Friday, August 4th 2017
AMD RX Vega Mining Performance Reportedly Doubled With Driver Updates
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...
Sources:
OCUK's Gibbo, Videocardz, NAG, Dirtbagdh @ Reddit
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."
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."
216 Comments on AMD RX Vega Mining Performance Reportedly Doubled With Driver Updates
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.
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 ... ;)
The largest problem for Vega is the supply of HBM2, which is out of AMD's control.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.
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
AMD's GPU division might not survive long term if things keep up the way they've been going.
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
I feel so betraaaayed!!!
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.You wouldn't be in their situation ?
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.