NVIDIA, AMD to Launch Mining-Oriented Versions of Their GPUs

[efikkan]

Another month; another silly cryptocurrency. When will this madness end?
The only way to make any substantial money is to get in before it becomes popular, not after the prices are skyrocketing.

Still, those "mining" motherboards might be nice for a low-cost research rig.

 

[Steevo]

I wondered why BestBuy was sold out of all their AMD cards....

This will only be good for AMD, their cards will sell, some will die from people being stupid and they will buy more, the ones that make it past the mining rig will probably be put to use in gaming or other rigs and marketshare will increase, and once people get the idea that AMD is better they will buy more AMD.

As far as the cost to us gamers.... look at all the thread crapping on AMD for the past few years, despite having decent hardware other than their bullshi* CPU architecture before Ryzen. Speaking of which, I wonder how cheap Ryzen CPU's would handle PCIe port expanders to run many GPU's?

 

[Readlight]

Just now started eth mining whit one rx 460 lets see do i get something back from mining. 11 MH/s

 

[dalekdukesboy]

Is there some kind of Simon and Garfunkel resurgence in popular culture I've missed? Love them but I only ask because seems everywhere I look here and on twitter for 2 recent examples I'm seeing quotes from the song "Sound of Silence"...I know there was a cover recently by disturbed but didn't think it was that popular to seemingly get quoted widely online....anyway my nod to the quote in story here and general comment on it.

 

[Raevenlord]

Is there some kind of Simon and Garfunkel resurgence in popular culture I've missed? Love them but I only ask because seems everywhere I look here and on twitter for 2 recent examples I'm seeing quotes from the song "Sound of Silence"...I know there was a cover recently by disturbed but didn't think it was that popular to seemingly get quoted widely online....anyway my nod to the quote in story here and general comment on it.

Not quite. Simon & Garfunkel isn't in the mainstream these days, I'm afraid. But I did remember the cover from Disturbed (which I love, btw) and thought it appropriate.

Coincidence? I think yes!

 

[cdawall]

I wondered why BestBuy was sold out of all their AMD cards....

This will only be good for AMD, their cards will sell, some will die from people being stupid and they will buy more, the ones that make it past the mining rig will probably be put to use in gaming or other rigs and marketshare will increase, and once people get the idea that AMD is better they will buy more AMD.

As far as the cost to us gamers.... look at all the thread crapping on AMD for the past few years, despite having decent hardware other than their bullshi* CPU architecture before Ryzen. Speaking of which, I wonder how cheap Ryzen CPU's would handle PCIe port expanders to run many GPU's?

People happily mine with 8 cards and a celeron/pentium the cpu doesn't matter.

 

[Steevo]

People happily mine with 8 cards and a celeron/pentium the cpu doesn't matter.

Interesting, so it doesn't have CPU load like F@H has? How many PCIe lanes are used by each card to let them run efficiently, just 1? I thought about trying mining but don't want to subject my system that when it already holds so much, but I have thought about all the left over towers we have had at work with older e8200's and stuff and just throw a couple cards in each and let them run in the crawl space as its always cool down there.

 

[cdawall]

Interesting, so it doesn't have CPU load like F@H has? How many PCIe lanes are used by each card to let them run efficiently, just 1? I thought about trying mining but don't want to subject my system that when it already holds so much, but I have thought about all the left over towers we have had at work with older e8200's and stuff and just throw a couple cards in each and let them run in the crawl space as its always cool down there.

These adapters are what power a lot of the big mining rigs

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00HZ0M9F2/?tag=tec06d-20

 

[intelzen]

wow - not even a few weeks since prices have spiked - making mining profitable for few weeks to come - till mining difficulty increase (because every other idiot is suddenly mining - duh) or prices crash down (spike up and spike down - duh again).... this will be over faster than these companies (nvida/amd) could order a sticker "mining special edition"

 

[ArdWar]

I'll give them benefit of the doubt about relieving supply scarcity there. Maybe they use silicons that otherwise discarded or configured out for much lower segment. Like one with too much defect or certain pattern of defect on the compute unit (can't be a Tesla) AND too much defect on the output section (can't be a GeForce), maybe....


Or maybe just plain old artificial segmentation.

 

[notb]

Romania is out of stock everywhere no RX 470/480-570/580

Pretty expected. Think about the PPP difference between Romania and US.

Based on nicehash calculator, an RX580 can make 90 euro a month, which is what... 1/8th of average salary in Romania? So investing in few RX580 will significantly increase one's income.
For a US-citizen, this is just 1/36 of income. For them an RX580 would just be a nice addition, but nothing changing his situation significantly...

10-15 years ago I was hugely tempted by stock photography for similar reason: your location doesn't impact the earning (not by much, anyway). Stocks didn't look that great for people from US or UK, but for me it could have been hugely profitable (at least potentially, since I simply didn't have time to get more involved).
Mining has the similar advantages with no issues (since photography is very time-consuming and... you have to learn it in the first place ).

 

[dozenfury]

I started amd/nv mining about a year and a half ago and it turned out to be a great decision. Have done very well in that time and paid for my investment many times over. This is not bitcoin mining btw (which is all but dead except for specialized cpu hw), it's gpu mining which clearly is very much alive.

The catch is that as you can see the pricing of bit currency is incredibly volatile. There's no guarantee it won't drop as fast as it rose. So it's a gamble for sure. Estimates were it would be dried up in 6 months, 18 months ago. Just something to think about before dropping $500 on a 480X thinking you'll get rich. It might work out, or it might already be too late. I do think there's an extreme amount of manipulation in the pricing, leading to the volatility.

