Wednesday, August 16th 2017

AMD Releases Beta Driver Specifically Geared for Blockchain Compute

Aug 16th, 2017 07:14 Discuss (76 Comments)

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

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76 Comments on AMD Releases Beta Driver Specifically Geared for Blockchain Compute

#26

Dimi

Imsochobo4990 NOK paid.
Which is where GTX1070 is somewhere from 4500-5000 kroners.
the gtx1080 is 5200+++

You are getting ripped off. In my expensive european country, a 1070 can be had for 4050 Kroners (in stock, readily available).

#27

ZoneDymo

oxidizedBehold AMD, the self-proclaimed herald of PC videogaming!

Assuming you actually know what "self-proclaimed" means, got a link to that?

#28

HD64G

Prima.VeraI have a feeling nVidia will push some "special" driver for their Ti, Titan and Quadro cards, which in theory, should smoke any AMD ones....

AMD just fixed a problem with their GPU behavior on ethereum mining when the epoch DAG increases its size. They didn't find any new technique to increase their pefrormance more than what they reached until early 2017. nVidia didn't have this "bug" in their drivers, so they will do nothing about. Only Vega arch is white board atm regarding its max potential in mining cryptos.

#29

xkm1948

cdawallWell that's a different tune from two weeks ago. Card not quite perform how you expected?

The all mighty Vega supporter bought a 1080Ti, need we say more. He only supports AMD with his mouth. That is all. After this no one will take him seriously when the Navi hype train comes by.

On topic. So AMD is Advaned Mining Devices now huh?

#30

oxidized

ZoneDymoAssuming you actually know what "self-proclaimed" means, got a link to that?

Do you need me to explain you the joke? Are you really at this level? :wtf:

#31

RejZoR

cdawallWell that's a different tune from two weeks ago. Card not quite perform how you expected?

No, the card performs quite as expected. The pricing doesn't. There is no way in hell I'm paying 800€ for Vega 64 AiO when I can get one of the beefiest fastest GTX 1080Ti's for 20€ less. I mean, elementary school math...

#32

etayorius

Anyone have issues with these drivers under win7 x64? i already tried it 3 times in a row uninstall and reinstall them using DDU in safe mode each time... all seems to work fine after installation, but once you reboot and try to open Radeon Settings the window locks up... you can`t really use Radeon Settings and if you try to mine eth with claymore the miner crashes. Going back to 17.7.2 fixes all the issues and i can start mining all fine again and use Radeon Settings... can anyone confirm?

#33

ZoneDymo

oxidizedDo you need me to explain you the joke? Are you really at this level? :wtf:

The "joke" is that AMD is not focusing on gamers seemingly with this driver update but on miners.
But the entire joke hinges on your claim that AMD said they were the "herald of PC videogaming"
Without that claim being real the entire joke falls apart Im afraid.

Its like reacting to an article about a new 4 wheel drive Ford and saying "Behold Ford, the self-proclaimed herald of 4 wheel drive"
If Ford never claimed to be the "herald of 4 wheel drive" then there is no joke here.

#34

AsRock

TPU addict

GasarakiUh... Thanks AMD?... I thought you were trying to get your cards in to the hands of GAMERS not miners. So that was just a big lie?

Shit happens, they failed, so next best thing is to take advantage of what they do have.

Maybe with some luck this will make AMD some extra money.

Sure it sucks but shit we can do about it and even if they were as good as nVidia the prices would be silly anyways soon.

#35

Eric3988

Congrats, AMD, for not stabbing gamers in the back, but right in the face. By all means sell all of your hardware to miners who will probably get 3 cards for the price of 1 after the 2 RMAs they put in from running their GPUs at 110% load for 24/7. Why should gamers try to buy your products anymore when you're clearly producing MINING cards and not GPUs that over-promise and under-deliver on gaming performance?

@RejZoR

Congrats on the TI. When did you take the plunge and buy one?

#36

oxidized

ZoneDymoThe "joke" is that AMD is not focusing on gamers seemingly with this driver update but on miners.
But the entire joke hinges on your claim that AMD said they were the "herald of PC videogaming"
Without that claim being real the entire joke falls apart Im afraid.

Its like reacting to an article about a new 4 wheel drive Ford and saying "Behold Ford, the self-proclaimed herald of 4 wheel drive"
If Ford never claimed to be the "herald of 4 wheel drive" then there is no joke here.

Go watch all the latest press conferences on every launch product they ALWAYS claimed "gamers" could count on them, that their focus went to them, that every choice they made, they made thanks to gamers, and for the good of gamers, all the "better-red" "poor volta" and the rest of the stupid propaganda, was everything with "gamers" in mind.
And after all this, here's what you get.

