Wednesday, August 16th 2017
AMD Releases Beta Driver Specifically Geared for Blockchain Compute
Paraphrasing our own VSG, "So, this happened". AMD has gone out and done it: they've released a Beta driver specifically geared towards blockchain-based workloads, which should improve the company's GPU performance in generating money for miners. The driver is compatible with close to the entirety of AMD's GCN lineup - all the way from hot-from-the-foundry Vega to AMD's HD 7900 series. As AMD puts it, this is a driver solely purposed towards blockchain workloads - no gaming or graphics workloads (read, what graphics cards were originally meant to do) are officially supported in this release.
Apparently, AMD took it upon themselves to release this driver due to AMD's well documented DAG performance decrease for Ethereum mining hashrates. Specifically, according to Legit Reviews, the Radeon RX 480 went from an expected 14.8 MH/s at DAG #199 (down from 24.6 MH/s at DAG #130) to a prospective 24.8 MH/s DAG #199 performance according to Claymore's benchmark script. Performance improvements from the non-blockchain-geared driver release seem to stand at around 10-15%, which isn't too shabby from a single, Beta driver release.
This move from AMD could open up a proverbial can of worms, however, in the sense that it may start to look like AMD's focus isn't on gaming anymore. This makes sense - the only focus of any company is to make money - so the fact that AMD is tapping the mining market with increased, more predictable performance and longevity isn't strange. This is especially true if one considers Vega's current positioning against NVIDIA's parts, if current pricing trends remain. This move from the company, while sensible from an economic perspective - a graphics card sold is a graphics card sold, period - may bring the company some pushback from gamers, who simply want to be able to purchase AMD's graphics cards for their historically-intended purpose - gaming. That is already hard to do - nigh impossible - at MSRP prices for AMD's most recent architectures. And Vega seems to be going down the same road.
You can download AMD's blockchain-geared driver here.
Sources:
Legit Reviews, Hot Hardware
Apparently, AMD took it upon themselves to release this driver due to AMD's well documented DAG performance decrease for Ethereum mining hashrates. Specifically, according to Legit Reviews, the Radeon RX 480 went from an expected 14.8 MH/s at DAG #199 (down from 24.6 MH/s at DAG #130) to a prospective 24.8 MH/s DAG #199 performance according to Claymore's benchmark script. Performance improvements from the non-blockchain-geared driver release seem to stand at around 10-15%, which isn't too shabby from a single, Beta driver release.
You can download AMD's blockchain-geared driver here.
76 Comments on AMD Releases Beta Driver Specifically Geared for Blockchain Compute
Vega is a compute card, not gaming card.
Volta is a compute card too but pascal isnt..
I think game devs will go towards compute stuff more and more in the future, but I may be wrong.
AMD's problem, and has been for a long time, is that they build their cards to be a jack of all trades and a master of none.
It saddens me that might next upgrade might be an nvidea one, low availability, high price and high power consumption are all a sign to pick something else...
As if i were to buy a new video card today it would not be AMD so good on them hopefully they make cost back at least.2x the power ? really. and did you know if you take the card of turbo the power usage drops a fair bit for the expense of about 5 fps.They seen what people are saying and the new cards are just not cutting it.
launch price seemingly was available in one e-tailer, so I hit it, going to undervolt it and enjoy the facts about AMD cards I personally love.
*Enhanced sync
*Freesync
*Linux drivers.
thus making it decent for me, the hardware suck no doubt, and unless you do machinelearning, lots of opencl it's not great hardware. and or mining.
Undervolting helps the card a lot with 1110mv on RX64 with more memory clock (50+) is going to make it a lot better card than it really is.
I just hope bios editing is possible soon to make the hardware suck a little less.
There are a couple of bundles still available.
AMD always seems to struggle keeping up with demand, even when they sell a lot fewer cards than Nvidia.
AMD has done good with Ryzen, but the graphics dept seems to be getting worse every generation.
This driver isn't here to improve mining performance, it's here to correct a flaw in the existing drivers which has been known about for some time and which in future would have caused mining performance on Polaris/Vega cards to tank.
Some might say that's a good thing, but a design flaw causing a GPU to underperform in any compute task is an embarrassment for a GPU maker, hence the arrival of this fixed driver that AMD announced months ago.
Which is where GTX1070 is somewhere from 4500-5000 kroners.
the gtx1080 is 5200+++
just an example of a 1070
www.komplett.no/product/895394/datautstyr/pc-komponenter/skjermkort/pci-express/asus-geforce-gtx-1070-dual-oc
Cheapest 1080 there:
www.komplett.no/product/893659/datautstyr/pc-komponenter/skjermkort/pci-express/asus-geforce-gtx-1080-turbo
Thus I paid less than 1080, but more than cheapest 1070.
So for the performance it is "ok", but it doesn't make the hardware less shit, if it wasn't for freesync\enhanced sync it'd be a no deal!
Edit:
They've removed the card all together on the site, but this is the link to the product I bought
www.komplett.no/product/943918?noredirect=true#
This is a screenshot of purchase.
As the buyers, they will buy whatever they have the budget for and do whatever they (miners, gamers, specialized PC works.. etc...) want with their purchased. Maybe, they are dump to purchase such high prices, maybe, who's know??? But who are we to justify them and who cared??? All we can do is complaints, whines and bitches... Urrgghh.... wait. NVM! Troll on!
*sigh*