# AMD RX Vega Mining Performance Reportedly Doubled With Driver Updates



## Raevenlord (Aug 4, 2017)

Disclaimer: take this post with a bucket of salt. However, the information here, if true, could heavily impact AMD's RX Vega cards' stock at launch and in the subsequent days, so, we're sharing this so our readers can decide on whether they want to pull the trigger for a Vega card at launch, as soon as possible, or risk what would seem like the equivalent of a mining Black Friday crowd gobbling up AMD's RX Vega models' stock. Remember that AMD has already justified delays for increased stock so as to limit the impact of miners on the available supply.

The information has been put out by two different sources already. The first source we encountered (and which has been covered by some media outlets solo) has been one post from one of OC UK's staff, Gibbo, who in a forum post, said "Seems the hash rate on VEGA is 70-100 per card, which is insanely good. Trying to devise some kind of plan so gamers can get them at MSRP without the miners wiping all the stock out within 5 minutes of product going live."



 

 



The fact that a staffer from OC UK is actually looking for ways to prevent miners from wiping the stock speaks more to the credence of the information than the "70-100 hash rate" claim. Apparently, this information was conveyed to Gibbo from an AMD AIB partner, who remains unknown at time of writing. This information has already been sort of confirmed by a second source, coming out of Videocardz's Why Cry. In a post, the editor reported how he already had come in possession of similar information through his sources, who put the hash rate of RX Vega close to double that of the Frontier Edition's original hash rate, which was ~30 MH/s in Ethereum mining. This means the hash rate could be ~60 mark, which is still close to OC UK's Gibbo's reference to a "70-100" hash rate. This increase in hash rate was apparently indirectly enabled by updated driver features for the RX Vega cards. Apparently, these were included in the drivers to improve features and gaming performance - which also indirectly resulted in increased mining capabilities.

We had already covered in our Vega Architecture Technical Overview article that AMD's Vega NGCU computation capabilities were bolstered through added support for over 40 new ISA instructions, which result in increased IPC over Polaris - and which were also mentioned by VSG at the time as being "very relevant for GPU mining."



 

Adding to this story is the fact that recent optimizations from a Reddit user to a Monero mining program and an underclock to 1.3 GHz have brought the Frontier Edition's mining hashrates to around 1.16 kH/s - 34% faster than a GeForce GTX 1080 Ti (around 0.76 kH/s according to Nicehash), and 43% faster than a single Radeon RX 580 8 GB. This means that the $999 Frontier Edition currently stands at double the mining performance of the GTX 1080 on Monero - and the gaming RX Vega, with its $499 price-tag, should follow suit. And these are optimizations achieved by a single user, for a cryptocurrency that is admittedly not as popular as Ethereum or others. But increasing levels of performance in some mining algorithms really does leave the door open for exploration of improved speeds on others, and you can rest assured that miners will, at the very least, attempt to achieve these optimizations in other cryptocurrencies.



 

 

 

All in all, if true, these reports lend credence to AMD's take on the RX Vega delays for stock build-up. And the situation seems to be less straightforward than one might hope when it comes to disabling these instructions, or only enabling them at a latter date, after gamers had already had some time to purchase their desired cards. Because these driver-level updates were apparently done with the intent to bolster gaming performance, I believe it's safe to assume AMD can't easily neuter the mining improvements without putting the increased gaming performance at risk as well. Let's see how this pans out, but consider yourselves at least warned - the RX Vega may see much reduced stock and increased pricing throughout if this scenario pans out. in the meantime, those Radeon Packs with both their shortcomings and opportunities are looking like an increasingly interesting way to get ahold of one of AMD's latest...

*View at TechPowerUp Main Site*


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## RejZoR (Aug 4, 2017)

It's almost as if AMD doesn't really care about gamers. Everyone should refuse buying second hand cards. That's f**k miners up as they won't get any financial returns from the hardware. And refuse to buy new ones if prices get stupid. That'll force AMD to decide who they want to support. Gamers or dumb a** miners. Cancerous mining nonsense...


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## erocker (Aug 4, 2017)

Maybe AMD needs to consider a separate SKU and/or driver for mining cards.


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## notb (Aug 4, 2017)

Hmm...
$500 for a card doing 30MH/s.
$500 for a "mining mode" that adds another 30MH/s.

That should keep the price for gamers down.
Makes sense?


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## DeathtoGnomes (Aug 4, 2017)

Newegg has bumped Vega FE prices by $170 in anticipation. 

I think we can expect release day pricing to be some of the worst price gouging. Shame AMD cant cash in on that too.


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## FordGT90Concept (Aug 4, 2017)

DeathtoGnomes said:


> Newegg has bumped Vega FE prices by $170 in anticipation.


Might be related to the USD weakness more than anticipation: Weak! The U.S. dollar has plunged on Trump's watch

10% shift since January.


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## Ubersonic (Aug 4, 2017)

RejZoR said:


> It's almost as if AMD doesn't really care about gamers. Everyone should refuse buying second hand cards. That's f**k miners up as they won't get any financial returns from the hardware.



The flaw with that plan is that real miners (the ones causing the shortages) don't resell cards they run them till they die or become obsolete (at which point they're worth like £50 tops).  The ones that resell/reuse them are the gamers/hobbyists who only get involved in mining for a short time during the booms.


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## RejZoR (Aug 4, 2017)

If this garbage continues I'll be forced to buy GTX 1080/Ti. There goes the idea of having AMD ever again...


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## R-T-B (Aug 4, 2017)

Ubersonic said:


> The flaw with that plan is that real miners (the ones causing the shortages) don't resell cards they run them till they die or become obsolete (at which point they're worth like £50 tops).  The ones that resell/reuse them are the gamers/hobbyists who only get involved in mining for a short time during the booms.



Exactly.  Even if everyone refused to buy second hand cards it would make exactly 0 difference.



RejZoR said:


> If this garbage continues I'll be forced to buy GTX 1080/Ti. There goes the idea of having AMD ever again...




NVIDIA cards are not immune to this, though for some reason 1080ti seems largely untouched.



notb said:


> Hmm...
> $500 for a card doing 30MH/s.
> $500 for a "mining mode" that adds another 30MH/s.
> 
> ...





erocker said:


> Maybe AMD needs to consider a separate SKU and/or driver for mining cards.



No, because there is no real way to separate mining from generic gaming compute.  That is the crux of the problem.

My thoughts on this is pretty much as follows:  It's not like VEGA stock was going to be adequate anyways (though this certainly did not help).


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## HZCH (Aug 4, 2017)

RejZoR said:


> If this garbage continues I'll be forced to buy GTX 1080/Ti. There goes the idea of having AMD ever again...



You know what ? That is exactly what I've done a month ago. Got one of the last correctly priced Ti in my country, as every other cards were getting a 20 to 30% rise... While not even in stock.


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## JalleR (Aug 4, 2017)

hopefully they stop buying pascal HW and that way we will get cheap nvidia Cards, used 980TI has raised in Price the last 3-5 month because of the 10 series doing the same Grrrr....


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## nem.. (Aug 4, 2017)




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## Chaitanya (Aug 4, 2017)

RejZoR said:


> If this garbage continues I'll be forced to buy GTX 1080/Ti. There goes the idea of having AMD ever again...


 You are not the only one who might do that, even I might end up with another nvidia card. my 970(bought during memorygate) is on its way out and since I got it from ebay and open box that gpu is ending in garbage bin. i was looking to get vega 56 bundle but looks like its another nvidia gpu for my pc.


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## Ubersonic (Aug 4, 2017)

JalleR said:


> used 980TI has raised in Price the last 3-5 month because of the 10 series doing the same Grrrr....


Technically the 980ti raised in value because all the new people jumping on the mining bandwagon eventually realised that Nvidia is highly competitive for mining these days and there's no point spending £300 on a used RX480 when you can get a higher performing 980ti for less.  The 10 series was a similar story, once people realised that they had better performance/powerdraw than the RX series they jumped on them due to the AMD shortage and the prices mooned.


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## Vayra86 (Aug 4, 2017)

Now do that with the gaming performance and AMD's gonna save the world in one fell swoop


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## FYFI13 (Aug 4, 2017)

RejZoR said:


> If this garbage continues I'll be forced to buy GTX 1080/Ti. There goes the idea of having AMD ever again...


I did this already, got myself second hand GTX 980Ti for 270€. 

Now AMD can change their name to Amateur Mining Division.


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## TheGuruStud (Aug 4, 2017)

Lol at all the butthurt and blaming AMD as if AMD has ANYTHING to do with the "mining crisis".

You're mad, b/c AMD has had superior cards for many years (forever) for this particular workload.

Boohoo. Go cry to mommy, so she can buy you one.

Little Huang is laughing all the way to the bank. They don't even have to trick you. You're tricking yourselves. Go buy an Intel CPU why you're at, so you can really stick it to AMD (as if they're profiting from inflated prices...).


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## Fluffmeister (Aug 4, 2017)

I'm gonna try and cash in on this.


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## RejZoR (Aug 4, 2017)

We are blaming crypto miner degenerates for the major part...


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## TheGuruStud (Aug 4, 2017)

RejZoR said:


> We are blaming crypto miner degenerates for the major part...



I agree (as far as TPU is concerned), but I'm still inferring a lot of whine towards AMD.

It sounds like people want a driver gimping mining. Can you imagine the shit storm if that happened, even by some so-called miner haters?


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## noname00 (Aug 4, 2017)

If this is right, it'a a hard decision for AMD. On one hand, they can sell as many Vega as they can produce, at a higher than initially expected price. This will really help them.
On the other hand, after the mining craze will pass (if it will ever pass), AMD will have a bad reputation, and most games will run inefficiently on AMD, because no one will use an AMD GPU and developers will want to optimise for nVidia. Picking up from there will be hard.


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## RejZoR (Aug 4, 2017)

There is no manufacturing capacity that can satisfy this mining idiocy. And no one is going to build a new plant just to satisfy these demands when it can die over night. Just too much of a gamble increasing manufacturing capacities 10 fold and then it all dies off over night. It's why we have such clusterf**k. If there was guaranteed capacity needed, the'd done it already.


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## FYFI13 (Aug 4, 2017)

TheGuruStud said:


> Lol at all the butthurt and blaming AMD as if AMD has ANYTHING to do with the "mining crisis".


LOL at all brainded and saying AMD has NOTHING todo with mining crisis while the tittle of this thread is "AMD RX Vega Mining Performance Reportedly Doubled With Driver Updates". 

AMD NEEDS miners because they don't complain about issues with the drivers and pay double price for their cards. Perfect customers. If this trend continues, AMD will be able to sack all driver team and shrink driver to something like 10MB. Now they just need to figure out how to get 400€ for RX 570 directly to them selves, without feeding retailers.


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## jabbadap (Aug 4, 2017)

R-T-B said:


> Exactly.  Even if everyone refused to buy second hand cards it would make exactly 0 difference.
> 
> NVIDIA cards are not immune to this, though for some reason 1080ti seems largely untouched.
> 
> ...



1080ti and 1080 uses gddr5x, which does not work that good on ethereum(i.e. 1080 hash rate is much lower than gtx1070). Of course there's other coins where they excel better, but those are not yet very popular.


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## TheGuruStud (Aug 4, 2017)

FYFI13 said:


> LOL at all brainded and saying AMD has NOTHING todo with mining crisis while the tittle of this thread is "AMD RX Vega Mining Performance Reportedly Doubled With Driver Updates".
> 
> AMD NEEDS miners because they don't complain about issues with the drivers and pay double price for their cards. Perfect customers. If this trend continues, AMD will be able to sack all driver team and shrink driver to something like 10MB. Now they just need to figure out how to get 400€ for RX 570 directly to them selves, without feeding retailers.



That's not how it works and AMD isn't wasting time optimizing the driver for mining (Vega isn't even using any of Vegas features b/c they're so far behind LOL). Nor do they even give a shit about mining. Every chip made is already sold. There's no incentive to improve mining whatsoever.


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## coolernoob (Aug 4, 2017)

that is it. Vega is gone for good. I do not want to read about that crappy "gtx 1070 killer" (soon to be 2 year old by the way) for x2 gtx 1070 price.... obviously there will be reviews that will display msrp price (god I hate those  - false information is false information, even if false information should be truth in perfect conditions)


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## bug (Aug 4, 2017)

R-T-B said:


> No, because there is no real way to separate mining from generic gaming compute.  That is the crux of the problem.



I think they can. Afaik, mining is mostly about FP64, whereas gaming is about FP32 (or 16). Cut back on FP64 hardware and miners will go away. It's what Nvidia did with Maxwell (though that wasn't directly aimed at miners, it was because they needed to cram additional transistors in there while stuck at 28nm - something simply had to go).


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## the54thvoid (Aug 4, 2017)

Firmware. Is it practical for the graphics card firmware to 'detect' the presence of secondary or more cards?  Nvidia could do it to nullify physx if an AMD card was present. Could they not limit the Vega operations to two card max? Or, limit compute when certain software was present on the system? 
Hoops to jump through but is it doable?


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## Vya Domus (Aug 4, 2017)

Rest in peace GPU pricing and availability. If this goes on it will end up fucking up also the products themselves not just the pricing and availability. A dark era for PC gaming for sure.



the54thvoid said:


> Firmware. Is it practical for the graphics card firmware to 'detect' the presence of secondary or more cards?  Nvidia could do it to nullify physx if an AMD card was present. Could they not limit the Vega operations to two card max? Or, limit compute when certain software was present on the system?
> Hoops to jump through but is it doable?



I do not believe it's that simple , Physx has a well defined signature , it's easy to block. These random hashing algorithms not so much , I mean by which methods do you filter these things out automatically ? It's not like they can prevent people from running whatever the hell code they want to on their cards.


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## Vayra86 (Aug 4, 2017)

FYFI13 said:


> LOL at all brainded [....]
> Now they just need to figure out how to get 400€ for RX 570 directly to them selves, without feeding retailers.



You don't see the contradiction in what you just posted?

AMD doesn't make shit, the retailers do, the MSRPs are already set.
I suppose you were LOLing at yourself.


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## FYFI13 (Aug 4, 2017)

Vayra86 said:


> You don't see the contradiction in what you just posted?
> 
> AMD doesn't make shit, the retailers do, the MSRPs are already set.
> I suppose you were LOLing at yourself.


Wrong. Miners do all shit, not retailers. And AMD enjoying it. Only if AMD wanted they could stop all this mess once and for good.


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## Vya Domus (Aug 4, 2017)

Vayra86 said:


> You don't see the contradiction in what you just posted?
> 
> AMD doesn't make shit, the retailers do, the MSRPs are already set.
> I suppose you were LOLing at yourself.



Exactly they are just simply selling more stuff , and even then it's not that big of a deal.

They have a more or less fixed amount of wafers they can use per yearly contract , if they want more they have to pay more  , at which point they start getting diminishing returns. This is what actually fucks up the pricing and availability , you would think they would pump out as many cards as possible but that's not how it works. They simply can't afford to sell an unlimited amount of cards.


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## Vayra86 (Aug 4, 2017)

FYFI13 said:


> Wrong. Miners do all shit, not retailers. And AMD enjoying it. Only if AMD wanted they could stop all this mess once and for good.



???????? How...wha... do you even English? Please read back your earlier comment and try to connect the dots, I'm not gonna bother explaining further.


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## Captain_Tom (Aug 4, 2017)

notb said:


> Hmm...
> $500 for a card doing 30MH/s.
> $500 for a "mining mode" that adds another 30MH/s.
> 
> ...



Nope.   They are going to sell out instantly.

I hope AMD is indeed stocking up big time.


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## Captain_Tom (Aug 4, 2017)

the54thvoid said:


> Firmware. Is it practical for the graphics card firmware to 'detect' the presence of secondary or more cards?  Nvidia could do it to nullify physx if an AMD card was present. Could they not limit the Vega operations to two card max? Or, limit compute when certain software was present on the system?
> Hoops to jump through but is it doable?



That would make absolutely no sense.

