NVIDIA "Pascal" Based Mining GPU Lineup Detailed

[btarunr]

GPU-accelerated crypto-currency mining poses a threat to the consumer graphics industry, yet the revenues it brings to GPU manufacturers are hard to turn away. The more graphics cards are bought up by crypto-currency miners, the fewer there are left for gamers and the actual target-audience of graphics cards. This is particularly bad for AMD, as fewer gamers have Radeon graphics cards as opposed to miners; which means game developers no longer see AMD GPU market-share as an amorphous trigger to allocate developer resources in optimizing their games to AMD architectures.

To combat this, both AMD and NVIDIA are innovating graphics cards designed specifically for crypto-currency mining. These cards are built to a cost, lack display outputs, and have electrical and cooling mechanisms designed for 24/7 operation, even if not living up to the durability standards of real enterprise-segment graphics cards, such as Radeon Pro series or Quadro. NVIDIA's "Pascal" GPU architecture is inherently weaker than AMD's "Polaris" and older Graphics CoreNext architectures at Ethereum mining, owing in part to Pascal's lack of industry-standard asynchronous compute. This didn't deter NVIDIA from innovating a lineup of crypto-mining SKUs based on its existing "Pascal" GPUs. These include the NVIDIA P104 series based on the "GP104" silicon (on which the GTX 1080 and GTX 1070 are based); and P106 series based on the "GP106" silicon (GTX 1060 series is based on this chip). NVIDIA didn't tap into its larger "GP102" or smaller "GP107" chips, yet.



VideoCardz compiled a small list of unreleased crypto-currency mining cards based on the P104 and P106. These include cards from popular NVIDIA GeForce add-in card (AIC) partners, such as ASUS, MSI, and Colorful. The mining-segment cards look almost identical to the GeForce GTX 10-series cards they're derived from; but lack display outputs. Pictured above are the ASUS MINING-P106-6G, MSI P106-Miner, MSI P104-Miner; and Colorful P106-100 WK1 (in that order). It remains to be seen how NVIDIA and its partners price these cards, but if they're pricier than their GeForce GTX siblings, this whole exercise will be rendered futile, as miners will simply buy up the GeForce GTX inventories.

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[silentbogo]

"NVidia Tesla for mortals"

 

[Slizzo]

Interesting they went with GDDR5X when the 1070 is a better miner due to the lower latencies of GDDR5 when compared directly with the GTX 1080.

 

[0x4452]

NVIDIA's "Pascal" GPU architecture is inherently weaker than AMD's "Polaris" and older Graphics CoreNext architectures at Ethereum mining, owing in part to Pascal's lack of industry-standard asynchronous compute.

Was this ever confirmed and how does async-compute-and-graphics matter at all for mining, which is only compute? After yesterday's RX 560 vs GTX 1050 advertorial...

 

[RejZoR]

AMD has a "wide and slower" GPU, NVIDIA has a "narrow and faster" GPU. Wider and slower is generally preferred for compute. I mean, you don't see many workstations with 7700K, but you see plenty with Xeons that have shit tons of slower cores. Basically the same logic applies to GPU's.

 

[atomicus]

What's the set-up for these cards then given they have no video output?

 

[R-T-B]

What's the set-up for these cards then given they have no video output?

Integrated graphics?

 

[0x4452]

... or ssh from a remote system.

 

[silentbogo]

What's the set-up for these cards then given they have no video output?

- Explicit multi-display + iGPU.
- SSH
- VNC
- Serial console

 

[TheinsanegamerN]

What's the set-up for these cards then given they have no video output?

Headless PCs are common in server spaces, and both mining pcs and rendering PCs use the iGPU for the display.

 

[D.Crepit]

The key problem for nVidia anything is
that it doesn't play well in the FOSS
environment.

Make those drivers open source, and I'd bet
nVidia would be MADE competitive by the
FOSS community.

