BIG NEWS - First Graphics Cards Specific to Mining are on the Market
Mining is more popular than ever. People are making thousands of dollars a month with small investments. Those who put 10 or 20 thousand dollars in mining can make more than a hundred thousand in a year or two. What a huge ROI (return on investment)!
Of course, everybody want(ed) to jump in and grab a part of the cake, which increased demand for graphic cards A LOT!
Consequently, today we are facing massive graphics card shortages. Situation is the worst in Europe, but not much better in other parts of the world. Dramatic increase in demand for cryptocurrency mining hardware drives prices of GPUs to go up. In Russia they increased for 80 percent in less than a year.
Global surge in demand for GPUs has pushed companies to innovate and it was a matter of time when first model will be launched.
Even though there were rumors that Nvidia and other manufacturers are working on graphics cards for cryptocurrency miners, the Sapphire Technology has beaten all others to the punch and becomes the only manufacturer with consumer-based graphics cards for miners on the market.
Sapphire Technology made first graphic cards design solely for cryptocurrency mining.
Characteristics
Sapphire Technology will be releasing 5 different GPUs:
- Sapphire Radeon RX 470 MINING Edition 8192MB GDDR5 Samsung 7 Gbps (11256-38-10G) – 25-28MH/s ETH
- Sapphire Radeon RX 470 MINING Edition 8192MB GDDR5 7 Gbps (11256-37-10G) – 24-27MH/s ETH
- Sapphire Radeon RX 470 MINING Edition 4096MB GDDR5 Samsung 7 Gbps (11256-36-10G) – 24-27 MH/s ETH
- Sapphire Radeon RX 470 MINING Edition 4096MB GDDR5 7 Gbps (11256-35-10G) – 23-26 MH/s ETH
- Sapphire Radeon RX 560 Pulse MINING Edition 4096MB (11267-11-10G) – 12-15 MH/s ETH
Four cards are based on AMD’s Radeon RX 470 GPU with different video memory configurations and they do not have external video connectors. One is based on AMD Radeon RX 560 GPU also labeled as Mining Edition, but it has a single DVI connector on the back, so it can be used for other things than just crypto mining.
Two GPUs are using Samsung memory chip which clocks a little higher than Elpida chips. As you can see Samsung is providing one MH/s more than Elpida.
They are available to preorder at OverclockersUK and the price ranges from 170 pounds for Sapphire Radeon RX 560 Mining Edition 4GB to 300 pounds for Sapphire Radeon RX 470 Mining Edition 8GB (Samsung memory chip).
These cards can be used in mining alternative crypto currencies such as Ethereum and Litecoin.
Limitations
First of all, they are backed by (only?) one year warranty. Regularly, gaming cards do come with two or even three years warranty (depending on the market).
Secondly, they can’t be sold to gamers (except Radeon RX 560). These graphic cards do not feature display ports, so they are not able to be used for any purpose other than cryptocurrency mining.
Thirdly, the prices are not competitive. They have to be lower than gaming variants. If not, there will be no demand for them.
What is your opinion? Are these graphics cards solution for the future crypto mining? Would you buy them or not? Why?
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Need to get my hands on some of these GPU's! Definitely interested in getting a Mining Edition to see whether they are worth the hype! Living Malaysia is going to cost me extra shipping fees though, great post!
Thank you @steemitguide
I've put all my money in crypto investing so I do not have enough resources for this, but if I make some here (on steemit) I will probably buy one too.
The mining speed is roughly the same so i am hoping there is some reduction in electricity used. Otherwise, it will be the same, if it is very profitable, these cards will be priced flyhigh reducing the potential return and if is not, no one will bother to buy these cards.
For 200€ I have an rx480 8gb @256bit...
I can resell this one to some gamers in the neighbourhood.
A mining specific card is something to throw away in half a year.
(Imo)
Nice post though!
@driesba and @wlikinshui I agree with you. They are too expensive right now and I do not see an economic logic to buy them. Well, only if you are not able to buy other GPUs (like those guys in Russia).
The review for the latest P106-100 has just been released and it supposes design as a mining specific card, but to me it is just a scum and Nvidia is trying to get quick money out of it.
There is no package on top of the card, the non clock version for ETH mining is around 20mh and overclocked version is around 24mh, this is almost the same as GTX 1060!!!
And what worse than that? A 6 card rig will increase power wattage to 70 W, it sounds like a joke to me.
So what are we expecting?
A high priced GPU card
And you can't use it for anything beside of mining (i.e. no resale value)
the efficiency is even worse than the non mining 1060 GPU
Not Optimised for mining
See more from:
https://videocardz.com/70520/nvidia-p106-100-cryptocurrency-mining-card-tested
If that is completely true, which I don't have any reason to doubt, its settled then.
As what I know, mining gets progressively difficult as more coins get mined. Do you think these rigs are worth the investment long term? I'm interested to do mining as well.
Yes, that is true. A year ago my friend mined (with one RIG, five GPUs) almost 30 Ethereum per month and in June 2017. he got less than 2. At the other side, price increased so he earns now more than in July 2016.
If you want to invest first of all you have to ask yourself how much can I invest in hardware. Than you have to choose which one is the best (as you can see these new GPUs do not have the best price-earning ratios). Than put all information in calculator
At the end you will know is it profitable.
If you have more questions I will be glad to answer it.
Wow. Thank you. You're an expert!
Good to know, I've been seriously considering building a rig with some friends. I agree it would be nice if the prices were more competitive lol, but it seems to be another sign of the times - Crypto mining is becoming more popular by the minute!