It is in AMD's best interest to sell more cards.  If cards are selling out, the should just produce more cards, not nerf their usefulness.  Man I am glad a lot of the people here aren't in charge of businesses lol


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## dyonoctis (Aug 4, 2017)

Thanks god Nvidia isn't as affected by mining as AMD. Otherwise that would have been the death of pc gaming alltogether. 
But really, what will happen if ETH value never goes down to being unprofitable, and ASIC like hardware never made for ETH ? If that stuff is reaching bitcoin value, Nvidia being the only accessible option for gaming will do no good. I think that they may really need to make compute cards optimized for mining at a price so attractive, that miners won't touch the gaming gpu at all.


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## Imsochobo (Aug 4, 2017)

the54thvoid said:


> Firmware. Is it practical for the graphics card firmware to 'detect' the presence of secondary or more cards?  Nvidia could do it to nullify physx if an AMD card was present. Could they not limit the Vega operations to two card max? Or, limit compute when certain software was present on the system?
> Hoops to jump through but is it doable?



Good luck blocking it without amd's drivers, and in linux..
Pretty much what miners do.


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## Captain_Tom (Aug 4, 2017)

dyonoctis said:


> *Thanks god Nvidia isn't as affected by mining as AMD.* Otherwise that would have been the death of pc gaming alltogether.
> But really, what will happen if ETH value never goes down to being unprofitable, and ASIC like hardware never made for ETH ? If that stuff is reaching bitcoin value, Nvidia being the only accessible option for gaming will do no good. I think that they may really need to make compute cards optimized for mining at a price so attractive, that miners won't touch the gaming gpu at all.



Yes it pretty much has lol.   The 1060, 1070, and 1080 Ti are marked up $100 (In fact the 1070 costs the same as the the 1080!).   


As for ASIC's... NOPE.   Ethereum uses a near perfect mininig algorithm that scales up requirements over time, and makes almost full use of every part of a GPU.   The closest thing one could ever get to an Ethereum ASIC is literally Vega lol.


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## Vya Domus (Aug 4, 2017)

dyonoctis said:


> Thanks god Nvidia isn't as affected by mining as AMD.



I'd say 450$ 1070s means they are pretty damn affected as well.


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## Captain_Tom (Aug 4, 2017)

Vya Domus said:


> I'd say 450$ 1070s means they are pretty damn affected as well.



Most people don't realize the 1070 would normally be $349 by now, the 1080 $479, and the 1080 Ti $629.


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## Cybrnook2002 (Aug 4, 2017)

clever marketing AMD, bravo.


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## dyonoctis (Aug 4, 2017)

Captain_Tom said:


> That would make absolutely no sense.
> 
> It is in AMD's best interest to sell more cards.  If cards are selling out, the should just produce more cards, not nerf their usefulness.  Man I am glad a lot of the people here aren't in charge of businesses lol


Idk man, I wanted to buy a RX570 to replace my old R9 270x but I can't. I have to settle for a gtx 1060 3gb. 

And because of the nature of the mining business, they isn't a single partner who want to flood the market with GPU. One of the reason for the The video game krach of 1983 was that they didn't expected the trend to slow down. The market was overflooded with games that nobody would buy. So yhea, while the mining craze is alive making more gpu may looks like a profit, if it's going down the backlash will be hard.


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## dyonoctis (Aug 4, 2017)

Captain_Tom said:


> Yes it pretty much has lol.   The 1060, 1070, and 1080 Ti are marked up $100 (In fact the 1070 costs the same as the the 1080!).
> 
> 
> As for ASIC's... NOPE.   Ethereum uses a near perfect mininig algorithm that scales up requirements over time, and makes almost full use of every part of a GPU.   The closest thing one could ever get to an Ethereum ASIC is literally Vega lol.


In france it's not the case. I can get a GTX 1060 for 229 € and you can find a GTX 1070 in stock for 474€. ( even at launch the 1070 was in the +400 € in france)


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## the54thvoid (Aug 4, 2017)

Captain_Tom said:


> That would make absolutely no sense.
> 
> It is in AMD's best interest to sell more cards.  If cards are selling out, the should just produce more cards, not nerf their usefulness.  Man I am glad a lot of the people here aren't in charge of businesses lol



I was thinking of how to make things nicer for gamers.  My handle on business is quite decent.  If i didnt give a shit about gaming, I'd suggest that AMD dont give a shit either and they will be really happy this good mining news has leaked (a story they also used to explain the delay).

FWIW, you yourself constantly berate Nvidia for Pascal being a Maxwell refresh but it's bloody good business, so I suppose it is good neither you nor I are in charge.  You'd make Nvidia less profitable and I'd try to help the gamers.


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## nemesis.ie (Aug 4, 2017)

None of this would be an issue if the resellers didn't gouge the prices and the makers can provide sufficient cards for the gaming and mining demand.

If the price stayed at MSRP, the makers would make a killing rather than the gougers.


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## Fluffmeister (Aug 4, 2017)

Captain_Tom said:


> Most people don't realize the 1070 would normally be $349 by now...



1070s are great miners, so it's no wonder:

https://forum.beyond3d.com/threads/amd-vega-hardware-reviews.60246/page-31#post-1994478

Nv's margains on that 314mm2 chip must already be pretty great, but luckily they got the cards out to gamers long ago.


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## Vya Domus (Aug 4, 2017)

Again , the issue is AMD *can't *supply enough , retailer are just cashing in.


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## jigar2speed (Aug 4, 2017)

FYFI13 said:


> Wrong. Miners do all shit, not retailers. And AMD enjoying it. Only if AMD wanted they could stop all this mess once and for good.


Awe, someone doesn't understand market 101.


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## bug (Aug 4, 2017)

jigar2speed said:


> Awe, someone doesn't understand market 101.


Fwiw, orders for the chips have been placed long ago and prices were more or less settled. Markups will end up mostly in the pockets of retailers and board manufacturers, but those are also the ones that took a risk when placing their orders. It's just business.


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## dyonoctis (Aug 4, 2017)

Even in the US some GTX 1060 are escaping the craze. I really doubt that nvidia would sell them  at 119$-129$-179$, if it wasn't for the mining craze. This would have been waaaay too much of a good value, and utterly negating the very existence of gtx 1050-1050ti. Even the cheapest "recent" Rx 570 4 Gb *was* at 180$ msrp.

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814126133
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814487263


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## Captain_Tom (Aug 4, 2017)

dyonoctis said:


> Idk man, I wanted to buy a RX570 to replace my old R9 270x but I can't. I have to settle for a gtx 1060 3gb.
> 
> And because of the nature of the mining business, they isn't a single partner who want to flood the market with GPU. One of the reason for the The video game krach of 1983 was that they didn't expected the trend to slow down. The market was overflooded with games that nobody would buy. So yhea, while the mining craze is alive making more gpu may looks like a profit, if it's going down the backlash will be hard.




That's if you assume mining will completely crash again.   Look there will always be "booms and busts" like there are in any market, but at this point it has been like 5 years of constant mining.  For the foreseeable future AMD/Nvidia need to assume miners will want to buy their cards.


It's not entirely impossible to make "mining cards" while protecting your exposure to risk.   For instance I would recommend AMD make a Vega48 card with 4GB of HBM, lower clocks, a 30-day warranty, and only 2 display outputs for $350.   This card would consist of AMD's absolute worst HBM and 14nmGF yields.   Most gamer with half a brain would know it is worth the extra $50 to get more VRAM and 10% higher performance, but this card would be just as good for miners.   More importantly though, if the mining market went through a "bust" period:  AMD could simply drop the price to $299 and sell the card as a dirt cheap alternative to 1080p gamers with only 2 displays (And they wouldn't be losing money given the substantially reduced warranty and components).


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## Vya Domus (Aug 4, 2017)

Captain_Tom said:


> That's if you assume mining will completely crash again.   Look there will always be "booms and busts" like there are in any market, but at this point it has been like 5 years of constant mining.  For the foreseeable future AMD/Nvidia need to assume miners will want to buy their cards.
> 
> 
> It's not entirely impossible to make "mining cards" while protecting your exposure to risk.   For instance I would recommend AMD make a Vega48 card with 4GB of HBM, lower clocks, a 30-day warranty, and only 2 display outputs for $350.   This card would consist of AMD's absolute worst HBM and 14nmGF yields.   Most gamer with half a brain would know it is worth the extra $50 to get more VRAM and 10% higher performance, but this card would be just as good for miners.   More importantly though, if the mining market went through a "bust" period:  AMD could simply drop the price to $299 and sell the card as a dirt cheap alternative to 1080p gamers with only 2 displays (And they wouldn't be losing money given the substantially reduced warranty and components).



VRAM requirements go up for mining purposes too , from what I heard 4GB will soon be insufficient. There is simply no way to stop miners from buying everything they find. It's all up to the mining scene itself , if it fails everything goes back to normal.


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## yotano211 (Aug 4, 2017)

If this is true, I am ready to order 24+ from a local supplier near by.


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## dyonoctis (Aug 4, 2017)

Captain_Tom said:


> That's if you assume mining will completely crash again.   Look there will always be "booms and busts" like there are in any market, but at this point it has been like 5 years of constant mining.  For the foreseeable future AMD/Nvidia need to assume miners will want to buy their cards.
> 
> 
> It's not entirely impossible to make "mining cards" while protecting your exposure to risk.   For instance I would recommend AMD make a Vega48 card with 4GB of HBM, lower clocks, a 30-day warranty, and only 2 display outputs for $350.   This card would consist of AMD's absolute worst HBM and 14nmGF yields.   Most gamer with half a brain would know it is worth the extra $50 to get more VRAM and 10% higher performance, but this card would be just as good for miners.   More importantly though, if the mining market went through a "bust" period:  AMD could simply drop the price to $299 and sell the card as a dirt cheap alternative to 1080p gamers with only 2 displays (And they wouldn't be losing money given the substantially reduced warranty and components).



I still remember what happened when bitcoin was all the craze. AMD gpu price went up and in French store 90% were out of stock, and 10 were overpriced. Things only settled down when gpu weren't the best way to mine anymore. But now we got a new currency that is made to run on gpu. Now that i know that i realise that the issue would be the same even with full mining compute unit. Unless they somehow manage to do a whole new chipset, really cheap, power efficient and easy to make, and still better than the gaming version for mining. 

Unlike newegg, French store don't do the "2 units per customers" here if you got the money, you can buy as much as you want. Price are not only going way up, stock are scarce as well. At the moment it seems like they can't make enough chips to supply demand, everything still depends on the health of the currency. 


I know that as time goes by, mining become harder and harder. Now i wish that ETH become so hungry on compute power, that it will become unavailable for the average consumer . From where i'm standing greed will win over the customer. As long as there is an high demand, and people buying overpriced gpu, I don't see them lowering price and making less profit. 

Now for the launch of vega, AMD took miners into consideration, we'll see just how much the delayed launch will make them available for gamers at decent price. But if they are as good as the rumors says, i will not be surprised if they quickly become hard to get.


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## nemesis.ie (Aug 4, 2017)

I'm curious as to how well (if at all) HBCC works for mining.

I'm a 99+% gamer but it is nice to have efficient mining available, I did 3 months in 2014 (LTC with 2 x 290x) and made a profit of €500 when I sold them at the recent high. That puts a nice dent in the cost of cards. 

I don't call myself a miner though as the cost of juice here is too much really. Maybe when I get those solar panels ...


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## bug (Aug 4, 2017)

nemesis.ie said:


> I'm curious as to how well (if at all) HBCC works for mining.



Atm it seems to be aimed squarely at games. It's basically a cache for assets, but I haven't understood exactly what it does so far.


----------



## efikkan (Aug 4, 2017)

noname00 said:


> If this is right, it'a a hard decision for AMD. On one hand, they can sell as many Vega as they can produce, at a higher than initially expected price. This will really help them.


AMD's cut is based on MSRP, not on retail price. Retailers get all the profits from overpriced cards.



RejZoR said:


> There is no manufacturing capacity that can satisfy this mining idiocy. And no one is going to build a new plant just to satisfy these demands when it can die over night. Just too much of a gamble increasing manufacturing capacities 10 fold and then it all dies off over night. It's why we have such clusterf**k. If there was guaranteed capacity needed, the'd done it already.


You are exaggerating the mining mania. Sure, they buy a few thousands, but it's not millions, sucking up all the cards. Both Polaris and Pascal have been in low stocks at times before this latest mining mania.



Captain_Tom said:


> It is in AMD's best interest to sell more cards.  If cards are selling out, the should just produce more cards, not nerf their usefulness.  Man I am glad a lot of the people here aren't in charge of businesses lol


The production capacity is reserved years in advance. AMD and Nvidia have to decide before each batch how many wafers to spend on each GPU, and then ~4-5 months later, they have a batch of products in shiny boxes.
The largest problem for Vega is the supply of HBM2, which is out of AMD's control.



Captain_Tom said:


> That's if you assume mining will completely crash again.   Look there will always be "booms and busts" like there are in any market, but at this point it has been like 5 years of constant mining.  For the foreseeable future AMD/Nvidia need to assume miners will want to buy their cards.


As mining difficulty increases, it eventually becomes unprofitable. It happened with bitcoin, litecoin and all the other whatevercoins. There will probably continue to be some demand, since the world isn't running out of fools anytime soon, but the mining demand wouldn't grow forever.


----------



## Manu_PT (Aug 4, 2017)

Someone said consoles would kill PC gaming, wich we currently laugh at.

But the mining thing is killing it, slowly and painfuly.  Altho Nvidia isn´t good for mining, the prices go up too, here in Europe is madness just to get a "simple" 1080p 144hz GPU like the GTX 1070. Good luck finding one less than 500€, wich is "only" the most common montlhy wage in my country. GG


----------



## bug (Aug 4, 2017)

Manu_PT said:


> Someone said consoles would kill PC gaming, wich we currently laugh at.
> 
> But the mining thing is killing it, slowly and painfuly.  Altho Nvidia isn´t good for mining, the prices go up too, here in Europe is madness just to get a "simple" 1080p 144hz GPU like the GTX 1070. Good luck finding one less than 500€, wich is "only" the most common montlhy wage in my country. GG


Amazon.de lists several model under €500. One is at €449. But you'd have to pay import taxes.


----------



## Prince Valiant (Aug 4, 2017)

R-T-B said:


> Exactly.  Even if everyone refused to buy second hand cards it would make exactly 0 difference.
> 
> NVIDIA cards are not immune to this, though for some reason 1080ti seems largely untouched.
> 
> ...


Couldn't they cripple performance with x+ GPUs detected in a system unless you buy a card specifically for it? Or do cards not communicate at all with mining?

AMD's GPU division might not survive long term if things keep up the way they've been going.


----------



## SPLWF (Aug 4, 2017)

The only people to be able to get their hands on these cards and actually use it for gaming (well benchmarking) are the Reviewers.

When will we ever get our hands on these cards to actually play games?  Oh wait, let's spend an extra $100 for that Vega Package that comes with coupons even though most of us probably already have Ultra Wide screens, etc..so it's pointless.

Remember the RX570/580?  It's like they don't exist.  I hope this doesn't happen to the Vega because HBM2 is already in short supply.

The only thing I can count on is my three local Microcenters.  They limit 2 GPU's for every customer.

Eff all you miners


----------



## yotano211 (Aug 4, 2017)

So many mad angry gamers out there


----------



## Captain_Tom (Aug 4, 2017)

Vya Domus said:


> VRAM requirements go up for mining purposes too , from what I heard 4GB will soon be insufficient. There is simply no way to stop miners from buying everything they find. It's all up to the mining scene itself , if it fails everything goes back to normal.



define "soon".   It won't be for like 2 years, and even then you can program the miner to break up the workload into 2 parts.   4GB is fine.


----------



## Captain_Tom (Aug 4, 2017)

efikkan said:


> AMD's cut is based on MSRP, not on retail price. Retailers get all the profits from overpriced cards.
> 
> 
> You are exaggerating the mining mania. Sure, they buy a few thousands, but it's not millions, sucking up all the cards. Both Polaris and Pascal have been in low stocks at times before this latest mining mania.
> ...



And there is always another coin to mine when one becomes unprofitable.   But "fools"?   LMAO you are fool not making money...


