I'd like to see a quad-Pitcairn card targeted at miners with a price point around $500-$750. Pitcairn has the best KH/$ ratio, and four chips could push 1600-2000 KH/sec, which would get the miners to leave the gaming cards alone.
AMD is selling plenty of gaming cards right now, so why cannibalize their sales with an R&D-intensive SKU that's only usable to one slice of their users?
It's also worth noting that part of the allure of cards to miners is that they can be resold as gaming cards as the difficulty increases or if the market tanks. A specialized SKU would lose all its resale value in these scenarios, so it would have to be very attractively priced to appeal to miners.
this guy knows what he's talkin about. Nobody wants a outdated, less efficient mining card. With mining, its GO FAST or GO BROKE. Litecoin and maybe dougecoin is the only reason GPU's are still being used.
You'll notice in ebay auctions that people are often stating a video card wasn't used for cryptocoin mining. This may become a common thing, but I guess there may be people who don't think to ask and don't consider it so they can still sell for close to a market price. However less potential buyers may mean lower resale price and I think people that are up on their hardware news will want to know.
I don't see why AMD would need to do this. The type of R&D needed would be something easily achievable by the individual vendors like what ASUS does with its dual GPU solutions.
Any who is spending money on GPU's for mining is well pretty clueless. Custom ASIC's are where the scene is at, from the same price you get ten times the hashing performance or more than a GPU with significantly less power usage. The best a 290x can do is about 1.1 Ghash where a $250 Custom Asic box you can plug into a USB port can do up to 7Ghash. And to make a profit you really need to be doing a lot more Ghashing than that. The difficulty factor has increased to the point that a Gpu is not going to produce much of anything, and will likely not even pay for the power consumed.
If you're talking about gigahashes, you're talking about Bitcoin (and other SHA-256 cryptocurrencies). Everyone knows these are purely the realm of ASICs now, and have been for some time. The GPU miners usually go for Litecoin, Dogecoin, or other Scrypt-based cryptocurrencies, which are more ASIC-resistant since they have substantial requirements for low-latency RAM. There are some ASICs out there, but the ones released so far are underwhelming: a unit with five Gridseed chips costs about $250-$300 and generates about 350 KH/sec at most, whereas a $149 R7 265 card can get 420+ KH/sec if tuned properly. The Gridseed ASICs do have much lower power consumption, but not enough to offset that substantial price difference (even when you factor in overhead for motherboards, PSUs, etc.)
Ohhhh man... the delicious irony. Someone calling out others as clueless then going on to make a completely misinformed statement.
Ain't nobody mining bitcoins with GPU's guy-- they use them to mine scrypt-based coins for which ASIC's either don't exist, or haven't yet approached an acceptable ROI.
I'm not sure you'd actually be able to use any more cards on one system because each GPU in AMD and Nvidia's multi-GPU cards shows up as an independent PCI-E device. Isn't there a hard limit on the number of video cards on most boards?
Hilarious! I like what they're doing to engage with reviewers ahead of time. I'm interested to see what they cook up, if only to see how well they keep power and thermals under control.
Actually what I'd like to see is an official (and thus AMD-supported) dual Bonaire XTX card to attack a much more mainstream section of the market. Such an animal at $200 or so would be interesting to see.
AMD is starting to get the viral marketing thing right since if there's one thing the company needs badly its effective advertising.
I still know how they (or any graphics company) could ever beat NVidia's GTX 690 launch where all the reviewers were sent crowbars. Watching the forums light up with Half Life 3 speculation was comical to watch.
If that's dual Hawaii board - I'm intrigued to see such a monstrosity - in a GOOD sense, I mean. Water cooler coming at stock? Or just advanced triple fan, similar to HD 7990?
But if it's just a re-branded HD 7990, then it's not so interesting.
One midday in the early fifties... "Mom, do I smell slapsticks?" "Yes, son, they are shrimpies. Was there any mail? How was school?" "Something about Kepler. And someone called Maxwell. There is a large envelope, a file with my photograph split in two in order to make a claim that everything will be better if I doubled." "I already paid for it at the grocery store, do they want me to pay even more now? These communists!"
Yes clearly they're targeting this for low-power eco-rigs. Anyway, with proper binning and tweaking, it will draw considerably less than two seperate Hawaii cards.