#37

_Flare

ok, AMD has officially given up making good and efficient gaming-cards, i´m not surprised at all.

AMD Lisa Su: "We focus on what we are good at." gaming NO - mining YES

#38

cdawall

where the hell are my stars

RejZoRNo, the card performs quite as expected. The pricing doesn't. There is no way in hell I'm paying 800€ for Vega 64 AiO when I can get one of the beefiest fastest GTX 1080Ti's for 20€ less. I mean, elementary school math...

Sure. You screamed for months that you were going to buy one, it was going to be the greatest AMD rara. Nice opinion change.

#39

snakefist

Ehm, when NV 10x0s launched, they costed as they do now, didn't they? There was no FE edition, stab in the back to AIBs?

What 'gamer' expects is:
- AMD stuff is 10x0 (TI) killer, even on old games
- it cost much less than NV offering
- it also consume much less (sighs deeply) power, and cools the room in the summer and heats it in winter
- it actually poisons miners, so they buy zero cards
- it rewards gamers richly, by expensive gaming bundle

Oh, and all of it happens within 3-4 days (unlike 10x0 launch).

It's quite realistic expectation, I'd say.

#40

oxidized

snakefistEhm, when NV 10x0s launched, they costed as they do now, didn't they? There was no FE edition, stab in the back to AIBs?

What 'gamer' expects is:
- AMD stuff is 10x0 (TI) killer, even on old games
- it cost much less than NV offering
- it also consume much less (sighs deeply) power, and cools the room in the summer and heats it in winter
- it actually poisons miners, so they buy zero cards
- it rewards gamers richly, by expensive gaming bundle

Oh, and all of it happens within 3-4 days (unlike 10x0 launch).

It's quite realistic expectation, I'd say.

No, polaris was fine, and wasn't anything you said.

#41

dozenfury

Well more accurately, this driver fixes the bug in the AMD driver that would cause the 480's mining performance to gradually but significantly decline starting in the next few DAGs. It's not really a driver that improves mining performance, it just resolves the issue that would have soon lead to very decreased performance.

6 or half-a-dozen I know, but it's not like it took the cards from 25 to 30 or 35 MH/s. It's just making cards running at 25 MH/s not drop to 15 MH/s in the next month due to the bug.

#42

RejZoR

cdawallSure. You screamed for months that you were going to buy one, it was going to be the greatest AMD rara. Nice opinion change.

It was all of you calling me an AMD fanboy for being optimistic and now everyone is shocked that I opted for GTX 1080Ti. You know, being optimistic and not jumping to conclusions before more info is known doesn't equal to being a fanboy or hater... I did wait for release date and gathered all the numbers. Was looking and deciding for 3 hours. And then decided for GeForce. I don't see it as shocking the slightest, I just did what all of you were raving about, value for the money. But, whatever...

#43

oxidized

RejZoRIt was all of you calling me an AMD fanboy for being optimistic and now everyone is shocked that I opted for GTX 1080Ti. You know, being optimistic and not jumping to conclusions before more info is known doesn't equal to being a fanboy or hater... I did wait for release date and gathered all the numbers. Was looking and deciding for 3 hours. And then decided for GeForce. I don't see it as shocking the slightest, I just did what all of you were raving about, value for the money. But, whatever...

I don't mean to attack with this post, but the fact that you bought a 1080ti at the end, doesn't really prove anything, you just had no choice, and it's what people is mainly (me included) upset for, you just have no choice, and often when you do it's just better to pick nvidia, i'm sure that if there was a card from AMD that was, slightly slower than a 1080ti, same price, or maybe slightly more, and consumed a bit more than the 1080ti (so the 1080ti is still the winner, slightly but still), you would've chosen AMD nonetheless. This time what happened was that AMD had no 1080ti response, they only had a 1080 response, which is 100% worse than a 1080, so, what i'm saying is, that, unless you have no choice, or there's but it's so much worse, there's not even the slightest intention for you to choose nvidia over AMD.

#44

danbert2000

Imsochobouhm why is that ?
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.

Vega is a compute card, so somehow it's poor gaming results are okay?

This bullshit again...

#45

oxidized

danbert2000Vega is a compute card, not gaming card.

This bullshit again...

It's not what they advertised, and not what they kept advertising, during the launch week, and for the days afterwards.

#46

RejZoR

oxidizedI don't mean to attack with this post, but the fact that you bought a 1080ti at the end, doesn't really prove anything, you just had no choice, and it's what people is mainly (me included) upset for, you just have no choice, and often when you do it's just better to pick nvidia, i'm sure that if there was a card from AMD that was, slightly slower than a 1080ti, same price, or maybe slightly more, and consumed a bit more than the 1080ti (so the 1080ti is still the winner, slightly but still), you would've chosen AMD nonetheless. This time what happened was that AMD had no 1080ti response, they only had a 1080 response, which is 100% worse than a 1080, so, what i'm saying is, that, unless you have no choice, or there's but it's so much worse, there's not even the slightest intention for you to choose nvidia over AMD.