----------



## Prima.Vera (Aug 4, 2017)

People are very naive if they still think this crypto mining business has any future for the average user. Is simple logic actually. The more people are mining the harder the process to get the crypto coins becomes. So, very soon actually, only big Enterprise mining companies will keep buying video cards for this purpose, since for the average Joe the investment would not be any more profitable anymore (initial cost+running cost).


----------



## ZoneDymo (Aug 4, 2017)

yotano211 said:


> So many mad angry gamers out there



Oh no, more people are interested in the hardware we are interested in and thus the price goes up?!?!
I feel so betraaaayed!!!


----------



## Durvelle27 (Aug 4, 2017)

Nooooooooooo


----------



## Vya Domus (Aug 4, 2017)

Prima.Vera said:


> People are very naive if they still think this crypto mining business has any future for the average user. Is simple logic actually. The more people are mining the harder the process to get the crypto coins becomes. So, very soon actually, only big Enterprise mining companies will keep buying video cards for this purpose, since for the average Joe the investment would not be any more profitable anymore (initial cost+running cost).




That is already the case , always been really. Most "home miners" even with up to 100 cards are only looking at about 40k profit a year with say ETH , witch to be honest doesn't really sound that amazing at all , certainly not a "gold mine" which is what people tend to make it look like it.

Mining farms with thousands of cards in countries where electricity is cheap , that's where the real money is made. For the home miners this will never make them truly rich. It's a joke really , toy money as it is referred to.



yotano211 said:


> So many mad angry gamers out there



You wouldn't be in their situation ?


----------



## nemesis.ie (Aug 4, 2017)

40k (USD?) profit/year would be a gold mine for many folks.. A lot of people (myself included at the moment) earn less than that working a "real" job.


----------



## Vya Domus (Aug 4, 2017)

nemesis.ie said:


> 40k (USD?) profit/year would be a gold mine for many folks.. A lot of people (myself included at the moment) earn less than that working a "real" job.



You sure ? Look at it this way : currently you would need about 30 000$ to invest in say 100 x GTX1060s. Do folk that earn less that 40k be able to do that ? Not really , everyone that can invest that much money already has a fair amount of cash in their hand and 40k more per year ain't gonna be life changing. And let's be honest most amateur miners don't have more than a couple of cards.

Extra money is nice sure , but is it worth fucking up an entire industry for chump change in most cases ? Not in my opinion , but I'm sure someone will disagree and explain to me how this is cryptocurrency is the messiah of money making. Even though they fail to make a fortune for themselves with it.

Again , people with big money at their disposal make a significant profit , not the average Joe.


----------



## dyonoctis (Aug 4, 2017)

Yhea right. Let's just shut up and accept the lack of stock and inflated price. Let gaming pc or even video editing/3D rendering pc become something accesible to only the richest among us. Computers used to be a luxury after all. We've been too spoiled lately.


----------



## Vya Domus (Aug 4, 2017)

I hope that's sarcasm.


----------



## dyonoctis (Aug 4, 2017)

Vya Domus said:


> I hope that's sarcasm.


It is.


----------



## ZoneDymo (Aug 4, 2017)

Vya Domus said:


> You sure ? Look at it this way : currently you would need about 30 000$ to invest in say 100 x GTX1060s. Do folk that earn less that 40k be able to do that ? Not really , everyone that can invest that much money already has a fair amount of cash in their hand and 40k more per year ain't gonna be life changing. And let's be honest most amateur miners don't have more than a couple of cards.
> 
> Extra money is nice sure , but is it worth fucking up an entire industry for chump change in most cases ? Not in my opinion , but I'm sure someone will disagree and explain to me how this is cryptocurrency is the messiah of money making. Even though they fail to make a fortune for themselves with it.
> 
> Again , people with big money at their disposal make a significant profit , not the average Joe.



I think you need to look at your own post again and question just about every line to see how many options you leave open, how oddly tunnel vision your "argument" is given the variables presented by yourself.


----------



## ZoneDymo (Aug 4, 2017)

dyonoctis said:


> Yhea right. Let's just shut up and accept the lack of stock and inflated price. Let gaming pc or even video editing/3D rendering pc become something accesible to only the richest among us. Computers used to be a luxury after all. We've been too spoiled lately.



Well you cannot not accept it... I mean what are you going to do? not buy videocards that are not available?


----------



## Captain_Tom (Aug 4, 2017)

Prima.Vera said:


> People are very naive if they still think this crypto mining business has any future for the average user. Is simple logic actually. The more people are mining the harder the process to get the crypto coins becomes. So, very soon actually, only big Enterprise mining companies will keep buying video cards for this purpose, since for the average Joe the investment would not be any more profitable anymore (initial cost+running cost).



That is when you switch to a different coin lol.


----------



## Captain_Tom (Aug 4, 2017)

dyonoctis said:


> Yhea right. Let's just shut up and accept the lack of stock and inflated price. Let gaming pc or even video editing/3D rendering pc become something accesible to only the richest among us. Computers used to be a luxury after all. We've been too spoiled lately.



You will shut up and accept it, because you have no other choice.


Graphics cards possess immense processing power for the money, and it was inevitable they would inflate in price once applications started to make good use of their processing power.   Nvidia has been trying to increase GPU prices for years simply because they are sick and tired of selling a 1080 for $500 when the professional version is being sold for $2000!   

AMD didn't have the mindshare to demand higher prices, but now their cards are also finally being utilized for business purposes.


----------



## Vya Domus (Aug 4, 2017)

ZoneDymo said:


> I think you need to look at your own post again and question just about every line to see how many options you leave open, how oddly tunnel vision your "argument" is given the variables presented by yourself.



How about this line -> ...but I'm sure someone will disagree and explain to me how this is cryptocurrency is the messiah of money making..

Yup , spot on.

So you told me I am wrong , fair enough. Now how tell me why , because what you said is extremely vague at best and does not count as an argument in all fairness. Not even as much as "tunnel vision argument" and you know it.


----------



## Steevo (Aug 4, 2017)

All AMD needs to do is either have an infinite amount of foresight to know if 1) their card will be great at a digital currency algorithm and 2) they have all the supplies in the world with the same fixed cost.

Other than that if they have a logic processor that happens to be better than the competition at calculating certain loads due to architecture and higher accuracy during specific computation workloads.... people will buy them and retailers will gouge buyers.

Why doesn't someone blame Nvidia for their mediocre performance per dollar? How about their love of substituting lower accuracy for higher performance unless its explicitly stated the pipeline must remain at 16 or 32 bit? How come no one makes a new ASIC that outperforms everyone elses?


----------



## the54thvoid (Aug 4, 2017)

This thread is a double post-a-rama.

Learn to multi-quote people.



Steevo said:


> How come no one makes a new ASIC that outperforms everyone elses?



I read somewhere (maybe the back of a bus shelter) that some crypto-currencies are scripted so as not be readily ASIC mined, i.e. the ASIC miners have had their day to stop mass corporations mining for profit.  This maybe why the run on AMD for mining has been so unbelievably strong as the ASIC rigs are out in the cold.


----------



## Vya Domus (Aug 4, 2017)

Steevo said:


> All AMD needs to do is either have an infinite amount of foresight to know if 1) their card will be great at a digital currency algorithm and 2) they have all the supplies in the world with the same fixed cost.
> 
> Other than that if they have a logic processor that happens to be better than the competition at calculating certain loads due to architecture and higher accuracy during specific computation workloads.... people will buy them and retailers will gouge buyers.
> 
> Why doesn't someone blame Nvidia for their mediocre performance per dollar? How about their love of substituting lower accuracy for higher performance unless its explicitly stated the pipeline must remain at 16 or 32 bit? How come no one makes a new ASIC that outperforms everyone elses?



AMD is responsible for the mining craze , latest fanboy joke of the year.


----------



## Captain_Tom (Aug 4, 2017)

Vya Domus said:


> AMD is responsible for the mining craze , latest fanboy joke of the year.




ikr?  LOL


Look I get why people are frustrated, but there really is no one out there to blame.   The only blame I can think of is to be annoyed that this surprised AMD/Nvidia yet again.   

This is like the 3rd time their cards have sold out due to miners, and to be surprised by the THIRD time something has happened is completely ridiculous.


----------



## EarthDog (Aug 4, 2017)

Sooooooo NVIDIA and AMD are supposed to know bitcoin markets/futures???? Come on now...

We cant be mad at either of them IMO.


----------



## Vya Domus (Aug 4, 2017)

Captain_Tom said:


> The only blame I can think of is to be annoyed that this surprised AMD/Nvidia yet again.



I doesn't even matter if they have been taken by surprise or not , it ain't their fault and there is nothing they can do other than to gain unlimited supply of wafers.


----------



## dyonoctis (Aug 4, 2017)

Captain_Tom said:


> You will shut up and accept it, because you have no other choice.
> 
> 
> Graphics cards possess immense processing power for the money, and it was inevitable they would inflate in price once applications started to make good use of their processing power.   Nvidia has been trying to increase GPU prices for years simply because they are sick and tired of selling a 1080 for $500 when the professional version is being sold for $2000!
> ...


 
Quadro price are justified for the added value that they bring for people making a living from content creation or scientific usage. 
Geforce and radeon are mainly entertainement  tool that can also be used for compute. Gaming card can do compute task just fine, but the developement  of their driver isn't made with optimisation for the lastest rendering engine, or the lastest 3d software, it's focalised on games. You want a quick fix for a bug in maya ? You gotta buy a quadro or a radeon pro.

Both Nvidia and AMD have compute unit that were made from the ground up for heavy processing 24/24 7/7 for several years. But the average joe don't buy them, he can't afford it. Instead he's buying stuff that was meant for entertainement. And the demamd is higher than what the factory can put out. Hell even without miners, we already had issue with stock because manufacturing silicon becomes harder and harder. Mining need to have specific hardware that is cheap to make and got a low energy cost.

I'm also doing video edititing 3d rendering/compositing with my pc. So I was really glad to see opencl, cuda, bring more speed for those kind of task. 

But for me mining doesn't hold the same value. Mining isn't something that you can enjoy on the long term with a single gpu, the more people that get on the band wagon, the more power it require. Mining hunger is growing way faster than the technology it's using. ETH is the cause of unprecedented energy drain. 
Good thing laptop are not concerned by all of this. If their price had to increase because of all this we would have reached total insanity.


----------



## efikkan (Aug 4, 2017)

nemesis.ie said:


> 40k (USD?) profit/year would be a gold mine for many folks.. A lot of people (myself included at the moment) earn less than that working a "real" job.


Really?
40k USD at the moment, but constantly falling, for a super noisy, high maintenance, high risk fire hazard in your basement or garage is a gold mine?

And as with all the other cryptocurrencies, by the time it's mentioned in public it's really too late to earn any real money mining. The ones making a real profit are the ones who mined thousands of coins when it was easy and unknown. You are going to earn less for every single new miner and every single new coin that's found, that sounds like a pretty bad investment.

It's not that hard to make a couple thousands bucks a month dealing in collectibles such as stamps, old video games, etc. But before you think you can make a living from such activities, you should take a closer look at what you'll earn per hour reliably…



Captain_Tom said:


> That is when you switch to a different coin lol.


This will not go on forever.
And there is no guarantee that the cards you buy now will be good for any kind of mining for the next years. And it's not like these cards last for many years when doing mining 24-7.


----------



## yotano211 (Aug 4, 2017)

ZoneDymo said:


> Oh no, more people are interested in the hardware we are interested in and thus the price goes up?!?!
> I feel so betraaaayed!!!





Durvelle27 said:


> Nooooooooooo


NOOOOoooo!!!!1111111


----------



## yotano211 (Aug 4, 2017)

efikkan said:


> Really?
> 40k USD at the moment, but constantly falling, for a super noisy, *high maintenance*, high risk fire hazard in your basement or garage is a gold mine?
> 
> And as with all the other cryptocurrencies, by the time it's mentioned in public it's really too late to earn any real money mining. The ones making a real profit are the ones who mined thousands of coins when it was easy and unknown. You are going to earn less for every single new miner and every single new coin that's found, that sounds like a pretty bad investment.
> ...



Funny, I have 16 mining rigs and the last one to go down or restart was over a week ago (stupid windows update). In the beginning it was like a full time job for me but I gave up on the high overclocking and every card now is stock. 99% stable now.


----------



## cdawall (Aug 4, 2017)

yotano211 said:


> If this is true, I am ready to order 24+ from a local supplier near by.



I am looking at 18 units myself. Love all the complaining in the thread though. Magically all these people "were going to upgrade"



yotano211 said:


> Funny, I have 16 mining rigs and the last one to go down or restart was over a week ago (stupid windows update). In the beginning it was like a full time job for me but I gave up on the high overclocking and every card now is stock. 99% stable now.



All of mine have the ram bumped and the tdp dropped only cards I still have issues with are the damn amd ones.


----------



## cowie (Aug 4, 2017)

yotano211 said:


> Funny, I have 16 mining rigs and the last one to go down or restart was over a week ago (stupid windows update). In the beginning it was like a full time job for me but I gave up on the high overclocking and every card now is stock. 99% stable now.



hope you don't mind me asking but how many gpu's per rig?


like say if I had just 4 580' going in whatever coin that's "in atm" any ballpark number on monthly profits?


----------



## hat (Aug 4, 2017)

yotano211 said:


> Funny, I have 16 mining rigs and the last one to go down or restart was over a week ago (stupid windows update). In the beginning it was like a full time job for me but I gave up on the high overclocking and every card now is stock. 99% stable now.


You probably actually earn more this way than you did before too, don't you? Less downtime...

@cdawall you got any 1070s with micron RAM? If so, what's your memory offset and power target for them?


----------



## efikkan (Aug 4, 2017)

Bringing this thread back on track; the only way mining is going to have a substantial effect on supplies for Vega is if the supplies themselves are very limited to begin with. With a normal high volume card, mining sales would just make up a few percent of the shipped units. But if Vega is an attractive mining GPU, and the supplies are going to just be a few thousands, then surely it will be hard to get.

But make no mistake, even the most crazy mining rush will not be enough to make a good profit for AMD. I did my bitcoin mining before the big GPU rush there, but even that big GPU rush did not make a real impact on AMD's market position nor AMD's profits. Even if AMD managed to ship enough Vegas to meet any demand, the mining market is ultimately "capped", since each new coin makes it less profitable. Even with constantly new currencies, the demand for such GPUs are fairly limited over time. If Vega turns out to be 2-3× better at mining than current cards, that's just going accelerate the rush until it becomes unprofitable.


----------



## cdawall (Aug 4, 2017)

hat said:


> You probably actually earn more this way than you did before too, don't you? Less downtime...
> 
> @cdawall you got any 1070s with micron RAM? If so, what's your memory offset and power target for them?



All of my 1070's are micron they are all stable at +65/+550/70% TDP that's good for 30mh/s


----------



## dorsetknob (Aug 4, 2017)

Captain_Tom said:


> a 30-day warranty,



Not in the EU not unless they want the EU up their ..........................unmentionable
And the EU is a Very Big market ( with consumer Protection Clout )


----------



## nemesis.ie (Aug 4, 2017)

efikkan said:


> Really?
> 40k USD at the moment, but constantly falling, for a super noisy, high maintenance, high risk fire hazard in your basement or garage is a gold mine?



The original post, which I commented on only stated 40k profit/year.  The assumption would be that includes the price/need to add cards, switching coins etc. i.e. earning 40k/year from mining versus a proper job - or even as an extra in one's spare time.

THAT is what I consider a gold mine ... free money for very little work. Actually that would be BETTER than a gold mine as real mining is pretty hard on one's body.


----------



## dyonoctis (Aug 4, 2017)

cdawall said:


> I am looking at 18 units myself. Love all the complaining in the thread though. Magically all these people "were going to upgrade"
> 
> 
> 
> All of mine have the ram bumped and the tdp dropped only cards I still have issues with are the damn amd ones.


Well apparently you got the money to buy whatever you like at whatever price, no wonder that you would be oblivious to peasants whinning. 
I don't care about vega, even the msrp would be above my budget. what really annoy me is how it's reaching even budget oriented market, and the incertitude about when it's going to  settle down.


