What if... AMD and NV added support for "background mining" in drivers?

[VirtualLarry]

Either to benefit themselves, or allow the user to specify a BTC address, ala NiceHash. (Or even skin a version of the NiceHash client, and embed it into their drivers, just like both AMD and NV did with game capture / streaming, with ReLive and ShadowPlay?

If there's demand for mining support for "casuals", then shouldn't they do it?

 

[Crono]

They have relationships with game developers and put out tools when it's apparent they can maybe optimize better given their knowledge of their own hardware designs, but otherwise what you want to do with your hardware is up to you. I can't imagine them wanting to support background mining, or that their OEM partners would appreciate such a move.

 

[Fir]

Gamer's shouldn't have to pay the "mining tax".
It's ridiculous that a 1080Ti is $1500 now.
Utterly ridiculous!

 

[ultimatebob]

The SJW's are already complaining that crypto mining is destroying the environment with all of its electricity usage. They would probably organize boycotts against any video card company that added background mining to their drivers.

Now, if someone made a cryptocurrency did something good for the environment, that might be a different story. I'm not sure what would be, though. Maybe it would be a distributed AI for a tree planting robot or something

Honestly, I'm thinking that Nimiq is going to be a crypto of choice for "casuals". Open a browser, start mining with your CPU. It's that easy.

 

[b-mac]

Ah the ol SJW insult, the go to when you don’t have anything substantive to say.

 

[UsandThem]

Ah the ol SJW insult, the go to when you don’t have anything substantive to say.

What they stated is not inaccurate, although it goes beyond the SJW (which are usually just one of the loudest groups):

https://www.google.com/search?ei=nr......0...1c.1.64.psy-ab..0.0.0....0.ZQgofASZQQc

 

[cfenton]

I can't imagine any situation where that would go well for them. If you don't understand how to set up a miner, you shouldn't be in the cryptocurrency market. People would lose their private keys and get angry when Nvidia or AMD couldn't recover them. It would be a support nightmare. It would be even worse if Nvidia or AMD was using your GPU to mine for themselves. That's basically just stealing your power.

 

[wilds]

I'll start complaining about the impact crypto miners have on the environment as soon as we get rid of all internal combustion engines and all those methane producing livestock.

 

[IEC]

Just switching all lighting over to LED has the potential to shave multiple % off of global energy consumption.

So, while 0.3% of global energy consumption is undeniably large, it is a drop in the bucket in terms of waste heat producing inefficiencies.

 

[Crono]

Ah the ol SJW insult, the go to when you don’t have anything substantive to say.

Actually, the rest of his post was substantive. Technically your post wasn't.

 

[VirtualLarry]

People would lose their private keys and get angry when Nvidia or AMD couldn't recover them.

I'm not sure how you got that from my post. I wasn't suggesting that AMD or NV offer wallet services, just mining.

 

[cfenton]

I'm not sure how you got that from my post. I wasn't suggesting that AMD or NV offer wallet services, just mining.

What's the point of a miner without a wallet? If someone can set up a wallet, they can probably also set up a miner. I think you are expecting way too much of the kind of person who wants to mine but doesn't know how to set up a miner. If it's an Nvidia logo they see, that's who they'll email to complain when something doesn't work.

 

[VirtualLarry]

What's the point of a miner without a wallet? If someone can set up a wallet, they can probably also set up a miner. I think you are expecting way too much of the kind of person who wants to mine but doesn't know how to set up a miner. If it's an Nvidia logo they see, that's who they'll email to complain when something doesn't work.

"If someone can set up Radeon ReLive, then they can set up XSplit or OBS"... right? There's no value to "integration" of software with the Radeon driver stack stuff, is there? I mean, AMD is just wasting all of their resources doing just that. Better e-mail them and tell them to stop wasting their time.

Edit: Forgot the /s.

But I hope that you got my point?

 

[tential]

"If someone can set up Radeon ReLive, then they can set up XSplit or OBS"... right? There's no value to "integration" of software with the Radeon driver stack stuff, is there? I mean, AMD is just wasting all of their resources doing just that. Better e-mail them and tell them to stop wasting their time.

Edit: Forgot the /s.

But I hope that you got my point?

At this point, AMD's driver stack has improved so much, it may not be a "draw" between the two vendors anymore. AMD has truly impressed with their commitment to adding features.