All I can say is LOL to this. "Oh, so you bought GTX 1080Ti. That doesn't change anything! You're still an AMD fanboy." That's one hell of a hot take. XD Same for the "You had no choice". Yeah, when you're not actually a fanboy, between same priced cards where one consistently has like what, 30-40% higher performance, yeah, there really isn't any choice when you're a rational person and not a fanboy despite everyone yelling at you that you are. Besides, I bought it for myself, from this point on, I frankly couldn't care any less what any of you thinks. If this still makes me an AMD fanboy with GTX 1080Ti in the system, then so be it lolz. It's just hilarious as f**k to read such oxymoron nonsense...

#47

oxidized

RejZoRAll I can say is LOL to this. "Oh, so you bought GTX 1080Ti. That doesn't change anything! You're still an AMD fanboy." That's one hell of a hot take. XD Same for the "You had no choice". Yeah, when you're not actually a fanboy, between same priced cards where one consistently has like what, 30-40% higher performance, yeah, there really isn't any choice when you're a rational person and not a fanboy despite everyone yelling at you that you are. Besides, I bought it for myself, from this point on, I frankly couldn't care any less what any of you thinks. If this still makes me an AMD fanboy with GTX 1080Ti in the system, then so be it lolz. It's just hilarious as f**k to read such oxymoron nonsense...

Whatever man

#48

cdawall

where the hell are my stars

RejZoRAll I can say is LOL to this. "Oh, so you bought GTX 1080Ti. That doesn't change anything! You're still an AMD fanboy." That's one hell of a hot take. XD Same for the "You had no choice". Yeah, when you're not actually a fanboy, between same priced cards where one consistently has like what, 30-40% higher performance, yeah, there really isn't any choice when you're a rational person and not a fanboy despite everyone yelling at you that you are. Besides, I bought it for myself, from this point on, I frankly couldn't care any less what any of you thinks. If this still makes me an AMD fanboy with GTX 1080Ti in the system, then so be it lolz. It's just hilarious as f**k to read such oxymoron nonsense...

You can't see far past your ego can you?

oxidizedNo, polaris was fine, and wasn't anything you said.

We are seeing some areas that it wasn't the absolute best in. Memory controller performance being one. What is funny to me is AMD released a "flagship" card and it quite honestly looks to have the same issues. What is strange to me is it doesn't have the compute performance to pull out of the slump this time. I really question what goes through their heads sometimes. I was pretty excited for these cards. Thanks AMD.

#49

ValenOne

oxidizedI don't mean to attack with this post, but the fact that you bought a 1080ti at the end, doesn't really prove anything, you just had no choice, and it's what people is mainly (me included) upset for, you just have no choice, and often when you do it's just better to pick nvidia, i'm sure that if there was a card from AMD that was, slightly slower than a 1080ti, same price, or maybe slightly more, and consumed a bit more than the 1080ti (so the 1080ti is still the winner, slightly but still), you would've chosen AMD nonetheless. This time what happened was that AMD had no 1080ti response, they only had a 1080 response, which is 100% worse than a 1080, so, what i'm saying is, that, unless you have no choice, or there's but it's so much worse, there's not even the slightest intention for you to choose nvidia over AMD.

Vega 64 has more support for DirectX12 features, hence it has some positives over GTX 1080.

#50

oxidized

cdawallWe are seeing some areas that it wasn't the absolute best in. Memory controller performance being one. What is funny to me is AMD released a "flagship" card and it quite honestly looks to have the same issues. What is strange to me is it doesn't have the compute performance to pull out of the slump this time. I really question what goes through their heads sometimes. I was pretty excited for these cards. Thanks AMD.

In the end it was a fine card, very competitive, i still think 1060 is better, but it was super competitive no doubt, and was pretty good, polaris refresh wasn't that good for example.

rvalenciaVega 64 has more support for DirectX12 features, hence it has some positives over GTX 1080.

That is probably the only one, since it came out a year and 3 months later, it's pretty reasonable if it has better support for DX12, but seen how badly the latter is implemented even in the latest games, i wouldn't see this as a big advantage at the moment, surely will age better, after all AMD cards do usually age better, but it's also because it's 15 months newer.

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AMD Releases Beta Driver Specifically Geared for Blockchain Compute

76 Comments on AMD Releases Beta Driver Specifically Geared for Blockchain Compute

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