----------



## Vya Domus (Aug 4, 2017)

nemesis.ie said:


> The original post, which I commented on only stated 40k profit/year.  The assumption would be that includes the price/need to add cards, switching coins etc. i.e. earning 40k/year from mining versus a proper job



That doesn't include the cost of the cards , and you never know how relevant ETH is going to remain relevant ,which is what I  used as an example or any coin for that matter. Cards brake too. It's something too volatile for someone that isn't already very financially stable to invest into. Call it a gold mine , I wouldn't. You might just as well start betting.

As a side income it's OK but at that point it as far as it can get form a gold mine.


----------



## GAR (Aug 4, 2017)

TheGuruStud said:


> Lol at all the butthurt and blaming AMD as if AMD has ANYTHING to do with the "mining crisis".
> 
> You're mad, b/c AMD has had superior cards for many years (forever) for this particular workload.
> 
> ...



LOL who is this fool? get out of here you idiot.


----------



## cdawall (Aug 4, 2017)

dyonoctis said:


> Well apparently you got the money to buy whatever you like at whatever price, no wonder that you would be oblivious to peasants whinning.
> I don't care about vega, even the msrp would be above my budget. I just don't like how it's reaching even budget oriented market, and the incertitude about when it's going to  settle down.



That was a stock issues. The lack of stock of for cards worth buying made budget cards looked at. Anything below a 1060/570 is a waste of money.



Vya Domus said:


> That doesn't include the cost of the cards , and you never know how relevant ETH is going to remain relevant ,which is what I  used as an example or any coin for that matter. Cards brake too. It's something too volatile for someone that isn't already very financially stable to invest into. Call it a gold mine , I wouldn't. You might just as well start betting.
> 
> As a side income it's OK but at that point it as far as it can get form a gold mine.



Then you swap to a different crypto currency. Cards have warranties as well if they go down, box them up send them out and move on. The only cards I am seeing really have issues are ones run too hot or memory pushed too far. Most miners who do this to make money and not because tom's hardware had a thread about it massively drop TDP levels and wattage consumed so you are looking load wise at nothing more than a typical game might hit (often times it is lower than even that). Most of the algorithms worth money on a GPU mainly load the memory controllers. 

As a side income it all depends what you are willing to invest. If you were to drop 100K into this yes it would a gold mine.


----------



## Vya Domus (Aug 4, 2017)

cdawall said:


> If you were to drop 100K into this yes it would a gold mine.



But how many of these home miners drop 100k. Do you ? Who even has 100k to casually invest into something like this ? 100k is the kind of money a well paid job pays. Who would consider such an investment for some side income , a millionaire ?

My point is that this is really difficult to get into for most people and make a living out of it. Not a smart idea either.


----------



## cdawall (Aug 4, 2017)

Vya Domus said:


> But how many of these home miners drop 100k. Do you ? Who even has 100k to casually invest into something like this ? 100k is the kind of money a well paid job pays. Who would consider such an investment for some side income , a millionaire ?
> 
> My point is that this is really difficult to get into for most people and make a living out of it. Not a smart idea either.



It takes money to make money. I live in Houston and I can tell you plenty of people with good paying jobs dumped a stupid amount of money into mining. Mining has afforded me a nice 70K dollar SUV, I could have reinvested that money into the market again yes, or I could cash out on something more useful for my family.


----------



## efikkan (Aug 4, 2017)

nemesis.ie said:


> The original post, which I commented on only stated 40k profit/year.  The assumption would be that includes the price/need to add cards, switching coins etc. i.e. earning 40k/year from mining versus a proper job - or even as an extra in one's spare time.
> 
> THAT is what I consider a gold mine ... free money for very little work. Actually that would be BETTER than a gold mine as real mining is pretty hard on one's body.


You still don't get it, so I'll have to teach you some elementary economics. The profits are high in the beginning, but they keep dropping as coins are harder to find and more people compete in the mining game. For a short time the price of the currency will keep up with the increasing cost, but it will eventually always flattens out and eventually drops as people realize the price is inflated.

In economics this is called a "bubble", and it doesn't matter what the speculation object is, the phenomenon is exactly the same whether it's a national currency, bitcoin, gold, oil, stock trade, obligations, food, etc. To begin understanding this, I encourage you to read about the Dutch Tulip mania of 1637, once you grasp this you'll see it's the same thing happening in every economic bubble. Whenever there is a bubble, the ones making the real profits are the ones who invested before the rapid price increase. The ones joining in the middle of the mania can get some return on investment, but the ones near the end will always be the ones taking the full hit.



 

Each bubble is driven by how people act during a mania. Some call it The greater fool theory; somebody invests more than an object's real value assuming there will be a greater fool in the future willing to pay a higher premium. This growth never keeps up in the long run, if you understand math you'll see why. So when some of you are making some money on the current cryptocurrency, even though it looks okay for the moment, I can tell you it's not going to last.


----------



## cdawall (Aug 4, 2017)

efikkan said:


> You still don't get it, so I'll have to teach you some elementary economics. The profits are high in the beginning, but they keep dropping as coins are harder to find and more people compete in the mining game. For a short time the price of the currency will keep up with the increasing cost, but it will eventually always flattens out and eventually drops as people realize the price is inflated.
> 
> In economics this is called a "bubble", and it doesn't matter what the speculation object is, the phenomenon is exactly the same whether it's a national currency, bitcoin, gold, oil, stock trade, obligations, food, etc. To begin understanding this, I encourage you to read about the Dutch Tulip mania of 1637, once you grasp this you'll see it's the same thing happening in every economic bubble. Whenever there is a bubble, the ones making the real profits are the ones who invested before the rapid price increase. The ones joining in the middle of the mania can get some return on investment, but the ones near the end will always be the ones taking the full hit.
> View attachment 90758
> ...



Similar, but not quite how Bitcoin has run






and to be quite honest most currencies match that market. Here is the USD for example


----------



## Vya Domus (Aug 4, 2017)

cdawall said:


> It takes money to make money. I live in Houston and I can tell you plenty of people with good paying jobs dumped a stupid amount of money into mining. Mining has afforded me a nice 70K dollar SUV, I could have reinvested that money into the market again yes, or I could cash out on something more useful for my family.



It turned out nicely in your case but many people simply do not have the means to do the same and it wouldn't be a smart decision to drop everything and cash into this. It also doesn't mean things can't turn for the worse.


----------



## cdawall (Aug 4, 2017)

Vya Domus said:


> It turned out nicely in your case but many people simply do not have the means to do the same and it wouldn't be a smart decision to drop everything and cash into this. It also doesn't mean things can't turn for the worse.



Most miners who did this when it wasn't idiotic reached ROI a while ago


----------



## notb (Aug 4, 2017)

cdawall said:


> Most miners who did this when it wasn't idiotic reached ROI a while ago


What you're doing here is pretty unfair and IMO even offending to part of this community.

Most people that get into an investment before the bubble make a profit - this is fairly basic stuff.
But most people that start after the "greed" moment (from the graph in @efikkan 's post) don't make a profit.
So if this turns out to be a bubble and profitability stays on current level (or more likely: drops even further), people that started in June will lose money.

Your role in this is pretty simple. You're the one who made the hugely popular mining thread - you've presented mining as a great investment with no risk ("free money"), you've consulted people on setting up their rigs etc. It was most likely the first time many people on TPU really decided to learn something about mining (me included) and some of them invested into it as a result.

After merely 2 months you're simply telling those people that they started to late. Nice going.



dorsetknob said:


> Not in the EU not unless they want the EU up their ..........................unmentionable
> And the EU is a Very Big market ( with consumer Protection Clout )


The 2-year guarantee is only applicable to consumer purchases (much like the 14-day return policy).
So it only protects you if you're a consumer buying a new product from a retailer, when both parties have to be legally registered in EU.

It would be enough for a GPU vendor to offer mining GPUs only for commercial use. The same is true if the cards were sold and shipped directly from Asia.


----------



## Durvelle27 (Aug 5, 2017)

Tom_ said:


> You must be an Idiot, buying a slow 980Ti instead of a 1080Ti.


Insults are not tolerated on these forums

The 980Ti is an amazing GPU and still packs a nice punch. For the price it's a heck of a steal. 

Not everyone needs a 1080Ti nor want to spend that kind of money.


----------



## cdawall (Aug 5, 2017)

notb said:


> Your role in this is pretty simple. You're the one who made the hugely popular mining thread - you've presented mining as a great investment with no risk ("free money"), you've consulted people on setting up their rigs etc. It was most likely the first time many people on TPU really decided to learn something about mining (me included) and some of them invested into it as a result.
> 
> After merely 2 months you're simply telling those people that they started to late. Nice going.



I wouldn't say it is too late to start now, just not dump money with no thought.

I would say "idiotic" timeframe to me was spending $500 on an rx480/580 or $550+ on a 1070. Maybe I should have phrased that better.

The gpu price has actually fallen back down for most nvidia cards and right this second wouldn't be an awful buy in if you did so frugally.

I still build mining rigs 2-3 times a week for customers.


----------



## Foobario (Aug 5, 2017)

Ubersonic said:


> Technically the 980ti raised in value because all the new people jumping on the mining bandwagon eventually realised that Nvidia is highly competitive for mining these days and there's no point spending £300 on a used RX480 when you can get a higher performing 980ti for less.  The 10 series was a similar story, once people realised that they had better performance/powerdraw than the RX series they jumped on them due to the AMD shortage and the prices mooned.



The 980TI and any other Maxwell cards are crap at mining.  Nvidia gutted the compute capabilities on all their consumer cards in that generation.  So any price increases on the 980ti or anything else form that generation is not being directly driven by the "mining bandwagon".  The increased prices on 1060s and 1070s directly related to mining has driven up demand for gamers looking for a Nvidia option that they can afford.


----------



## yotano211 (Aug 5, 2017)

cowie said:


> hope you don't mind me asking but how many gpu's per rig?
> 
> 
> like say if I had just 4 580' going in whatever coin that's "in atm" any ballpark number on monthly profits?


I usually do 6 gpus per rig and I have one with 7. 3 rigs are 3 only, 3 cards failed on me leaving 3 good. I RMA'ed those

All of my rigs are paid off but I started back in Feb.(?)



hat said:


> You probably actually earn more this way than you did before too, don't you? Less downtime...
> 
> @cdawall you got any 1070s with micron RAM? If so, what's your memory offset and power target for them?


I dont really earn that much less now with stock speeds, maybe 10% but much less headache. I need that time to put into a home business that was suffering when I sent most my time into taking care of the mining rigs. Next month I will sent a few days in cleaning the rigs out.


----------



## cdawall (Aug 5, 2017)

Foobario said:


> The 980TI and any other Maxwell cards are crap at mining.  Nvidia gutted the compute capabilities on all their consumer cards in that generation.  So any price increases on the 980ti or anything else form that generation is not being directly driven by the "mining bandwagon".  The increased prices on 1060s and 1070s directly related to mining has driven up demand for gamers looking for a Nvidia option that they can afford.



They do the same as the 1070 just a little more power hungry


----------



## erocker (Aug 5, 2017)

yotano211 said:


> I usually do 6 gpus per rig and I have one with 7. 3 rigs are 3 only, 3 cards failed on me leaving 3 good. I RMA'ed those
> 
> All of my rigs are paid off but I started back in Feb.(?)
> 
> ...


I have merged your posts. Please use the multi-quote or edit feature if you want to quote multiple posts.

Thank you.


----------



## evernessince (Aug 5, 2017)

RejZoR said:


> It's almost as if AMD doesn't really care about gamers. Everyone should refuse buying second hand cards. That's f**k miners up as they won't get any financial returns from the hardware. And refuse to buy new ones if prices get stupid. That'll force AMD to decide who they want to support. Gamers or dumb a** miners. Cancerous mining nonsense...



It's not AMD doing this, it's the miners.  It's not like you can tell store owners to not sell to certain customers either.


----------



## the54thvoid (Aug 5, 2017)

Captain_Tom said:


> It just takes planning people.



So does posting, so please stop constantly double posting.


----------



## Captain_Tom (Aug 5, 2017)

evernessince said:


> It's not AMD doing this, it's the miners.  It's not like you can tell store owners to not sell to certain customers either.



I would actually disagree.   I wouldn't say AMD/Nvidia "don't care about gamers" per se, but I would say they could put a lot more effort into making sure gamers can buy cards.

1. There should be mining-focused versions of cards.  Example:   RX 570D [$150] = 1792 Stream processors, low 1200 MHz core clock, 4GB GDDR5, only 2 display outputs, and a 30-day warranty.   This would be an excellent card for mining (Almost equal to a 580 for $100 less and lower power usage), and if mining demand dries up it still makes a good budget gaming card!


2.  AMD needs to make MORE CARDS, but I suspect they are taking this seriously with Vega though for the first time.   It seems like they took an extra week to make sure Vega is programmed to be the ultimate mining card, and they will hopefully come prepared with extra stock.


----------



## FordGT90Concept (Aug 5, 2017)

They're already working on it: http://www.pcworld.com/article/3204...ppear-as-gaming-gpu-shortage-intensifies.html

Mining cards are lower priced than graphics cards.  They have a different return policy (very restrictive to protect the manufacturers from mining fluctuations).  They don't have any display outputs which forbids them from being of any value to gamers.  The thing is, these cards take months to get to the public so this round, they're wholly unprepared.  Next time, they should be able to ramp production of mining-specific cards and hopefully shelter gamers from getting gouged.

They can't just produce more graphics cards now because it slaps them in the face when the mining market collapses.



Captain_Tom said:


> -Either way even if I don't mine a complete ROI, I can sell each card for $120 when I am done!


Which means four lost sales for AMD/NVIDIA.


----------



## notb (Aug 5, 2017)

Captain_Tom said:


> -I just bought 4 x R9 380 4GB's for $500 total. (22-25 MH/s with modded bios)
> -Overall I will pay off a card per month of mining.
> -So this will take me like 5 months technically, to finish profiting - but that assumes prices don't increase, and I expect them to by the end of the year.
> -Either way even if I don't mine a complete ROI, I can sell each card for $120 when I am done!
> ...


Planning like "I expect them to increase"? Really?
And if it will decrease? You've planned that?

Also, I don't know where you live and how much you pay for electricity, but R9 380 is already not breaking even in a fairly large part of the world.
With cheap electricity (US, Eastern Europe) your 4 cards will make maybe $700 during first year. Is it really worth the work and inconvenience?

It might all look great now: $700 "free money". But time goes by and POV changes. Go through @cdawall 's thread - you'll see how many people gave up because they felt it's pointless. And most stopped mining at higher mining rates that we have today.

Also, by the end of the year ethereum should switch to POS and your cards might not make a profit afterwards. So the fun could stop before you hit those 5 months.
And the release of next gen cards (Vega, Volta) will not help either.


----------



## efikkan (Aug 5, 2017)

Captain_Tom said:


> AMD needs to make MORE CARDS, but I suspect they are taking this seriously with Vega though for the first time.   It seems like they took an extra week to make sure Vega is programmed to be the ultimate mining card, and they will hopefully come prepared with extra stock.


As I've told you, they can't just turn around and make more cards, production of silicon chips takes several months. And the total production volume on the node is limited as well, so if they wanted to have more Polaris or Vega chips today, they would have had to sacrifice some Ryzen batches, and made this decision >=5 months ago. Perhaps it would be wise to sacrifice a few percent of the Ryzen wafers, but how could they have known this back then?

AMD must surely regret using HBM2 for Vega. Even if they could supply enough chips, they would still remain limited by HBM2 supplies. If they used GDDR5(X), they could even have dumped a lower binning just for the miners.


----------



## FordGT90Concept (Aug 5, 2017)

Vega is a 50% about HBM2.  If they used GDDR5X, it wouldn't be Vega.  Since Vega changed a lot more than just the memory, they couldn't really develop a GDDR5X version in parallel.  I expected a GDDR5X derivative of GCN5 next year.  It's also a possibility that AMD will not use GDDR5X because AMD has to produce the volume to make HBM2 production viable for the suppliers.  HBM2 will always be more expensive to produce than GDDR but supply is something that can be fixed if the demand is there for it.


