to take it.
Ultimately I feel like this would be a very simple way to get a lot of miners out of the gaming GPU market while deflecting the risks of producing additional cards for the mining market onto the miners themselves. Thoughts?