 

[noname00]

Apparenty you can preorder the MSI card in Romania - http://www.pcgarage.ro/placi-video-mining/
The unit price for a pack of 1000 is the same as you paid two monts ago for the cheapest GTX 1060 6GB, and you need to pay 25% in advance. The card will be delivered in 40 to 60 days from now.

I am glad I replaced my ONE MONTH OLD RX480 (second hand) with a new 1070, it was the last day the 1070 was available in stores for a decent price. I will keep this one until the mining insanity will settle down.

 

[jaggerwild]

Headless PCs are common in server spaces, and both mining pcs and rendering PCs use the iGPU for the display.

The new AMD chips don't have IGPU...........

 

[cdawall]

Since not all of you are a part of my mining thread. Couple of them have purchase links.

On another note I have been researching the mining cards.

ZOTAC

MSI "$224"

http://www.ipexinfo.com/product/search?catId=AC&brand=MSI

UPC 824142149362

for sale in russia

https://www.sp-computer.ru/catalog/1452/57475/

ASUS "$226"

 

[TXST Guardian]

Since not all of you are a part of my mining thread. Couple of them have purchase links.

Mining thread link?

 

[cdawall]

Mining thread link?

https://www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/riding-the-crypto-wave.233884/

 

[Zathan]

Problem with these new mining cards is the lack of resell value when they're no longer able to mine (with the increased difficulty). I'm not sure how well they will sell. It's much less of a gamble to buy "gaming" cards and sell the used cards at some point.

 

[cdawall]

Problem with these new mining cards is the lack of resell value when they're no longer able to mine (with the increased difficulty). I'm not sure how well they will sell. It's much less of a gamble to buy "gaming" cards and sell the used cards at some point.

If you break ROI and are just making profit who cares? So you don't get half your investment back at the end...

 

[hat]

Mining will be a popular use for these, but really these are compute cards. Serious F@H people will likely be buying these as well. I'll be getting a pair of these cards myself if things pan out according to plan.

I'm waiting to see some hack that allows these cards to render games while some other video device (like an Intel iGPU) simply passes along the picture to the monitor.

 

[Camm]

Ethereum epoch's are due to grow too large enough to push 8GB RX 4\580's out of being useful, these 1060's would be even worse hit. Guess these could be used as a PhysX card or something :S. lel.

 

[dinmaster]

Everyone just looks at ethereum... what about classic, not to mention all the other coins. When eth becomes unminable at whatever gb of ram. There will be another coin to mine.. a lot of people profit switch anyway or go to whattomine to see which ones are at the top.. as for price, too high for a dumbed down version of a card. Amd and nvidia should make gpu cores that are tailored for miners (double/triple corenext, shader cores etc. Hbm2 for men intense coins) and that would make normal gaming gpus worthless to miners and the balance would be restored.

 

[RejZoR]

I hope this stupid mining crap just dies already.

 

[R0H1T]

I hope this stupid mining crap just dies already.

and takes down the speculators with it!

 

[notb]

I wonder how this changes the roadmap.
At the moment Pascal cards are available at (1050/1050Ti) or over (1600 and up) their launch prices.
Is NVIDIA even interested in releasing anything new? 2050 was going to be a refresh anyway.
I just don't see this mining conundrum ending without a huge collapse of profitability or a forced limit on GPU's mining efficiency.
Would it be even possible for NVIDIA to make normal cards unusable for mining? Technically - maybe yes, but that would be a reputation issue for sure....

And it's even worse in AMD camp.

I'm ordering a 1050Ti today. It's 20% more expensive than 2 months ago (damn ;-(), but some stores are already selling it for another +30%. It seems to be the last moment...

 

[R-T-B]

I hope this stupid mining crap just dies already.

What you need to hope for is that these cards settle the demand and bring cards back to gamers.

Mining isn't going anywhere. It's here to stay, like it or not.

The new AMD chips don't have IGPU...........

I highly doubt anyone buys a Ryzen for a mining rig.