 

[Steevo]

I'll give them benefit of the doubt about relieving supply scarcity there. Maybe they use silicons that otherwise discarded or configured out for much lower segment. Like one with too much defect or certain pattern of defect on the compute unit (can't be a Tesla) AND too much defect on the output section (can't be a GeForce), maybe....


Or maybe just plain old artificial segmentation.

I'm not certain AMD has learned anything from the last mining craze, they should be farming out their spare space they PAID to not use from GloFlo for custom chips like mining ASIC, and hell, even knock off chips, its not like paying for unused fab and wafers was cheap, take a little bite out of the chinesium market and at least recoup their investment. But alas they never seem to learn or look beyond the new fidget spinner and count their luck as good business.

 

[dinmaster]

someone probably has already mentioned it but reselling these cards when a miner is done with it wont help the miners.... after im done mining with my cards i can sell them for a bit of a return. I understand that no backface or 1 hdmi instead of all the others and take out all the gaming stuff would make the cards cheaper and intern make it a better ROI but the resell down the road would be better then buying cheaper, up front tho you would mine more and make more money in that time... either way honestly.. (i think manufacturer time would be faster) my cents...

 

[notb]

someone probably has already mentioned it but reselling these cards when a miner is done with it wont help the miners.... after im done mining with my cards i can sell them for a bit of a return. I understand that no backface or 1 hdmi instead of all the others and take out all the gaming stuff would make the cards cheaper and intern make it a better ROI but the resell down the road would be better then buying cheaper, up front tho you would mine more and make more money in that time... either way honestly.. (i think manufacturer time would be faster) my cents...

Most importantly, these cards ought to be built for heavy load 24/7. They should survive a bit longer than gaming variants and this "a bit" could easily cover the lower resale price.
Also even if they mine just 10% faster than gaming models (for the same price), it'll make an enormous difference in the long run.

 

[Prima.Vera]

With these high exchange rates even CPU mining became profitable again so only thing helping would be the long overdue market crash...

Neh, this won't last long. The inflation will take over pretty soon. This crypto currency crap is just another bubble waiting to blow...

 

[dalekdukesboy]

Not quite. Simon & Garfunkel isn't in the mainstream these days, I'm afraid. But I did remember the cover from Disturbed (which I love, btw) and thought it appropriate.

Coincidence? I think yes!

Yeah, Paul Simon is a legend yet very underappreciated by many young dumb musically uninformed folks I guess is best way to put it...Just odd I saw your quote here and as I said on Twitter some guy has " the words of the prophets are written on the subway wall"...with some other stuff mixed in which so happens to be another quote from that same song...so 2 references to same 54 year old song did seem bit odd to me for as you said and I agree with they are far out of the "mainstream" of young folks/pop culture nowadays. Probably slight coincidence but I somewhat disagree with you I think the resurgence of quotes is at least partially due to the cover version which was moderately successful resurrecting it at least slightly lol. Whatever it is, I am just rather glad to see recognition where I think it is long overdue.

 

[medi01]

Both companies are thus reportedly working on specialized editions of their graphics cards specially geared for cryptocurrency mining.

Oh, dear God of Clickbait...

 

[RejZoR]

It's funny how everyone is prasing NVIDIA for its supreme efficiency, but then you look at cryptomining and everyone is running Radeons. Always. When it actually comes to a point where power efficiency is EVERYTHING that matters, people go after a card that's most tossed around as "inefficient" and "power hungry" (RX580). [mind blown into tiny gory bits]

 

[64K]

It's funny how everyone is prasing NVIDIA for its supreme efficiency, but then you look at cryptomining and everyone is running Radeons. Always. When it actually comes to a point where power efficiency is EVERYTHING that matters, people go after a card that's most tossed around as "inefficient" and "power hungry" (RX580). [mind blown into tiny gory bits]

Both are true but it depends on the application. AMD is more efficient for mining and Nvidia is more efficient for gaming. Neither AMD nor Nvidia does both the best.

 

[EarthDog]

It's funny how everyone is prasing NVIDIA for its supreme efficiency, but then you look at cryptomining and everyone is running Radeons. Always. When it actually comes to a point where power efficiency is EVERYTHING that matters, people go after a card that's most tossed around as "inefficient" and "power hungry" (RX580). [mind blown into tiny gory bits]

its the amount of gpgpu work per watt...has little to do with gaming. Different uses and efficiencies... simple.

 

[cdawall]

It's funny how everyone is prasing NVIDIA for its supreme efficiency, but then you look at cryptomining and everyone is running Radeons. Always. When it actually comes to a point where power efficiency is EVERYTHING that matters, people go after a card that's most tossed around as "inefficient" and "power hungry" (RX580). [mind blown into tiny gory bits]

Actually a lot of people are moving to nvidia because they are more efficient and there are a couple zcash based miners that use Cuda cores correctly.

 

[medi01]

Actually a lot of people are moving to nvidia because they are more efficient...

Yeah, sure thing, it's that people have just discovered that nvidia GPUs consume a bit less power, it is not that Radeon's are sold out pretty much everywhere and you can sell 470 for $350+ on ebay.

 

[cdawall]

Yeah, sure thing, it's that people have just discovered that nvidia GPUs consume a bit less power, it is not that Radeon's are sold out pretty much everywhere and you can sell 470 for $350+ on ebay.

The cuda miner has been out since prior to the run out of Polaris chips. They didn't become as popular until prices shot up on amd since ROI was poor. As it sits the 1060 3gb has the best ROI and some of the best power consumption.

 

[Vayra86]

Now AMD is going to sit on VEGA for another year

They'll never top these sales numbers anyway