----------



## efikkan (Aug 5, 2017)

FordGT90Concept said:


> Vega is a 50% about HBM2.  If they used GDDR5X, it wouldn't be Vega.  Since Vega changed a lot more than just the memory, they couldn't really develop a GDDR5X version in parallel.  I expected a GDDR5X derivative of GCN5 next year.  It's also a possibility that AMD will not use GDDR5X because AMD has to produce the volume to make HBM2 production viable for the suppliers.  HBM2 will always be more expensive to produce than GDDR but supply is something that can be fixed if the demand is there for it.


Perhaps PR wise, but they are developing Vega11 and Vega12, which I believe will be using GDDR. After the HBM(1) issues for Fiji, they should have known about the risks. They probably couldn't afford making both a HBM2 and GDDR version of Vega10, so they should have opted for GDDR. That would probably have sacrificed their HBC in the process, but that's really irrelevant for the consumer market anyway.

BTW, what is your expected GDDR version of Vega10 named?


----------



## hat (Aug 5, 2017)

cdawall said:


> All of my 1070's are micron they are all stable at +65/+550/70% TDP that's good for 30mh/s


What qualifies as "stable" for you? For me, first indicator of stability is the OCCT test.


----------



## the54thvoid (Aug 5, 2017)

This should just depress poeple:

http://www.tweaktown.com/articles/8229/ethereum-mining-1gh-40-gpus-5000-per-month/index.html






To be fair, his mining set up required shit loads of devotion and loads of cash but still, to me it's just another blight on our world of quick cash grabs at the expense of others.  

*Stop mining and do some folding*.  You might get some cash back but it wont cure your cancer.


----------



## nemesis.ie (Aug 5, 2017)

Vya Domus said:


> That doesn't include the cost of the cards , and you never know how relevant ETH is going to remain relevant ,which is what I  used as an example or any coin for that matter. Cards brake too. It's something too volatile for someone that isn't already very financially stable to invest into. Call it a gold mine , I wouldn't. You might just as well start betting.
> 
> As a side income it's OK but at that point it as far as it can get form a gold mine.



Ah, I see where the confusion has come from, you wrote PROFIT when you actually meant income/revenue.


----------



## cdawall (Aug 5, 2017)

hat said:


> What qualifies as "stable" for you? For me, first indicator of stability is the OCCT test.



If I don't have to restart the rig for anything other than Windows updates


----------



## Vya Domus (Aug 5, 2017)

nemesis.ie said:


> Ah, I see where the confusion has come from, you wrote PROFIT when you actually meant income/revenue.



Profit that becomes income , is there a difference ?


----------



## hat (Aug 5, 2017)

Probably profit means money earned over what you paid into it. My BTC is currently worth about 80 bucks, which still leaves me $800 in the hole at the moment.


----------



## cdawall (Aug 5, 2017)

Captain_Tom said:


> Buddy I just want to thank you for having so many level-headed responses in this ocean of ignorance.
> 
> What you said is exactly correct - Mining isn't technically as profitable as it was a few months ago, but it still can easily be VERY profitable depending on how you look at it.  Consider this:
> 
> ...



How much power does that pull? Those are right round the same performance as my 1060s


----------



## Steevo (Aug 5, 2017)

cdawall said:


> Similar, but not quite how Bitcoin has run
> 
> 
> 
> ...




One could ask how much a Roman coin trades for now since it was one of the longest and furthest reaching governments. Most of the money we trade with is older than ours, but still somewhat short lived in the grand scheme of things.


So money is only as stable as the government or liquid assets backing it, crypto has no government and is the first to be so, and the value is an arbitrary amount that few have most of the control of. That sounds like a recipe for disaster at some time in the future.


----------



## nemesis.ie (Aug 5, 2017)

Vya Domus said:


> Profit that becomes income , is there a difference ?



Yes, absolutely. It's the same as how companies report their finances. Income/revenue is the amount of money that comes in (i.e. what you sell the cons for), profit is how much you make after ALL the expenses are paid - electricity, cards, time spent and potentially taxes.

So very different.


----------



## cdawall (Aug 5, 2017)

Steevo said:


> One could ask how much a Roman coin trades for now since it was one of the longest and furthest reaching governments. Most of the money we trade with is older than ours, but still somewhat short lived in the grand scheme of things.
> 
> 
> So money is only as stable as the government or liquid assets backing it, crypto has no government and is the first to be so, and the value is an arbitrary amount that few have most of the control of. That sounds like a recipe for disaster at some time in the future.



My example of the USD rings oddly similar. Having the US government backing it is of no consequence since we lack the assets to payback the debt and have traded iba deficit for over a century now. It is based on the "good will" of the us government just like cryptocurrency is based off of the "good will" of the people using it.


----------



## Vya Domus (Aug 5, 2017)

nemesis.ie said:


> Yes, absolutely. It's the same as how companies report their finances. Income/revenue is the amount of money that comes in (i.e. what you sell the cons for), profit is how much you make after ALL the expenses are paid - electricity, cards, time spent and potentially taxes.
> 
> So very different.



At the end of the day it is money that you made , therefore income. You are not a corporation therefore it is kind of meaningless to look at it that way.

Are you implying that cash sort of sits in it's own little special place ? It doesn't , it's money that you made , just like the money you get from your job.


----------



## FordGT90Concept (Aug 5, 2017)

the54thvoid said:


> This should just depress poeple:
> 
> http://www.tweaktown.com/articles/8229/ethereum-mining-1gh-40-gpus-5000-per-month/index.html


That was written on Jun 21.  Look at the follow ups:
Jul 8 Anyone buying hardware to mine Ethereum is going to lose
Jul 11 Ethereum Mining is Dead: Price Drops, Difficulty Booms
Jul 20 Cryptocurrency mining deflates, used GPUs hit eBay

It's like an addiction: the highs are high but the lows are low.

I was hoping to find out details on the power consumption but doesn't look he did it.  His bill was probably $1000/mo.  If this keeps up, I wouldn't be surprised if power companies add surcharges for people that surge in power consumption.


----------



## notb (Aug 5, 2017)

efikkan said:


> Perhaps PR wise, but they are developing Vega11 and Vega12, which I believe will be using GDDR.


Which makes sense since Vega is 50% PR. We didn't know what the other 50% is, but this "mining driver" might be it.

This card's hype was built on HBM2. Not HBM. It's HBM2; "two" - new, better, more.
If not for this, it'll be just another GPU - no one would care.
Same for Zen. It's not just an MCM CPU with some interconnect solution. It has Infinity Matrix - a name instantly attractive and familiar to Millennials.




Vya Domus said:


> At the end of the day it is money that you made , therefore income.


Yes, it's income. But it's not profit.
If your rig is not effective, i.e. using more electricity than it creates value in coins, you still have an income (maybe a big one). But you're not making a profit.


> You are not a corporation therefore it is kind of meaningless to look at it that way.


It's meaningless to check if you're actually earning money on your work/investment? Seriously?


> Are you implying that cash sort of sits in it's own little special place ? It doesn't , it's money that you made , just like the money you get from your job.


But you also have some costs of your job! E.g. you have to cover commuting. If you work in an office, you usually have to get formal clothes. And so on.
I don't recognize commuting as a job cost, because I'd buy a monthly bus ticket anyway. But I do spend around $50 / month on clothes that I only use at work. And I also eat out often because of my job: that is another $100 / month.
Things like this add up... a job with a higher salary might not be the job with higher profit.


----------



## nemesis.ie (Aug 5, 2017)

@Vaya Domus

Yes, there is income, but the point is that is not the same as profit.

You are missing the point: let's say you had an income of 10,000, if your cards and electricity cost you 8,000, you only made a profit of 2,000 ...

Thus 40k of profit is very different to 40k that also includes all the expenses. My comment was that 40k PROFIT would be very nice.

It's not the same "income" as you are calling it as an income from a job where the same 40k would already have all the taxes etc. paid on it when you get it and you have it to spend. That would be the same as profit in the mining instance.

Maybe go and look up the definitions of the words if I'm not explaining it well enough.


----------



## the54thvoid (Aug 5, 2017)

FordGT90Concept said:


> That was written on Jun 21.  Look at the follow ups:
> Jul 8 Anyone buying hardware to mine Ethereum is going to lose
> Jul 11 Ethereum Mining is Dead: Price Drops, Difficulty Booms
> Jul 20 Cryptocurrency mining deflates, used GPUs hit eBay
> ...



Yeah, I was hoping to see his costs.  A good site needs to be developed and updated to reflect hashrate and income versus national energy costs.  i.e if i mined in the UK, where electricity isn't cheap because we nationalised a long time ago and the power companies are greedy fuckers, a 2 card rig would run about 400-500watts, maybe with 40-60 hash rate.  What would the revenue versus budget be?

That's such a good exam question for next years kids.

EDIT: like your power company surcharge idea, it would be justifiable for companies to charge you a secondary business rate for electricity usage.  After all, if you are consuming 5 households worth of energy and that trend increased, we'd be more prone to blackouts in vulnerable times.  People need to release fast that energy isn't infinte.


----------



## Vya Domus (Aug 5, 2017)

nemesis.ie said:


> @Vaya Domus
> 
> Yes, there is income, but the point is that is not the same as profit.
> 
> ...



Have I argued with what those things mean ? No. I argued it simply doesn't matter to bother with such details in that situation. You're not doing something on such a large scale that you would need to look at it that way.
All you would do is play "the business man" while in reality you aren't one. Look at it whichever way you want.


----------



## efikkan (Aug 5, 2017)

notb said:


> Which makes sense since Vega is 50% PR. We didn't know what the other 50% is, but this "mining driver" might be it.
> 
> This card's hype was built on HBM2. Not HBM. It's HBM2; "two" - new, better, more.
> If not for this, it'll be just another GPU - no one would care.
> Same for Zen. It's not just an MCM CPU with some interconnect solution. It has Infinity Matrix - a name instantly attractive and familiar to Millennials.


"Infinity matrix" would have to be one of the coolest technology names ever created. I wish AMD put as much effort into their actual technology as they put into PR and marketing.

AMD also made a big deal about using "AI" for branch prediction, because you know, everything has to use the "AI" gimmick these days. What it actually does is keeping a list of the results from last few conditionals, so when it runs into a loop it can use it for branch prediction. It's just simple statistics, just like Intel does. But of course it sounds much better when it's presented as "AI" that analyzes and optimizes your applications. You'll have to give them credit, AMD are masters of PR.

I remember back in February when some claimed Nvidia were anxious about the coming Vega and had to release GTX 1080 Ti to counter it… (look how that turned out)


----------



## justanother gamer (Aug 5, 2017)

RejZoR said:


> If this garbage continues I'll be forced to buy GTX 1080/Ti. There goes the idea of having AMD ever again...


expectations and self realizations are a wonder to behold. Some want to throw up their hands and run over and just buy a 1080, that's OK everyone must make a decision themselves. Prices for High end will Never drop down much, proof is in the pudding.  AMD Never said that their return would bring the holy grail of GPU's, everyone doing the early reporting was creaming their pants making ungodly predictions. Their product is good still in its infancy and prone to problems, Crypto mining boon for these cards is a surprise because AMD kept a lot of information secret. but its funny in a way how you get fanboys from both sides decrying everything. AMD can't really do much once they push their products out to market. Look at New Egg already capitalizing on 170$ price increase as others have posted from their authorized sellers , and who's to say it wont go higher. From the numbers pushed  there will be a true rush from professional miners and newbs who think to get into it. i know many don't get it. So for many its a going to be either take the plunge and buy before miners deluge the market  or wait 2-3 months for production to catch up with demand and possible price
inflation considering the FE has increased 11%.   guess i'll order a Aqua package before new egg  and amazon Jack-up prices. you wait a few months and who knows that new Vega you ordered may be a repackaged miners card  .


----------



## Steevo (Aug 5, 2017)

cdawall said:


> My example of the USD rings oddly similar. Having the US government backing it is of no consequence since we lack the assets to payback the debt and have traded iba deficit for over a century now. It is based on the "good will" of the us government just like cryptocurrency is based off of the "good will" of the people using it.




Guns and goods is what currently back the USD, no one is stupid enough to demand repayment as it would ultimately lead to physical conflict, and its also why the US has private lands owned wholly by companies and or individuals of other nations and that is somehow OK.


----------



## notb (Aug 5, 2017)

Vya Domus said:


> Have I argued with what those things mean ? No. I argued it simply doesn't matter to bother with such details in that situation. You're not doing something on such a large scale that you would need to look at it that way.
> All you would do is play "the business man" while in reality you aren't one. Look at it whichever way you want.


Scale is irrelevant. We're mostly talking about - how a "business man" would say - allocated costs. So a cost comes from a card running.
Depending on the card you choose and electricity tariff, power draw will usually consume between 20 and 50% of the mining income. You still think it doesn't matter?
And I'm talking about the modern GPUs. An older card (and most CPUs) will not make a profit at all (electricity cost > mining income).

I'm sorry to say this, but this discussion does suggest that you're not really in control of your home budget. Although I have to consider a possibility that you're 12 and you're still not thinking about such things - I'd say that would be OK (I was already a "business-type" back then, but thankfully not everyone has to be one ).




efikkan said:


> "Infinity matrix" would have to be one of the coolest technology names ever created. I wish AMD put as much effort into their actual technology as they put into PR and marketing.


I admit that Infinity Matrix is indeed a nice name. But there have been some poor choices as well, like the "Threadripper". And there's the EPYC fail... I mean... sorry, but I can't imagine myself making a presentation for the Board recommending EPYC CPUs for the server.
Maybe this will be acceptable in USA, but outside it'll just generate jokes and facepalms on business meetings.
Where is this going next? Will we see a DUDE or something like that?


> AMD also made a big deal about using "AI" for branch prediction, because you know, everything has to use the "AI" gimmick these days.


I can't blame them for this. AI (and Big Data) is in fact the hottest topic now.
But as you've described, the "AI" in Zen is not that special or unique. They're actually quite late (compared to Intel).


> You'll have to give them credit, AMD are masters of PR.


I much preferred them being masters of innovation and performance, like when my PC was full of AMD/ATI parts (Athlon 1700+ and R9500Pro).
Maybe AMD should close their semiconductor business and become a PR agency? Many Chinese companies struggle to understand Western culture and I'm pretty sure they're ready to pay more than AMD earns from current ventures.


----------



## Vya Domus (Aug 5, 2017)

notb said:


> I'm sorry to say this, but this discussion



I wasn't discussing anything with you. You proved your lack of comprehension on all subjects a long time ago. 



notb said:


> Although I have to consider a possibility that you're 12 .



Right , forgot why I wanted to put you on ignore. Grow up buddy.


----------



## nemesis.ie (Aug 5, 2017)

I think I might do the same with you for oddly (or maybe not), the reasons you just mentioned ...


----------



## Vya Domus (Aug 5, 2017)

nemesis.ie said:


> I think I might do the same with you for oddly (or maybe not), the reasons you just mentioned ...



Do as you please , after all you're arguing with nothing more than a opinion at this point and I really don't know where you are trying to get to.


----------



## Captain_Tom (Aug 5, 2017)

FordGT90Concept said:


> They're already working on it: http://www.pcworld.com/article/3204...ppear-as-gaming-gpu-shortage-intensifies.html
> 
> Mining cards are lower priced than graphics cards.  They have a different return policy (very restrictive to protect the manufacturers from mining fluctuations).  They don't have any display outputs which forbids them from being of any value to gamers.  The thing is, these cards take months to get to the public so this round, they're wholly unprepared.  Next time, they should be able to ramp production of mining-specific cards and hopefully shelter gamers from getting gouged.
> 
> ...



yeah, and?    People neglect the used market too much anyways.


