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I appreciate this move to make GPUs more available for non-crypto users. As someone who wants to buy an AMD GPU to run my Ryzen machine, I have been waiting 2 w

by throw14082020 6y ago

I appreciate this move to make GPUs more available for non-crypto users. As someone who wants to buy an AMD GPU to run my Ryzen machine, I have been waiting 2 weeks because there is no supply of GPUs at the RRP price. I can only buy the 2 year old models for double the price they sold for.

iforgotpassword 6y ago
We have a global chip shortage. NVidia isn't magically pulling more GPUs out of their asses. Yes as they claim some chips might be defective in a way that makes them unsuitable for a graphics card but still work as a mining chip, but if you believe that they won't redirect perfectly fine chips into mining card production if demand permits it, just because they care so much about gamers and not their shareholders, I got bad news for you.
- my123 6y ago
  The mining GPUs that they announced aren’t based on Ampere but on Turing AFAIK from the hash rate numbers that they gave. Not even the same manufacturing process...
- reader_mode 6y ago
  Mining demand is volatile and will use whatever gives them best hashing/$ ratio - pissing miners off might lose you some cash short term but gamers are much more susceptible to branding, and not to mention devs optimise for popular hardware - if AMD suddenly became a major market % holder in the gaming market because NV shipped their silicon to miners, once mining dips down they get slammed. And if they are hoping production will ramp up to match demand some time in the future they still want to have a winning product.
galangalalgol 6y ago
How long until gpgpu isn't cost effective for mining? I know a lot of fpgas went on ebay for cheap when the new xilinx line came out. The watt per hash has to be lower for fpgas already. Will the cost of a coin always reflect the current price to make a new one and thus gpgpu will always be a cost effective technique?
- ryebit 6y ago
  I think right now biggest earner for GPU mining is Ethereum. And (I think) it's aiming to move to Proof of Stake sometime in next 12-24 months, which kinda time limits the utility of both Eth-specific mining chips, and large investments in GPU mining (unless mining burns GPUs out really fast?). Regardless, most proof of work algorithms are already being optimized with ASICs (ala bitcoin)... Or, like Ethereum's ETHASH alg, they have a step requiring high throughput random access to large amounts of memory, ala scrypt or argon (5gb or so for ETHASH right now, and slowly increasing). That's what's kept ASICs from being profitable for Eth, and is probably limiting factor for FPGAs as well. Though maybe there are FPAGs with dedicated memory on par with a modern GPU?
  - galangalalgol 6y ago
    So nvidia is releasing a line of crippled cards that will mostly only be used for one year amd then trashed? That is horrible! Glad it may be over soon I guess.
    - ryebit 6y ago
      Pretty much, from what I can tell! I sorta see this as Nvidia trying to create some market segmentation not for the miners, but so gamers can actually get their cards before Nvidia loses mindshare. (Not that I think that's likely)
  - kortex 6y ago
    Proof of stake is the fusion power of crypto. It's been 6-24 months away since what, 2016? I toured Consensys a few years back and at the time it seemed PoS was right around the corner. OTOH, it could be cracked tomorrow and value of dedicated silicon will go off a cliff. So I don't blame the GPGPU crowd for that, before even considering the engineering challenges of silicon/FPGA for eth.
    - ryebit 6y ago
      Ethereum's Proof of Stake "beacon chain" is already live, with around $6 billion staked (since launch in december 2020). Next year is just formalizing and testing it taking over from the miners. So despite timeframe, there's little uncertainty about the outcome. https://beaconcha.in/ https://beaconcha.in/ is a nice explorer to see beacon chain running live.
deepakhj 6y ago
There’s a global chip shortage due to 1) covid-19. Factory closures, employee, and supply chain issues. 2) 30-40% growth in gaming due to covid-19 3) trump tariffs (for the USA). Gpu exemption expired in January. Crypto is affecting prices but they aren’t causing the supply issues. I don’t think amd has produced many 6800/6900s. Ryzen 5800/5900 cpus are rarely in stock.

iforgotpassword 6y ago

We have a global chip shortage. NVidia isn't magically pulling more GPUs out of their asses. Yes as they claim some chips might be defective in a way that makes them unsuitable for a graphics card but still work as a mining chip, but if you believe that they won't redirect perfectly fine chips into mining card production if demand permits it, just because they care so much about gamers and not their shareholders, I got bad news for you.

my123 6y ago
The mining GPUs that they announced aren’t based on Ampere but on Turing AFAIK from the hash rate numbers that they gave. Not even the same manufacturing process...
reader_mode 6y ago
Mining demand is volatile and will use whatever gives them best hashing/$ ratio - pissing miners off might lose you some cash short term but gamers are much more susceptible to branding, and not to mention devs optimise for popular hardware - if AMD suddenly became a major market % holder in the gaming market because NV shipped their silicon to miners, once mining dips down they get slammed. And if they are hoping production will ramp up to match demand some time in the future they still want to have a winning product.

galangalalgol 6y ago

How long until gpgpu isn't cost effective for mining? I know a lot of fpgas went on ebay for cheap when the new xilinx line came out. The watt per hash has to be lower for fpgas already. Will the cost of a coin always reflect the current price to make a new one and thus gpgpu will always be a cost effective technique?

ryebit 6y ago
I think right now biggest earner for GPU mining is Ethereum. And (I think) it's aiming to move to Proof of Stake sometime in next 12-24 months, which kinda time limits the utility of both Eth-specific mining chips, and large investments in GPU mining (unless mining burns GPUs out really fast?). Regardless, most proof of work algorithms are already being optimized with ASICs (ala bitcoin)... Or, like Ethereum's ETHASH alg, they have a step requiring high throughput random access to large amounts of memory, ala scrypt or argon (5gb or so for ETHASH right now, and slowly increasing). That's what's kept ASICs from being profitable for Eth, and is probably limiting factor for FPGAs as well. Though maybe there are FPAGs with dedicated memory on par with a modern GPU?
- galangalalgol 6y ago
  So nvidia is releasing a line of crippled cards that will mostly only be used for one year amd then trashed? That is horrible! Glad it may be over soon I guess.
  - ryebit 6y ago
    Pretty much, from what I can tell! I sorta see this as Nvidia trying to create some market segmentation not for the miners, but so gamers can actually get their cards before Nvidia loses mindshare. (Not that I think that's likely)
- kortex 6y ago
  Proof of stake is the fusion power of crypto. It's been 6-24 months away since what, 2016? I toured Consensys a few years back and at the time it seemed PoS was right around the corner. OTOH, it could be cracked tomorrow and value of dedicated silicon will go off a cliff. So I don't blame the GPGPU crowd for that, before even considering the engineering challenges of silicon/FPGA for eth.
  - ryebit 6y ago
    Ethereum's Proof of Stake "beacon chain" is already live, with around $6 billion staked (since launch in december 2020). Next year is just formalizing and testing it taking over from the miners. So despite timeframe, there's little uncertainty about the outcome. https://beaconcha.in/ https://beaconcha.in/ is a nice explorer to see beacon chain running live.

deepakhj 6y ago

There’s a global chip shortage due to 1) covid-19. Factory closures, employee, and supply chain issues. 2) 30-40% growth in gaming due to covid-19 3) trump tariffs (for the USA). Gpu exemption expired in January. Crypto is affecting prices but they aren’t causing the supply issues. I don’t think amd has produced many 6800/6900s. Ryzen 5800/5900 cpus are rarely in stock.