Consider this your notice in advance. Scrypt coins, like SHA256 before them, will be dominated by ASICs very soon. If you already have GPU miners set up, have a look at Ultracoin. It is being proclaimed as one of the most power efficient, quickest transacting coins ever developed. It is ASIC resistant and most global transactions are confirmed in sub 30 seconds, which is a massive improvement over other alts, especially considering E-Commerce and movement of capital. http://ultracoin.net
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JDG1980 - Thursday, March 13, 2014 - link
I'd like to see a quad-Pitcairn card targeted at miners with a price point around $500-$750. Pitcairn has the best KH/$ ratio, and four chips could push 1600-2000 KH/sec, which would get the miners to leave the gaming cards alone.ImSpartacus - Thursday, March 13, 2014 - link
AMD is selling plenty of gaming cards right now, so why cannibalize their sales with an R&D-intensive SKU that's only usable to one slice of their users?The Von Matrices - Friday, March 14, 2014 - link
It's also worth noting that part of the allure of cards to miners is that they can be resold as gaming cards as the difficulty increases or if the market tanks. A specialized SKU would lose all its resale value in these scenarios, so it would have to be very attractively priced to appeal to miners.jasonelmore - Saturday, March 15, 2014 - link
this guy knows what he's talkin about. Nobody wants a outdated, less efficient mining card. With mining, its GO FAST or GO BROKE. Litecoin and maybe dougecoin is the only reason GPU's are still being used.mikato - Monday, March 17, 2014 - link
You'll notice in ebay auctions that people are often stating a video card wasn't used for cryptocoin mining. This may become a common thing, but I guess there may be people who don't think to ask and don't consider it so they can still sell for close to a market price. However less potential buyers may mean lower resale price and I think people that are up on their hardware news will want to know.The Von Matrices - Thursday, March 13, 2014 - link
I don't see why AMD would need to do this. The type of R&D needed would be something easily achievable by the individual vendors like what ASUS does with its dual GPU solutions.xaml - Thursday, March 13, 2014 - link
Gamers might fight back, metaphorically, by C4-ing the pillars of the mines of such criminal virtual currencies.allknowingeye - Friday, March 14, 2014 - link
Any who is spending money on GPU's for mining is well pretty clueless. Custom ASIC's are where the scene is at, from the same price you get ten times the hashing performance or more than a GPU with significantly less power usage. The best a 290x can do is about 1.1 Ghash where a $250 Custom Asic box you can plug into a USB port can do up to 7Ghash. And to make a profit you really need to be doing a lot more Ghashing than that. The difficulty factor has increased to the point that a Gpu is not going to produce much of anything, and will likely not even pay for the power consumed.JDG1980 - Friday, March 14, 2014 - link
If you're talking about gigahashes, you're talking about Bitcoin (and other SHA-256 cryptocurrencies). Everyone knows these are purely the realm of ASICs now, and have been for some time. The GPU miners usually go for Litecoin, Dogecoin, or other Scrypt-based cryptocurrencies, which are more ASIC-resistant since they have substantial requirements for low-latency RAM. There are some ASICs out there, but the ones released so far are underwhelming: a unit with five Gridseed chips costs about $250-$300 and generates about 350 KH/sec at most, whereas a $149 R7 265 card can get 420+ KH/sec if tuned properly. The Gridseed ASICs do have much lower power consumption, but not enough to offset that substantial price difference (even when you factor in overhead for motherboards, PSUs, etc.)ol1bit - Sunday, March 16, 2014 - link
LOL, money for nothing....I think that is a song. :-Pnastyemu25 - Friday, March 14, 2014 - link
Ohhhh man... the delicious irony. Someone calling out others as clueless then going on to make a completely misinformed statement.Ain't nobody mining bitcoins with GPU's guy-- they use them to mine scrypt-based coins for which ASIC's either don't exist, or haven't yet approached an acceptable ROI.