----------



## RejZoR (Aug 5, 2017)

justanother gamer said:


> expectations and self realizations are a wonder to behold. Some want to throw up their hands and run over and just buy a 1080, that's OK everyone must make a decision themselves. Prices for High end will Never drop down much, proof is in the pudding.  AMD Never said that their return would bring the holy grail of GPU's, everyone doing the early reporting was creaming their pants making ungodly predictions. Their product is good still in its infancy and prone to problems, Crypto mining boon for these cards is a surprise because AMD kept a lot of information secret. but its funny in a way how you get fanboys from both sides decrying everything. AMD can't really do much once they push their products out to market. Look at New Egg already capitalizing on 170$ price increase as others have posted from their authorized sellers , and who's to say it wont go higher. From the numbers pushed  there will be a true rush from professional miners and newbs who think to get into it. i know many don't get it. So for many its a going to be either take the plunge and buy before miners deluge the market  or wait 2-3 months for production to catch up with demand and possible price
> inflation considering the FE has increased 11%.   guess i'll order a Aqua package before new egg  and amazon Jack-up prices. you wait a few months and who knows that new Vega you ordered may be a repackaged miners card  .



Well, with miners already drooling over VEGA for their mining garbage, it's not looking good. I'm frankly still interested in RX Vega, I'm just afraid it won't be obtainable or the prices will be ridiculous. It's even more of a problem because I have to wait for september because that's when aftermarket Vega's arrive. Blower just isn't worth it and AiO version might be priced a bit too high. But I think they'll be easier obtainable now than in september.


----------



## Vya Domus (Aug 5, 2017)

Captain_Tom said:


> People neglect the used market too much anyways.



I wonder why...


----------



## Vya Domus (Aug 5, 2017)

Captain_Tom said:


> I mean I do too.  If you know why please share with the rest of the class lol.
> 
> I remember a few years ago when people were buying 750 Ti's for $150 while you get a 7970 for $120 that matched the 780 if they were both overclocked.   What a bunch of idiots.



I would not touch any used high end AMD GPU from the last few years. Especially 7970s and R9 290. There is no way to tell if they have been used for mining 24/7 and how many times they have been baked. I had friends that got pretty much scammed trying to pick one of these up and then having them fail/artifact in like a month or so.

So think again 7970 for the price of a 750ti is a screaming scam. Not idiots at all.


----------



## FordGT90Concept (Aug 5, 2017)

Captain_Tom said:


> yeah, and?    People neglect the used market too much anyways.


Because tech moves fast.  Cards just a few years old are effectively half as fast.  Where a car or cloths still fulfill their purpose just as well, the bar is always rising with tech.  Hell, a graphics card a decade old will struggle running an internet browser today because it lacks hardware acceleration in modern browsers.  A decade old car is actually still pretty good in most regards by comparison (so long as it wasn't beat to hell).


----------



## Captain_Tom (Aug 5, 2017)

hat said:


> Probably profit means money earned over what you paid into it. My BTC is currently worth about 80 bucks, which still leaves me $800 in the hole at the moment.



I just don't even know if that's possible.   When did you buy Bitcoin for 10x more than it is worth now?!  

Or do you mean mining?  If so, I also am a bit confused on what you are doing.   What did you build, and what's your selling pattern? 



cdawall said:


> How much power does that pull? Those are right round the same performance as my 1060s



If you PM'd me next Friday, I will have an answer for you.  Until then I really won't have had the time to fully set up and and flash everything to full stability.   But those are my estimates from forums.

Don't be surprised if it matches your 1060's though.   I cannot say this enough to people:  Nvidia.  Isn't.  As Good.  As AMD.  For Mining.   Only the 1070 beats the efficiency of Polaris, and that's while costing twice as much.  I mean even my used 290X I picked up on craigslist does 31 MH/s for like 175w.   That's a 3 generation old card somewhat close to everything else Nvidia has now.



Vya Domus said:


> I would not touch any used high end AMD GPU from the last few years. Especially 7970s and R9 290. There is no way to tell if they have been used for mining 24/7 and how many times they have been baked. I had friends that got pretty much scammed trying to pick one of these up and then having them fail/artifact in like a month or so.
> 
> So think again 7970 for the price of a 750ti is a screaming scam.



And what if they were used for mining?  I have never had a card break from mining lol.

But yeah go a buy a 750 Ti over something stronger than the 770 lmao.   Yeah that makes you smart /s


----------



## Vya Domus (Aug 5, 2017)

Captain_Tom said:


> And if they were used for mining?  I have never had a card break from mining lol.
> 
> But yeah go a buy a 750 Ti over something stronger than the 770 lmao.   Yeah that makes you smart /s



Then you're simply unaware or want to ignore a very real issue. Mining combined with what @FordGT90Concept said makes picking up a used card not such a good idea and picking up an AMD card a horrible idea.

And by the way you can just simply buy a GTX 680 for the same or even less money that is equal to a 770/7970.That would make you smart.


----------



## FordGT90Concept (Aug 5, 2017)

Eh, I don't buy the argument that running a card at 100% load for extended periods of time really impacts life span.  It just exposes design flaws faster.  A card with crappy hardware might last just over a year under normal gaming load but when stressed, they could crap out in a month.  A card with good hardware shouldn't care if it was stressed for a year or five years.

Where's the evidence that this card that survived a month was ever used for mining?


----------



## Vya Domus (Aug 5, 2017)

FordGT90Concept said:


> Eh, I don't buy the argument that running a card at 100% load for extended periods of time really impacts life span.  It just exposes design flaws faster.  A card with crappy hardware might last just over a year under normal gaming load but when stressed, they could crap out in a month.  A card with good hardware shouldn't care if it was stressed for a year or five years.
> 
> Where's the evidence that this card that survived a month was ever used for mining?




This has occurred multiple times , where they incredibly unlucky ? Maybe , more than likely not. Mining does kill cards more often than gaming.

It's so easy to put a broken card in the oven and often make it work just like new , you don't seriously imply this isn't a thing.


----------



## cdawall (Aug 5, 2017)

Vya Domus said:


> This has occurred multiple times , where they incredibly unlucky ? Maybe , more than likely not. Mining does kill cards more often than gaming.
> 
> It's so easy to put a broken card in the oven and often make it work just like new , you don't seriously imply this isn't a thing.



Depends on what kind of gaming we are talking about. Running games 16hours a day everyday at full tdp wouldn't be anymore stressful than mining at 60-70% tdp


----------



## R-T-B (Aug 5, 2017)

RejZoR said:


> There is no manufacturing capacity that can satisfy this mining idiocy. And no one is going to build a new plant just to satisfy these demands when it can die over night. Just too much of a gamble increasing manufacturing capacities 10 fold and then it all dies off over night. It's why we have such clusterf**k. If there was guaranteed capacity needed, the'd done it already.



That's complete BS.  Eventually, hardware acquisition cost exceeds proft margin, even for miners, as the amount of possible profit remains fixed.

The fact is the manufacturers are enjoying the high prices as much as anyone, and that's why they aren't ramping up production more than anything.



RejZoR said:


> We are blaming crypto miner degenerates for the major part...



So it's "degenerate" to make money off a product (AND run a payment network) you were planing on gaming on?

If you ask me honestly, if anyone is degenerate, it's the gamers.  But I don't get judgemental and sling insults, so no one is.



bug said:


> I think they can. Afaik, mining is mostly about FP66



Not at all really, no.



Prince Valiant said:


> Couldn't they cripple performance with x+ GPUs detected in a system unless you buy a card specifically for it? Or do cards not communicate at all with mining?



Cards do not use the bus for anything but submitting hashes with mining, so no, they don't communicate.



Captain_Tom said:


> That is when you switch to a different coin lol.



Irrelevant.  Everyone cashes out in bitcoin.



notb said:


> What you're doing here is pretty unfair and IMO even offending to part of this community.
> 
> Most people that get into an investment before the bubble make a profit - this is fairly basic stuff.
> But most people that start after the "greed" moment (from the graph in @efikkan 's post) don't make a profit.
> ...



More mining doesn't help him though, it hurts him, which pretty much shoots a hole in any benefit argument you can make against him.

Also, people have been trying to apply that graph to bitcoin since bitcoin was $20.00.  It doesn't work.


----------



## Vya Domus (Aug 5, 2017)

R-T-B said:


> and that's why they aren't ramping up production more than anything.



I am still highly doubtful of that , like I previously said they already have deals in place in terms of how many wafers they can get. Ramping up production could be simply too costly for them or impossible , remember AMD/Nvidia aren't making more per card , they are just selling more of them than usual.


----------



## justanother gamer (Aug 5, 2017)

running a R 7 1800x with a R9 270x (pulled from Old system which is still running a I930     just waiting for AMD to put the vega 64 liq cooled on the market. Many cant afford the cards even the low end but the 700 is still a good deal,   but hey thats their delema.   ive never data mined but may look into it,  just wondering  do data miners have their own secret hand shake )


----------



## cdawall (Aug 5, 2017)

Vya Domus said:


> I am still highly doubtful of that , like I previously said they already have deals in place in terms of how many wafers they can get. Ramping up production could be simply too costly for them or impossible , remember AMD/Nvidia aren't making more per card , they are just selling more of them than usual.



Actually this is completely wrong. AMD/Nvidia is making more per wafer since they can now sell "damaged" cards to miners as mining cards. So per card cost is down increasing per card profit.


----------



## notb (Aug 5, 2017)

R-T-B said:


> That's complete BS.  Eventually, hardware acquisition cost exceeds proft margin, even for miners, as the amount of possible profit remains fixed.
> (...)
> More mining doesn't help him though, it hurts him, which pretty much shoots a hole in any benefit argument you can make against him.


These arguments are incorrect. Possible profit (in a period of time) is not fixed. Supply of crypto is infinite and demand is still growing.
The big unknown is whether central banks and financial institutions choose to utilize open currencies (BTC, ETH or something) or make fully controlled new ones.


----------



## Vya Domus (Aug 5, 2017)

cdawall said:


> Actually this is completely wrong. AMD/Nvidia is making more per wafer since they can now sell "damaged" cards to miners as mining cards. So per card cost is down increasing per card profit.


 
What do you mean damaged ? They seem to be fully enabled chips from what I see meaning they come from the same supply of wafers that the consumer variants come from.


----------



## AsRock (Aug 6, 2017)

RejZoR said:


> It's almost as if AMD doesn't really care about gamers. Everyone should refuse buying second hand cards. That's f**k miners up as they won't get any financial returns from the hardware. And refuse to buy new ones if prices get stupid. That'll force AMD to decide who they want to support. Gamers or dumb a** miners. Cancerous mining nonsense...



Could not agree more but.



erocker said:


> Maybe AMD needs to consider a separate SKU and/or driver for mining cards.



Yeah but then people be bitching that it was not done with the other cards as seen as there was no hardware changes required.

AMD is in a Catch 22, dammed if they do and dammed if they don't.

As seen as the AMD cards are just as exspenive as the high end nVidia cards i may as well go for one of those now even more so with Arma being my main game still.

AMD should higher prices so these company's are grabbing all the profits for them self's, when really it should be AMD getting the money.


----------



## R-T-B (Aug 6, 2017)

notb said:


> These arguments are incorrect. Possible profit (in a period of time) is not fixed. Supply of crypto is infinite and demand is still growing.



No, because everyone exchanges via BTC.  BTC has a fixed, decreasing release rate and market cap is not infinitely growing.  It would reach a point of equilibrium.


----------



## hat (Aug 6, 2017)

@Captain_Tom 
I paid almost $900 for two 1070s, and have so far earned roughly $80 by mining


----------



## cdawall (Aug 6, 2017)

Vya Domus said:


> What do you mean damaged ? They seem to be fully enabled chips from what I see meaning they come from the same supply of wafers that the consumer variants come from.



570D that a good chunk of the AMD stuff is based off of is a further disabled Polaris die, the 1060/1080's have outputs removed on the vast majority the clocks on some are also dropped well under reference for the OE dies, no TDP listings etc. These will be bad bin chips, 30 day warranty means basically DOA only warranty. You don't think they took the highest end chips and resold them to miners at lower cost do you?


----------



## Vya Domus (Aug 6, 2017)

cdawall said:


> 570D that a good chunk of the AMD stuff is based off of is a further disabled Polaris die, the 1060/1080's have outputs removed on the vast majority the clocks on some are also dropped well under reference for the OE dies, no TDP listings etc. These will be bad bin chips, 30 day warranty means basically DOA only warranty. You don't think they took the highest end chips and resold them to miners at lower cost do you?



And most chips that are still functional but don't meet the voltage/clocks requirements are far in between. These can be returned in the 30 days window along side the DOA stuff too. Yes they can resell some chips that they couldn't before but it's still not enough to make them clap their hands in excitement nor does it reduces the per wafer cost greatly on their end. The money they pay to fabs and the supply is still the same and it's still a limiting factor.

Point is , if they really wanted to profit from this situation in a meaningful way they would need completely different deals with the fabs and much higher MSRPs from the get go.


----------



## notb (Aug 6, 2017)

R-T-B said:


> No, because everyone exchanges via BTC.  BTC has a fixed, decreasing release rate and market cap is not infinitely growing.  It would reach a point of equilibrium.


"via" - not "to"

Also, you are aware of the fact than when e.g. nicehash delays your payment (even for weeks), they're not keeping those BTC on their books, right?


----------



## R-T-B (Aug 6, 2017)

notb said:


> "via" - not "to"



No, via AND to.  You switch to BTC and cash out.  You STILL exchange to BTC prior to sale.  Everyone does.



> Also, you are aware of the fact than when e.g. nicehash delays your payment (even for weeks), they're not keeping those BTC on their books, right?



I have no idea, I have never used nicehash.  The last pool I mined on was btcguild.  It certainly kept books.


----------



## notb (Aug 6, 2017)

R-T-B said:


> No, via AND to.  You switch to BTC and cash out.  You STILL exchange to BTC prior to sale.  Everyone does.


OK, so you're not using a mining pool now, but you know how they work (at least from the user/practical point of view).
So lets say you're mining ETH or ZEC or something, but you "switch to BTC" (whatever that means) and cash out as soon as possible - that's the general workflow.

So here are 2 questions for you:
1) How many wallets and in which cryptos do you need to do that?
2) Assuming you're mining at day 0, how will crypto transfers look between your wallets?

I believe that analyzing this scenario will tell us a lot about what's actually happening. 

And BTW: I've just started mining! :-D


----------



## R-T-B (Aug 6, 2017)

notb said:


> OK, so you're not using a mining pool now, but you know how they work (at least from the user/practical point of view).
> So lets say you're mining ETH or ZEC or something, but you "switch to BTC" (whatever that means) and cash out as soon as possible - that's the general workflow.
> 
> So here are 2 questions for you:
> ...



There are many ways to answer that question, but generally you need a wallet for every currency type involved.  Usually users today trust the exchange to manage the books there but I wouldn't, personally.  Maybe I'm old fashioned, but either way I promise you books are kept and every exchange to btc noted.

Good luck mining.  I'd have ran like hell if I were you.  Investing is far easier and even it is stressful as heck.


----------



## cdawall (Aug 6, 2017)

Vya Domus said:


> And most chips that are still functional but don't meet the voltage/clocks requirements are far in between. These can be returned in the 30 days window along side the DOA stuff too. Yes they can resell some chips that they couldn't before but it's still not enough to make them clap their hands in excitement nor does it reduces the per wafer cost greatly on their end. The money they pay to fabs and the supply is still the same and it's still a limiting factor.
> 
> Point is , if they really wanted to profit from this situation in a meaningful way they would need completely different deals with the fabs and much higher MSRPs from the get go.



More cards is more cards, less cost is more profit. You also don't know yields so how can you say if this made a debt or not? Do you work for tsmc/glofo?


----------



## Prince Valiant (Aug 6, 2017)

the54thvoid said:


> This should just depress poeple:
> 
> http://www.tweaktown.com/articles/8229/ethereum-mining-1gh-40-gpus-5000-per-month/index.html
> 
> ...


The box stacking in that picture is horrendous.




cdawall said:


> Actually this is completely wrong. AMD/Nvidia is making more per wafer since they can now sell "damaged" cards to miners as mining cards. So per card cost is down increasing per card profit.


Any proof of this happening or are you speculating?


