Thursday, October 14th 2021
AMD BC-160 Cryptocurrency Mining Card Surfaces with 72 MH/s in ETH
VideoCardz has recently published pictures of a rumored AMD BC-160 (Blockchain Compute) mining card designed by XFX China and featuring a Navi 12 GPU. The card supposedly features 8 GB of HBM2 memory along with 2304 Stream Processors however a memory speed of 4 Gbps is also listed which is not currently available casting doubt on the legitimacy of this rumor. We did report on rumors in March that pointed to AMD releasing Navi 10/12 headless cryptocurrency mining cards so this could still be true.
The only existing product featuring the Navi 12 GPU is the Apple-exclusive AMD Radeon Pro 5600M which features 256 more Stream Processors at 2560. The BC-160 card was pictured in a mining cluster where it reached performance levels of 72 Mh/s in Etash with a TGP of 150 W. The card features two 8-pin power connectors and should offer performance around 25% faster than the Navi 10 Radeon RX 5700 XT. We are unsure if this is a real product or how much it might cost so take these rumors with a healthy dose of skepticism.
Source:
VideoCardz
The only existing product featuring the Navi 12 GPU is the Apple-exclusive AMD Radeon Pro 5600M which features 256 more Stream Processors at 2560. The BC-160 card was pictured in a mining cluster where it reached performance levels of 72 Mh/s in Etash with a TGP of 150 W. The card features two 8-pin power connectors and should offer performance around 25% faster than the Navi 10 Radeon RX 5700 XT. We are unsure if this is a real product or how much it might cost so take these rumors with a healthy dose of skepticism.
41 Comments on AMD BC-160 Cryptocurrency Mining Card Surfaces with 72 MH/s in ETH
If this rumor tuwns out true, and if there is enough supply, this could only push down regular GPU pricing about 10%, greed knows no bounds.
And they buy ANYTHING that can mine: phones / tablets / laptops / consoles / consumer grade graphics cards.
To a degree even workstation / research / data centre hardware, but less so, since those already come with a very steep price tag without any scalping, which results in very unfavourable ROI (although we are getting there).
Like in the last attempt from Nvidia a few months ago (Did those cards actually sale this time?), I wonder if AMD will have any luck here. The only crypto specific hardware that did (and still does) sale, are ASICs.
1) send them straight to a landfill
or
2) build them out with pcb's and all of the other parts required that are currently seeing major shortages, burn through mega watts of electricity with them, and then send them straight to a landfill
Probably just comes down to your stance on mining in general as to which one makes more sense.
It may be that ZoneDymo was just holding AMD to the same scrutiny that nVidia received for the CMP cards. Those too were said to be rejects not suitable for gaming cards, however that didn't change the opinions of the community.
2018... I mean2019...2020,2021, oh definitely in 2022.Ive never seen a 150W passive GPU design either. And it would take quite some space too for the heatsink(s).
For those of you that believe mining only contributes to the landfill, what is your take on mining with older used gaming cards that will end in a landfill regardless?
It's true the current state of affairs is terrible but access to GPUs isn't a right of gamers, and with the AI market continuing to grow it's not like a certain level of strain (nothing comparable to now to be clear) won't remain in place as well as some of the price increases.
IMO the biggest waste factor of crypto is power, but currently it's also becoming a driver of new renewable plants which will stay online after the crypto crash and/or proof of stake takeover, so.. terrible but trying to get better