The GPU industry finally acknowledges cryptocurrency mining
Let me begin by stating I'm not a miner. However, I'm a GPU enthusiast, so my perspective will be from the GPU side of things.
Back in late 2013, AMD released one of the finest graphics cards ever made, the Radeon R9 200 series. Coming in at $549, the R9 290X edged out the then $1,000 GTX Titan. The R9 290 was an even better deal, beating the $650 GTX 780 for $400! These were great at the time, and they have gotten even better. The GPU community likes to call it AMD FineWine technology in jest, but it's true that the four and a half year old R9 290 is still remarkably great, going toe to toe with today's $200 mainstream graphics card. Crucially, the GTX 780 is no longer in the picture, and the R9 290 even beats the much newer GTX 970!
But there's something else the R9 290 revolutionized - GPU cryptocurrency mining. In late 2013 through early 2014, the R9 290 and 290X were constantly out of stock. Meanwhile, the Bitcoin GPU mining scene was booming. It was no co-incidence - it was clear that Bitcoin miners were buying up R9 290s by the truckloads.
Yet, the GPU industry at large were largely ambivalent, if not negligent, to this market. There was a lull for a few years while Bitcoin went ASIC, but Ethereum and RX 480 reinvigorated GPU mining. Meanwhile, several NVIDIA friendly algos started popping up as well.
Of course, as we know, Ethereum has soared through the roof, and at current prices ETH mining will ROI on an AMD RX 400/500 card in less than 2 months!
AMD's newly released RX 500 series cards are well out of stock, and nowhere to be found, despite AMD promising strong supply.
At last, they have come out and released an official statement to CNBC -
The gaming market remains our priority. We are seeing solid demand for our Polaris-based offerings in the gaming and newly resurgent cryptocurrency mining markets based on the strong performance we are delivering
Further still, we're seeing rumours of both NVIDIA and AMD releasing mining-specific SKUs. Based on GTX 1060 and RX 580, these mining GPUs will not feature display connectors, and only 90 days warranty. My hunch is that these will also be salvaged dies that didn't meet qualification. What miners will gain instead is a cheaper price. A win-win for both GPU makers and miners alike!
It's not just GPU makers, even motherboard vendors want a piece of the pie, with ASRock first to announce a mining motherboard with no less than 13 PCIe slots!
We're even seeing mainstream hardware sites publish Ethereum mining benchmarks as detailed as their gaming benchmarks!
One last thing, a correlation worth pointing out. Right after these news, AMD's stock went up 7%. Not willing to call it causation just yet, but an interesting data point. With Ethereum switching to PoS, which coin will drive demand for GPU mining in the future?
Not being in mining myself I never considered AMD cards - I'm very much a Nvidia fan
Interesting post though, you raise some great points about AMD's offerings
I would say as a GPU enthusiast, I'm a fan of the underdog, i.e. AMD. They have always delivered better performance for the money in gaming, but somehow NVIDIA's marketing pull is overpowering. Even when they had far superior products like the HD 5870, AMD never managed to beat NVIDIA in terms of market share. That said, I do have enormous respect for NVIDIA has accomplished in the GPU market.
I am skewed by a bad experience I had when I first started out in PC building and gaming. My AMD was very noisy and hot. It eventually burned itself out frying my motherboard and memory
Before my loss of Bitcoin on Mt Gox and Cryptsy, I was buying GPUs each opportunity I had. I'm sitting here with 4 Sapphire 7950s, but I do wish I would have had the foresight to buy the 200 series.
I plan on keeping my eye on this and see if there are pre-orders available.
You have to be really diligent to get hold of an RX 500 or 400 series card right now! They come online and are scooped up within minutes.
Funnily, I was an early buyer of the R9 290. Though I knew what Bitcoin was, I only learned of mining when I read about the R9 290/X shortages. In hindsight, I should have given it a shot - people were mining multiple BTCs back then on their 290s! I remember the price was around $150, and even at that price it was profitable. Months after the R9 290 released, the price was already $1,000, and then Mt Gox happened. My sympathies!
As a miner... It will be interesting how the GPU market changes when many cryptocurrencies switch to Proof of Stake.
Yes, it'll be interesting when Ethereum switches to PoS as clearly a vast majority of these mining buys are being driven by Ethereum right now.
Very well done article. I've been a fan of AMD GPU's for some time. My son and I just did a cross fire of 2 XFX Radeon RX 460 DirectX 12 RX-460P4DFG5 4GB 128-Bit GDDR5 cards. It was a bit of a struggle, and some games aren't programmed to utilize the cross fire.
I'd have suggested a single RX 480 instead - better performance than RX 460 x 2 for the same price! Without the pains of CrossFire, to boot.
Yeah. We probably won't cross fire again anytime soon. It was a fun but frustrating experience.
It is definitely the reason why AMD went up =) Yes they are definitely understanding that crypto is helping push sells. I often see people posting on twitter, commenting on AMD that this is a one time event for high GPU sales. I am so happy to see down the line how wrong they are. Too many people think this is a short term fad when it is the future!!!! Follow me if you are interested in seeing some crypto trades.
To be fair, I'm not so sure about the future... When Ethereum moves to PoS, what next? I guess there'll always be some coin or the other to mine, but as a whole blockchains are definitely moving towards the PoS route.
super interesting. i'm considering building a 4/6 gpu beast to not only keep my caravan warm in winter but mine me some coin. what should i get and what should i mine? :)
Your first decision should be - what you should mine. Then, you can look for the best hardware for your coin :) As for what to mine, I don't know - not a miner myself. www.whattomine.com is a pretty cool resource though!
Thats very nice info! im not a miner, at least not a hardware one, im mostly like you, GPU enthusiast, i even look at them, just to see sometimes the external details between one model an another xD great post!!followed, resteemed and upvoted!!
Great post,
explains a lot to me
Upvoted
If AMD won't do it another company will.
No other company can. It is tremendously difficult to develop a GPU from scratch. Even Intel with all its might tried and failed miserably. There's always NVIDIA, of course, but when it comes to sheer compute power for the buck, AMD is the only game in town, as evidenced from their dominance in Ethereum mining benchmarks. That said, there are some algos that also play well on NVIDIA's Pascal architecture, so if those coins were to be "the next Ethereum", there could be competition in this market.
Competition is always a good thing!
Great news. Now if they can make the cards smaller, cheaper, and faster $$$