[Rule35]

If the cards were cheaper, or even the same price but available, then I doubt there'd be an outcry. But they charge more, for a surely defective part.

It'd be like buying a car and finding a clause that says if you manage to make money off of it they'll take a percentage or "brick" the hatch or something, to prevent your profitable usage. Nvidia should back the fuck off and just sell a product.

[rcxdude]

Even if they were cheaper miners wouldn't like them: one thing which substantially reduces miners' operating costs is the resale value of the GPUs they are using. They can buy a GPU, mine on it for a year or two, and then sell it for ~50% of its original value (or even higher in today's markets). The mining cards with zero resale value (which will much more quickly become landfill) would need to be substantially cheaper to make this worthwhile.

[Rule35]

Right. But if they openly sold defective half-finished cards for mining they'd still be less popular products but people wouldn't feel insulted.