----------



## R-T-B (Aug 6, 2017)

FordGT90Concept said:


> I was hoping to find out details on the power consumption but doesn't look he did it.  His bill was probably $1000/mo.  If this keeps up, I wouldn't be surprised if power companies add surcharges for people that surge in power consumption.



Not a new idea by any means.  Mines been doing this for literally DECADES before computers existed, let alone miners.


----------



## cdawall (Aug 6, 2017)

Prince Valiant said:


> Any proof of this happening or are you speculating?



RX570D/RX470D feature 1792 shaders vs 2048.

P106/P104 based nvidia products lacking a video output means artifacting doesn't matter as long as they don't crash the driver.


----------



## Vya Domus (Aug 6, 2017)

cdawall said:


> Do you work for tsmc/glofo?



Then your guess is as good as mine. I'm just basing my assumptions on how it typically is.


----------



## cdawall (Aug 6, 2017)

Vya Domus said:


> Then your guess is as good as mine. I'm just basing my assumptions on how it typically is.



How what typically is, we have never in the history of gpu production had such a huge run on equipment.


----------



## Vya Domus (Aug 6, 2017)

That's the thing , this situation is occurring in a time when the manufacturing of these devices is still driven by the "old rules".

Your saying AMD/Nvidia managed to adapt in no time and make huge gains in terms of profitability in an industry where deals are made years before production even begins. Although they are certainly not losing cash , they are not in a perfect situation from which they can profit at full capacity either.


----------



## cdawall (Aug 6, 2017)

Vya Domus said:


> That's the thing , this situation is occurring in a time when the manufacturing of these devices is still driven by the "old rules".
> 
> Your saying AMD/Nvidia managed to adapt in no time and make huge gains in profitability in an industry where deals are made years before production even begins. Although they are certainly not losing cash , they are not in a perfect situation from which they can profit at full capacity either.



I never said huge gains in any post. I said they gained additional funds by selling lesser cards for a profit.

Number of cards sold is up quite a bit however. Which is very interesting considering it was down q1 of this year. The only reports really showing this are AMD's q2 results.


----------



## dorsetknob (Aug 6, 2017)

the54thvoid said:


> EDIT: like your power company surcharge idea, it would be justifiable for companies to charge you a secondary business rate for electricity usage. After all, if you are consuming 5 households worth of energy and that trend increased, we'd be more prone to blackouts in vulnerable times. People need to release fast that energy isn't infinte.


Energy Company is more lightly to report you to police (For A Pre Dawn Vist with the Sledge Hammer front door key ) as you would then be a suspect for Cannabis Farming/Home Growing
Now Would that be" POT hole mining"


----------



## Th3pwn3r (Aug 6, 2017)

dorsetknob said:


> Energy Company is more lightly to report you to police (For A Pre Dawn Vist with the Sledge Hammer front door key ) as you would then be a suspect for Cannabis Farming/Home Growing
> Now Would that be" POT hole mining"



I'm guessing he doesn't know about renewable energies. Here in Illinois we're going to have LOTS of solar arrays that will be pumping out some serious juice within the next few years. There are also wind farms...solar is basically free energy and the costs are getting a lot better.


----------



## the54thvoid (Aug 6, 2017)

Th3pwn3r said:


> I'm guessing he doesn't know about renewable energies. Here in Illinois we're going to have LOTS of solar arrays that will be pumping out some serious juice within the next few years. There are also wind farms...solar is basically free energy and the costs are getting a lot better.



lol, I know enough about renewables, what you dont know is in the UK the energy companies pass on the ful costs to develop them.  The UK is not like the US.  Our version of a free market is pretty much, don't pass on the savings, charge extra for the R&D.  Our bills are rising over here (even before brexit) even though energy wholesale costs have risen and fallen etc. 

Our govt plain sucks at improving business to help all.  So renewables, ironically, end up adding a tariff onto our bills as the govt imposes CO2 emission chrages on coal and gas etc.  And solar is not free.  The R&D plus manufacture and actual solar efficiency is pretty bad.  And where i live it's very green and very cloudy - no droughts, very little sun.


----------



## notb (Aug 6, 2017)

Th3pwn3r said:


> I'm guessing he doesn't know about renewable energies. Here in Illinois we're going to have LOTS of solar arrays that will be pumping out some serious juice within the next few years. There are also wind farms...solar is basically free energy and the costs are getting a lot better.


OH MY GOD.
First we had "mining is free money" and now "solar is free energy". Where do you guys come from? 
Where is this going? What's next? Fridge contains free food?

Why would anyone install a solar panel in Illinois? I checked some figures on sun exposure and it should be similar to central Europe - that is: rubbish. Solar panels in Europe are subsidized, because they can hardly make a profit.


----------



## TheGuruStud (Aug 7, 2017)

notb said:


> OH MY GOD.
> First we had "mining is free money" and now "solar is free energy". Where do you guys come from?
> Where is this going? What's next? Fridge contains free food?
> 
> Why would anyone install a solar panel in Illinois? I checked some figures on sun exposure and it should be similar to central Europe - that is: rubbish. Solar panels in Europe are subsidized, because they can hardly make a profit.



Don't worry, after everyone installs them, IL will pass a high tax on owning solar panels and give half the money to the electric companies (the rest into their wallets).


----------



## cdawall (Aug 7, 2017)

notb said:


> OH MY GOD.
> First we had "mining is free money" and now "solar is free energy". Where do you guys come from?
> Where is this going? What's next? Fridge contains free food?
> 
> Why would anyone install a solar panel in Illinois? I checked some figures on sun exposure and it should be similar to central Europe - that is: rubbish. Solar panels in Europe are subsidized, because they can hardly make a profit.



Mining is free money  What is the saying "if you love your job you never work a day in your life"?


----------



## justanother gamer (Aug 7, 2017)

RejZoR said:


> Well, with miners already drooling over VEGA for their mining garbage, it's not looking good. I'm frankly still interested in RX Vega, I'm just afraid it won't be obtainable or the prices will be ridiculous. It's even more of a problem because I have to wait for september because that's when aftermarket Vega's arrive. Blower just isn't worth it and AiO version might be priced a bit too high. But I think they'll be easier obtainable now than in september.



Vya the funny thing is i went with lower cards. and boards- making due  until i bought  the Ryzen 7 1800x   i had been using a I7-930 cpu on gigabyte boards  and a amd R9 270-- which i'm currently using still on this R71800x,  Intel and Nvidia  both have been Screwing us over with Incremental 3-8% increases in CPU and graphics.. and charging inflated prices. i haven't had a single prob with this CPU took the time to put on water cooling- my first ever
but after reading thru this and other  forums  and shoveling out the crap and whining. I look at it this way for the price of a 1080 ti water cooled is $1200 or so   a amd vega 64 Liq is $700  the same results slightly lower when you look at benchmarks,  all the review and testing.   well im ok with that at this point.. if your like me using a r9-270x or such card then this is a good deal   if your using a card  bought in the last year or 2   and price is a contention   then Just Make due until it stabilizes.  just like Monitors the price is crazy - bought a 43" Vizio 4k tv  and use it as a monitor 120htz, 2160p   we all make choices  to get there.
looking at the price of the FE edition being 1500.00 water cooled  then the Vega64 falls in line with the price.   Asus msi and others wont be coming out with water cooled versions until mid sep at the  earliest.  the stock air cooled versions prob earliest last week august   Asus is making a limited edition vega 64 x2  ie 2 cards in one water cooled  im guessing around $1680+ and over 600 watts  

anyway  this forum is entertaining to read.


----------



## cdawall (Aug 7, 2017)

justanother gamer said:


> Vya the funny thing is i went with lower cards. and boards- making due  until i bought  the Ryzen 7 1800x   i had been using a I7-930 cpu on gigabyte boards  and a amd R9 270-- which i'm currently using still on this R71800x,  Intel and Nvidia  both have been Screwing us over with Incremental 3-8% increases in CPU and graphics.. and charging inflated prices. i haven't had a single prob with this CPU took the time to put on water cooling- my first ever
> but after reading thru this and other  forums  and shoveling out the crap and whining. I look at it this way for the price of a 1080 ti water cooled is $1200 or so   a amd vega 64 Liq is $700  the same results slightly lower when you look at benchmarks,  all the review and testing.   well im ok with that at this point.. if your like me using a r9-270x or such card then this is a good deal   if your using a card  bought in the last year or 2   and price is a contention   then Just Make due until it stabilizes.  just like Monitors the price is crazy - bought a 43" Vizio 4k tv  and use it as a monitor 120htz, 2160p   we all make choices  to get there.
> looking at the price of the FE edition being 1500.00 water cooled  then the Vega64 falls in line with the price.   Asus msi and others wont be coming out with water cooled versions until mid sep at the  earliest.  the stock air cooled versions prob earliest last week august   Asus is making a limited edition vega 64 x2  ie 2 cards in one water cooled  im guessing around $1680+ and over 600 watts
> 
> anyway  this forum is entertaining to read.



The 1080ti from 980ti is a massive perfirmance jump...I don't know what 8% you are looking at


----------



## R-T-B (Aug 7, 2017)

dorsetknob said:


> Energy Company is more lightly to report you to police (For A Pre Dawn Vist with the Sledge Hammer front door key ) as you would then be a suspect for Cannabis Farming/Home Growing
> Now Would that be" POT hole mining"



Ironic that the cheap power is in one of the pot legal states then, eh?


----------



## RejZoR (Aug 7, 2017)

cdawall said:


> The 1080ti from 980ti is a massive perfirmance jump...I don't know what 8% you are looking at



Just a jump between GTX 1080 and GTX 1080Ti is greater than 8%...


----------



## notb (Aug 7, 2017)

justanother gamer said:


> anyway  this forum is entertaining to read.


But you comment wasn't. Maybe it would be easier if it was in English...

NVIDIA provides quite massive jumps.
For the last 3 generations the *70 model was at least matching previous flagship. They're offering solid +30% in most segments and generations are 2 years apart at most.
And don't you worry about Intel. They've concentrated on other things lately and got slightly surprised by Zen, but will be back to leading CPU efficiency sooner than you think. It's inevitable.

AMD has been making GPUs for a decade now and they still can't match the quality ATI offered. Such a pity this great company was taken over by such a management tragedy. :-(


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## RejZoR (Aug 7, 2017)

Tragedy? HD6000 was first AMD generation and it wasn't bad at all. HD7000 was the first actually designed entirely by AMD and it introduced GCN which is still beating today to some degree. It is one of the most highly praised Radeon cards of all times. Had one and it was pretty awesome indeed. R9 290X, despite everyone whining about it was actually very powerful card. So powerful they could later just rebrand it as R9 390X and go against NVIDIA's brand new GTX 980. Successfully. Polaris, despite all the whining again proved to be perfectly capable card. Minimal performance gains over R9 290X, but huge in efficiency. R9 Fury is probably a bit meh, but still capable card, but RX Vega, although not the speed king seems like decent card as well. The last generations after R9 290X aren't out of this world spectacular, made with tradeoffs, but calling them bad would be disingenuous.


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## Vya Domus (Aug 7, 2017)

I wonder how many people still live with the false impression that everything about ATI just sort of vanished when they were acquired by AMD.


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## cdawall (Aug 7, 2017)

RejZoR said:


> Tragedy? HD6000 was first AMD generation and it wasn't bad at all. HD7000 was the first actually designed entirely by AMD and it introduced GCN which is still beating today to some degree. It is one of the most highly praised Radeon cards of all times. Had one and it was pretty awesome indeed. R9 290X, despite everyone whining about it was actually very powerful card. So powerful they could later just rebrand it as R9 390X and go against NVIDIA's brand new GTX 980. Successfully. Polaris, despite all the whining again proved to be perfectly capable card. Minimal performance gains over R9 290X, but huge in efficiency. R9 Fury is probably a bit meh, but still capable card, but RX Vega, although not the speed king seems like decent card as well. The last generations after R9 290X aren't out of this world spectacular, made with tradeoffs, but calling them bad would be disingenuous.



AMD acquired ATi in 2009 the HD2k series was the first AMD branded cards...


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## RejZoR (Aug 7, 2017)

That can't be right. Neither Wiki agrees with that and neither my memory. If that was true, my HD4850 (Sapphire, reference blower) and HD5850 (MSI reference blower) should be AMD branded (they came after HD2000 series, clearly). And they weren't for sure. They were both branded ATi. Even the HD6950 that I had I think was still ATi branded even though they were already stamping AMD on boxes (not on actual cards afaik). I just can't find any images of it. It was Sapphire HD6950 2GB Silent Efficiency with single fan in the middle of rectangular shroud. Similar to HD6950 Flex, but I know my model wasn't Flex...


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## Vya Domus (Aug 7, 2017)

The branding change did not coincide with the moment they were bought by AMD. 6xxx series was the first AMD branded GPU series but by then ATI was already part of AMD for quite some time. 6xxx was TeraScale.


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## Prince Valiant (Aug 7, 2017)

RejZoR said:


> Tragedy? HD6000 was first AMD generation and it wasn't bad at all. HD7000 was the first actually designed entirely by AMD and it introduced GCN which is still beating today to some degree. It is one of the most highly praised Radeon cards of all times. Had one and it was pretty awesome indeed. R9 290X, despite everyone whining about it was actually very powerful card. So powerful they could later just rebrand it as R9 390X and go against NVIDIA's brand new GTX 980. Successfully. Polaris, despite all the whining again proved to be perfectly capable card. Minimal performance gains over R9 290X, but huge in efficiency. R9 Fury is probably a bit meh, but still capable card, but RX Vega, although not the speed king seems like decent card as well. The last generations after R9 290X aren't out of this world spectacular, made with tradeoffs, but calling them bad would be disingenuous.


I've always thought the problem with the 290 is it took too long to get out the door. I recommended AMD cards only to watch people ignore me and pay more for worse performance. The GTX 1K series is a significant gap but the damage was already done.


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## cdawall (Aug 7, 2017)

RejZoR said:


> That can't be right. Neither Wiki agrees with that and neither my memory. If that was true, my HD4850 (Sapphire, reference blower) and HD5850 (MSI reference blower) should be AMD branded (they came after HD2000 series, clearly). And they weren't for sure. They were both branded ATi. Even the HD6950 that I had I think was still ATi branded even though they were already stamping AMD on boxes (not on actual cards afaik). I just can't find any images of it. It was Sapphire HD6950 2GB Silent Efficiency with single fan in the middle of rectangular shroud. Similar to HD6950 Flex, but I know my model wasn't Flex...



I apoligize I typod 2006 ATi became part of AMD. Just because it still said ATi on the logo doesn't make it any less of an AMD product.


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## dozenfury (Aug 7, 2017)

Energy certainly isn't free and I haven't heard much of solar in Illinois, but there have been many large wind turbine farms in Illinois for years.  There are ones with 100+ turbines just outside Peoria and close to 100 near DeKalb, and many others.  Combined with cheap natural gas, thankfully energy is relatively very cheap here (.065 a kw/hr). 

Unless you're running a ton of cards (like 20+) I doubt it would be a blip on a energy company radar.  1 plasma tv uses as many watts as 2 Vegas.  I've also filled pools before which used thousands of extra gallons of water and I didn't have police at my door.


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## R0H1T (Aug 7, 2017)

dozenfury said:


> Energy certainly isn't free and I haven't heard much of solar in Illinois, but there have been many large wind turbine farms in Illinois for years.  There are ones with 100+ turbines just outside Peoria and close to 100 near DeKalb, and many others.  Combined with cheap natural gas, thankfully energy is relatively very cheap here (.065 a kw/hr).
> 
> Unless you're running a ton of cards (like 20+) I doubt it would be a blip on a energy company radar.  1 plasma tv uses as many watts as 2 Vegas.  I've also filled pools before which used thousands of extra gallons of water and I didn't have police at my door.


Energy isn;t *totally* free, ever. Anyone imagining it is living in cuckoo land, there are maintenance, material, personnel costs involved in using renewables.
Unless you can eliminate all 3, basically free installation & free everything afterwards, there will be certain costs associated with solar, wind et al forever.