Flunk - Monday, March 17, 2014 - link
Gridseed ASIC, the ROI is ok they cost slightly more than ATi GPUs but use massively less power. That's the only scrypt ASIC I can think of.kmi187 - Sunday, March 16, 2014 - link
Has it ever occured to you that, if so many people are still buying gpu's for mining ... you might be the misinformed one?Flunk - Monday, March 17, 2014 - link
I'm not sure you'd actually be able to use any more cards on one system because each GPU in AMD and Nvidia's multi-GPU cards shows up as an independent PCI-E device. Isn't there a hard limit on the number of video cards on most boards?nathanddrews - Thursday, March 13, 2014 - link
The picture is of two halves, not two whole... intentional? Aside from that, who's in the picture?Ryan Smith - Thursday, March 13, 2014 - link
Sorry that's not clear. That's me (taken from my Google+ profile).ImSpartacus - Thursday, March 13, 2014 - link
The Tech Report's Scott Wasson got the same treatment:http://techreport.com/news/26159/somehow-this-tran...
Homeles - Thursday, March 13, 2014 - link
As did PCPer's Ryan Shrout.Alexvrb - Thursday, March 13, 2014 - link
Hilarious! I like what they're doing to engage with reviewers ahead of time. I'm interested to see what they cook up, if only to see how well they keep power and thermals under control.Actually what I'd like to see is an official (and thus AMD-supported) dual Bonaire XTX card to attack a much more mainstream section of the market. Such an animal at $200 or so would be interesting to see.
The Von Matrices - Friday, March 14, 2014 - link
Which is kind of ironic because Anand took the photo.http://www.anandtech.com/show/7368/amd-gpu-product...
The Von Matrices - Thursday, March 13, 2014 - link
AMD is starting to get the viral marketing thing right since if there's one thing the company needs badly its effective advertising.I still know how they (or any graphics company) could ever beat NVidia's GTX 690 launch where all the reviewers were sent crowbars. Watching the forums light up with Half Life 3 speculation was comical to watch.
Mr Perfect - Friday, March 14, 2014 - link
#Meh #WhateverTiGr1982 - Thursday, March 13, 2014 - link
If that's dual Hawaii board - I'm intrigued to see such a monstrosity - in a GOOD sense, I mean.Water cooler coming at stock? Or just advanced triple fan, similar to HD 7990?
But if it's just a re-branded HD 7990, then it's not so interesting.
piroroadkill - Friday, March 14, 2014 - link
No way would they waste all this marketing on a 7990 rehash.It's guaranteed to be dual Hawaii. But in what configuration? Their stock cooler for single Hawaii was godawful, so...
(Then again, the 7990 one was decent).
xaml - Thursday, March 13, 2014 - link
One midday in the early fifties..."Mom, do I smell slapsticks?"
"Yes, son, they are shrimpies. Was there any mail? How was school?"
"Something about Kepler. And someone called Maxwell. There is a large envelope, a file with my photograph split in two in order to make a claim that everything will be better if I doubled."
"I already paid for it at the grocery store, do they want me to pay even more now? These communists!"
Ken_g6 - Friday, March 14, 2014 - link
I think your Mom's comparison is apt. Having two GPU cores is great for getting video processing done, but you'll pay for it at the electric company.Alexvrb - Friday, March 14, 2014 - link
Yes clearly they're targeting this for low-power eco-rigs. Anyway, with proper binning and tweaking, it will draw considerably less than two seperate Hawaii cards.dwade123 - Friday, March 14, 2014 - link
Twice the GPU, twice the temperature.ShieTar - Friday, March 14, 2014 - link
Somehow I doubt that they will sell a card with a 700K temperature set-point.DukeN - Friday, March 14, 2014 - link
Maybe they're just big fans of 2 girls 1 up videos..mwildtech - Friday, March 14, 2014 - link
I'm sure Nvidia will think of something to crash the party... Maybe a dual GK110??Putus9 - Monday, March 17, 2014 - link
Nope, i hope make Titan 2 instead, a single gpu with the performance of 780ti SLI.Putus9 - Monday, March 17, 2014 - link
*Nvidia makeMombasa69 - Friday, March 14, 2014 - link
A few months ago I bought 2 'Sapphire R9-280X Toxic' GPU's, best thing I ever did, they're bloody awesome!xwebnetwork - Saturday, March 22, 2014 - link
Consider this your notice in advance. Scrypt coins, like SHA256 before them, will be dominated by ASICs very soon. If you already have GPU miners set up, have a look at Ultracoin. It is being proclaimed as one of the most power efficient, quickest transacting coins ever developed. It is ASIC resistant and most global transactions are confirmed in sub 30 seconds, which is a massive improvement over other alts, especially considering E-Commerce and movement of capital. http://ultracoin.net