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## notb (Aug 7, 2017)

Vya Domus said:


> I wonder how many people still live with the false impression that everything about ATI just sort of vanished when they were acquired by AMD.


Of course nothing vanished (instantly). But the management changed and that's what I mentioned. The key difference is that ATI was GPU-centric, so they had to work hard to survive. For AMD this whole branch is just a side-project. Partly to make APUs, partly to get a strong position in consoles. IMO the idea of GPU as a device made for gaming on PCs got a much lower priority after the takeover.

Few years later AMD's consumer GPUs are better for mining and general calculations than they are for games. And hardly anyone cares about their HPC lineup, so we don't know if it's good for games...



dozenfury said:


> Energy certainly isn't free and I haven't heard much of solar in Illinois, but there have been many large wind turbine farms in Illinois for years.  There are ones with 100+ turbines just outside Peoria and close to 100 near DeKalb, and many others.  Combined with cheap natural gas, thankfully energy is relatively very cheap here (.065 a kw/hr).


Solar-wise Illinois is rubbish - no point discussing that further. 

As for wind... Generally speaking, Illinois is quite far from the central US area known for strong winds. Yet, there are quite many wind farms. 
Is wind energy subsidized by the state? Or maybe there's some microclimat that helps? Lakes?
Potential: http://www.tindallcorp.com/site/user/images/USA_Wind_Map_for_Tindall_Transp_2.jpg
Installations: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/dd/Distribution_of_wind_power_plants_in_U.S.png


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## SPLWF (Aug 8, 2017)

I know how to get back at miners, well a miner.  I'm staying up late Sunday night, going to order a Vega from Amazon and another one from my local Microcenters as pickup.  I'll sell both for Triple the price.


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## cdawall (Aug 8, 2017)

SPLWF said:


> I know how to get back at miners, well a miner.  I'm staying up late Sunday night, going to order a Vega from Amazon and another one from my local Microcenters as pickup.  I'll sell both for Triple the price.



You do understand the market isn't hot enough to spend $1500 on a gpu? You know how I know that? Vega is out for that price already.


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## SPLWF (Aug 8, 2017)

cdawall said:


> You do understand the market isn't hot enough to spend $1500 on a gpu? You know how I know that? Vega is out for that price already.



You know what I mean, if it's worth $399 MSRP then I'll sell it for $650.  Triple was just an exaggeration


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## cdawall (Aug 8, 2017)

SPLWF said:


> You know what I mean, if it's worth $399 MSRP then I'll sell it for $650.  Triple was just an exaggeration



That's not really getting back at anyone. 2 cards is small potatoes. The guys you are talking about are renting aircraft to fly 60 thousand gpus


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## SPLWF (Aug 8, 2017)

cdawall said:


> That's not really getting back at anyone. 2 cards is small potatoes. The guys you are talking about are renting aircraft to fly 60 thousand gpus



Totally understandable.  My point I'm trying to make is, they caused prices to go way above MSRP, so now I'm going to gouge them, even if it's a single person.


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## cdawall (Aug 8, 2017)

SPLWF said:


> Totally understandable.  My point I'm trying to make is, they caused prices to go way above MSRP, so now I'm going to gouge them, even if it's a single person.



Is it gouging if they quite literally couldn't care less? I sold an obscene numver of 290/390/480/580's at $400 a pop in the past two months. Its not gouging its following the market.


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## SPLWF (Aug 8, 2017)

cdawall said:


> Is it gouging if they quite literally couldn't care less? I sold an obscene numver of 290/390/480/580's at $400 a pop in the past two months. Its not gouging its following the market.



Haha, if you put it that way, so true.

Is it bad that I sold my R9 290 for $100 to my brother in law?  This was way before ETH miining, yeah I'm a nice guy.  I couldn't get it sold for $250 so I just sold it to him for dirt cheap.

Specs was:

AMD Sapphire R9 290 + NZXT Kraken G10 + Corsair H55 + GELID ICY Vision VRM Heatsinks + Zalman ZM-RHS1 VRAM Heatsinks


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## dyonoctis (Aug 9, 2017)

https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/08/bar...of-amd-will-drop-by-more-than-30-percent.html


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## TheGuruStud (Aug 9, 2017)

dyonoctis said:


> https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/08/bar...of-amd-will-drop-by-more-than-30-percent.html



Must be nice to legally be able to try to manipulate the market for your own gain. They just released baloney weeks ago, I guess it didn't work (obviously, stock didn't fall haha).


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## notb (Aug 10, 2017)

TheGuruStud said:


> Must be nice to legally be able to try to manipulate the market for your own gain. They just released baloney weeks ago, I guess it didn't work (obviously, stock didn't fall haha).


Well it's not "manipulating the market". It's a forecast. That's what we pay investments bank to do.
You can't just undermine everything that is against AMD...

BTW: wasn't the leaked Zen performance figures / the hype the actual market manipulation? Think how many people preordered a Ryzen and how much the stock price increased as a result.
In normal conditions people shouldn't preorder anything, ever.


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## Th3pwn3r (Aug 10, 2017)

the54thvoid said:


> lol, I know enough about renewables, what you dont know is in the UK the energy companies pass on the ful costs to develop them.  The UK is not like the US.  Our version of a free market is pretty much, don't pass on the savings, charge extra for the R&D.  Our bills are rising over here (even before brexit) even though energy wholesale costs have risen and fallen etc.
> 
> Our govt plain sucks at improving business to help all.  So renewables, ironically, end up adding a tariff onto our bills as the govt imposes CO2 emission chrages on coal and gas etc.  And solar is not free.  The R&D plus manufacture and actual solar efficiency is pretty bad.  And where i live it's very green and very cloudy - no droughts, very little sun.



What I said is that solar is basically free energy. Don't let semantics get the better of you. There's something called return on investment(ROI) after a period of time something will pay for itself. It's the same thing for miners, after the GPU and electricity is paid for they may possibly return a profit.




notb said:


> OH MY GOD.
> First we had "mining is free money" and now "solar is free energy". Where do you guys come from?
> Where is this going? What's next? Fridge contains free food?
> 
> Why would anyone install a solar panel in Illinois? I checked some figures on sun exposure and it should be similar to central Europe - that is: rubbish. Solar panels in Europe are subsidized, because they can hardly make a profit.



Again, don't skew what was posted, I said BASICALLY FREE, big difference from IS FREE. If I gave you a solar array and installed it for you here in Chicago you could possibly have the utility company owing you money, of course they never pay you in cash, they just credit your account.



TheGuruStud said:


> Don't worry, after everyone installs them, IL will pass a high tax on owning solar panels and give half the money to the electric companies (the rest into their wallets).



Honestly, I wouldn't doubt it if they tried to impose a tax. Here in Cook County they just placed a sweetened beverage tax on us of $0.01 per ounce of liquid.



cdawall said:


> Mining is free money  What is the saying "if you love your job you never work a day in your life"?



Once you've hit your return on investment it is, assuming your currency isn't stolen.



dozenfury said:


> Energy certainly isn't free and I haven't heard much of solar in Illinois, but there have been many large wind turbine farms in Illinois for years.  There are ones with 100+ turbines just outside Peoria and close to 100 near DeKalb, and many others.  Combined with cheap natural gas, thankfully energy is relatively very cheap here (.065 a kw/hr).
> 
> Unless you're running a ton of cards (like 20+) I doubt it would be a blip on a energy company radar.  1 plasma tv uses as many watts as 2 Vegas.  I've also filled pools before which used thousands of extra gallons of water and I didn't have police at my door.



You haven't heard of much solar in Illinois because you're not involved with it. I'm an IBEW Local 134 electrician. We already have some good size solar fields out there, the West Pulman area is a great example and there are many more arrays being planned right now.
https://www.google.com/maps/place/W...589ca9afeba7ba!8m2!3d41.6780523!4d-87.6430841

There are of course some costs that come with the territory, these panels aren't invulnerable to bullets. The locals like to fire their guns in the air and those bullets come down and damage modules from time to time.




R0H1T said:


> Energy isn;t *totally* free, ever. Anyone imagining it is living in cuckoo land, there are maintenance, material, personnel costs involved in using renewables.
> Unless you can eliminate all 3, basically free installation & free everything afterwards, there will be certain costs associated with solar, wind et al forever.



Yep, that's why key words need to be left in the text. It's semantics but I said solar was basically free energy. There's a big difference. If you pay in full(you usually don't) your ROI would be about 20 years depending on your install. I could do the work myself if I wanted to so that would save myself a lot on labor.



notb said:


> Solar-wise Illinois is rubbish - no point discussing that further.
> 
> As for wind... Generally speaking, Illinois is quite far from the central US area known for strong winds. Yet, there are quite many wind farms.
> Is wind energy subsidized by the state? Or maybe there's some microclimat that helps? Lakes?
> ...



You clearly don't know what you're talking about. You've clearly never been here and used a solar pathfinder. Solar is actually really good in Illinois. There are also kickbacks for solar installs for $10,000 in cases, a solar install will also add $10,000 to the value of your home after a home appraisal while most installs will be around $20,000 so right away you can break even. However, where I live I pay very little for per kilowatt-hour so in my case it would take a long time for solar to make sense if kickbacks weren't in effect. But I suggest you do your research and you'll realize how good solar is in Illinois and why there are very big projects being planned. IKEA has commited already.
http://midwestenergynews.com/2017/0...sh-with-illinois-largest-rooftop-solar-array/


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## TheGuruStud (Aug 10, 2017)

notb said:


> Well it's not "manipulating the market". It's a forecast. That's what we pay investments bank to do.
> You can't just undermine everything that is against AMD...
> 
> BTW: wasn't the leaked Zen performance figures / the hype the actual market manipulation? Think how many people preordered a Ryzen and how much the stock price increased as a result.
> In normal conditions people shouldn't preorder anything, ever.



Do you think real forecasts are given for free? Wallstreet is the scum of the planet. You might as well believe the govt while you're at it lol.


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## cdawall (Aug 10, 2017)

Th3pwn3r said:


> Once you've hit your return on investment it is, assuming your currency isn't stolen.



Don't hold coins and that doesn't happen.


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## Th3pwn3r (Aug 10, 2017)

cdawall said:


> Don't hold coins and that doesn't happen.




Can I come over to your house? I'm going to guess you have all your savings hidden under your mattress.


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## cdawall (Aug 10, 2017)

Th3pwn3r said:


> Can I come over to your house? I'm going to guess you have all your savings hidden under your mattress.



I trust the bank not to steal my USD. The cryptocurrency market however I never keep anything I can't afford go lose in it. I just cashed out a chunk from BTC I got at 2600 as it broke 3400


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## notb (Aug 10, 2017)

TheGuruStud said:


> Do you think real forecasts are given for free? Wallstreet is the scum of the planet. You might as well believe the govt while you're at it lol.


Yes. Banks are making thousands of analyses and forecasts. Some of them (for mainstream stocks) are released publicly as an element of marketing.
Sure, it's not always right, but it's in their interest to be as accurate as possible.
And it's not just banks - e.g. there was this guy that says BTC will be worth $50k. He's made a living (and a media career) by giving some recommendations for free - most likely the ones he finds most accurate.

Sometimes investment banks are employed by companies to "guard" the stock price. This is legal and clean.
But manipulating against the company is illegal. I doubt any large bank would take that risk for AMD - a small, yet very popular company (too many people and institutions watching).

Now, obviously there are documented situations where banks tried to manipulate a market with their publications and trades, but it's really, really rare. And usually about currencies, not stocks.


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## Bronan (Aug 26, 2017)

Ubersonic said:


> The flaw with that plan is that real miners (the ones causing the shortages) don't resell cards they run them till they die or become obsolete (at which point they're worth like £50 tops).  The ones that resell/reuse them are the gamers/hobbyists who only get involved in mining for a short time during the booms.



LoL Believe me you do not want to buy a miner card at all unless you do not mind artifacts and a short lifespan of that card. In most cases the fans die because of the 24/7/365 usage. And in most cases the cards i used for mining ended up crashing or showed really weird things when i tried to game on them.
After i stopped mining with them i tested most and selected those which did not show artifacts and sold them for half the second hand market prices, or if they flunked i scrapped them. A good miner makes sure these card never hit the gamers market or warns the user that the risk of the card failing is high.
Thinking that it would be a good deal that miners dump those on the market is absolute misleading yourself.
I hope that both companies soon make mining cards in all the models from 1060 to 1080ti and from amd's rx560 up to the vega rx 64 watercooled.
In case someone claims a miner card is useless then you never heard of sli / or setting the card as physics for nvidia and amd is even much more fun you can add 4 cards and only need 1 card to connect to monitor(s) the rest will add the power anyway. Ofcourse adding cards does not give you double the performance but it works .... they do not need to have a monitor connector at all. Especially AMD because it uses crossfire-x so no need for linking the cards with a bridge. Make sure to check that your motherboard supports CF-x but any modern motherboard does in most cases up to 4 cards. It seems you can actually use AMD and nvidia up to 8 cards in windows 10. But my experience with that is its not working well. Even 2 x nvidia and 2 amd is not easy to get and keep it working especially when large updates arrives.


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## Bronan (Aug 26, 2017)

Th3pwn3r said:


> What I said is that solar is basically free energy. Don't let semantics get the better of you. There's something called return on investment(ROI) after a period of time something will pay for itself. It's the same thing for miners, after the GPU and electricity is paid for they may possibly return a profit.
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Regarding solar energy its not worth the money in my country (netherlands) they are heavily taxed and costs a fortune.  In  my case almost 20.000 euro (bruto 6000 Wh) before you get that money back your well in the future and guess what the converter which costs about 2500 euro has to be replaced every 5 to 7 year see the problem here. 
As soon as you think your earning something back your earning back is moved further in the future every 5 to 7 years. So you really believe that it is free money..... 
Then there is the low return of these things because non of these solar selling companies tell the truth about the system.
The truth is that every part of these things eat power as well which is never calculated the converter consumes 250 to 550 watt and every panel depending if they do not have the power optimizers or they do.
15 to 25 watt without and up 75 with the optimizers. Ofcourse there is much more loss but it goes too far to give a estimate because it all depends on how long the cables and how the solar panels are placed and so on. 
My system does hardly ever deliver 6000 watt at all on average it produces just below 3000 watt at a very sunny day .... So the calculation that i earned this whole crap back in less than 7 years is a pure BS it actually will never pay me back the price i payed for it, it actually will cost me every 5 to 7 year a new converter and thats without installation costs.
Even if you have the perfect alignement and have a high solar day count its hard to break even ever.
"btw 20000 euro is about 24000 dollar"  
So even though my power bill dropped i still have to pay my power company because its not even covering the little power i use in my home, you allways need power when there is no effective sunlight for these things to make up for the power the system consumes. 
Thats why they allways refuse to tell what your real return delivery is, because they know its much less than you think.
When i asked them to install meters so i could monitor the real power delivered they kept saying it was impossible todo.
At the electricity meter from the power company it shows over 2 years that it delivered back 4500 kWh in total to the meter


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## Th3pwn3r (Aug 26, 2017)

Bronan said:


> Regarding solar energy its not worth the money in my country (netherlands) they are heavily taxed and costs a fortune.  In  my case almost 20.000 euro (bruto 6000 Wh) before you get that money back your well in the future and guess what the converter which costs about 2500 euro has to be replaced every 5 to 7 year see the problem here.
> As soon as you think your earning something back your earning back is moved further in the future every 5 to 7 years. So you really believe that it is free money.....
> Then there is the low return of these things because non of these solar selling companies tell the truth about the system.
> The truth is that every part of these things eat power as well which is never calculated the converter consumes 250 to 550 watt and every panel depending if they do not have the power optimizers or they do.
> ...



It's certainly not great for everyone. And yes parts do wear out and the part that sucks is some of them can't be repaired so you're stuck buying new. You are being sold poor quality gear. My instructor has had systems last over 25 years without needing any service. However a lot of warranties are 20 years, you can get more out of them but performance does diminish over time . Lastly, it's an inverter


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## Marstg (Aug 27, 2017)

So guys, are you using the AMD mining driver? I installed it but I see no difference on my 290X. In plus, I cannot overclock it on MSI Afterburner.


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