If you could background mine on your card to your own personal wallet, and AMD took 10%-30% cut for the convenience of you not having to set it up...
Sign me up.
Yesterday

I thought you were joking around with the thread (I had some good jokes to PM you too!) but ya, this would be interesting and beneficial for both parties involved (Us and the vendors) if done correctly.

I mean, right now we're just letting the dedicated crypto miners reap all the benefits while our GPUs sit idle a lot (well me anyway...) Might as well get some money.

 

[cfenton]

"If someone can set up Radeon ReLive, then they can set up XSplit or OBS"... right? There's no value to "integration" of software with the Radeon driver stack stuff, is there? I mean, AMD is just wasting all of their resources doing just that. Better e-mail them and tell them to stop wasting their time.

Edit: Forgot the /s.

But I hope that you got my point?

I mean, I think those streaming things are a waste of time and resources as well (I know that's not a popular opinion), but I also think there's a difference between steaming and mining. If you don't know what you're doing and you stream, then you don't gain an audience and nothing comes of it (other than an embarrassing video). If you don't know what you're doing when you're mining, you can lose your coins. Some people are going to lose their coins. Streaming is also quite user friendly. AMD and Nvidia made it easier to set up, but the rest of the streaming ecosystem is also user friendly. Twitch makes it easy to get your videos from your computer to the internet. There's nothing like Twitch for crypto. Cryptocurrency is not user friendly, and making a miner user friendly while leaving the rest for the user to figure out is going to lead to a bunch of angry people. I'm not saying it couldn't be done in the future or even that it wouldn't be a good idea in the future. However, right now, I think AMD or Nvidia would have to either make a fully integrated system that handles everything from mining to buying and selling, or keep out of crypto entirely until there is something like Twitch for crypto.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I was kind of thinking along the lines, that GPU makers like mining, it brings in sales / increased profits, but it's a more fickle business than the gaming market, and liable to crash and burn sometimes, and GPU makers don't want to be left "holding the bag" on unsold older stockpiles of cards.

But I was thinking, if the GPU makers actually got behind mining, making it "more legitimate", it might smooth things out in the market, and they could offer it, as a value-add, alongside their "mining edition" cards. Think of it as a package deal, for all of the newbies getting into mining. Buy a six-pack of AMD "Mining Edition" RX 580 cards, and get the benefit of their "integrated mining drivers", which won't work with the "gaming edition" cards.

(Much like NV's split between GeForce and Quadro cards, a laser-cut fuse on the die, and basically just software differences between the packages.)

The idea is to make it SO integrated, and SO easy-to-use, that it becomes the go-to standard for doing GPU mining on the PC. Much like ReLive and ShadowPlay have become popular alternatives to XSplit and OBS, for non-pro users, on sites like Twitch.tv.

Then the "mining edition cards" would fly off the shelves for 2x-3x the price of the lowly "gaming edition" cards, that are "only" used for "playing games". Thus the gamers could have their card market back. Hopefully.

 

[VirtualLarry]

https://arstechnica.com/information...-ads-with-cpu-draining-cryptocurrency-miners/

It's coming. It's going to supplement, or even supplant, advertising on the web. Instead of seeing ads, you'll coin-mine while you view content on web pages.

What better way to implement that, than to have a browser- and GPU-supported API that web sites can use to trigger background coin-mining, implemented in graphics drivers.

This is the future folks, whether we like it or not. Coin-mining (in the background), is here to stay!

If Adobe Flash was still a thing, they'd add coin-mining for their advertisers that use it.

Use Skype? Mine for Microsoft in the background.

Hey, we all collectively said that we hate ads, right? Distracting, pop-ups, video, audio, etc.?

Well, HERE'S YOUR SOLUTION.

 

[kondziowy]

Isn't pcgameshardware mining in background for like half a year now? Their page is laggy all the time, and it always saturates one of the cpu threads on both my amd and intel systems. I avoid visiting their page now.

Fun times. Don't we all love laggy internet experience? 56kbit modem days were the good days. It's like traveling back in time!!

 

[pcslookout]

https://arstechnica.com/information...-ads-with-cpu-draining-cryptocurrency-miners/

It's coming. It's going to supplement, or even supplant, advertising on the web. Instead of seeing ads, you'll coin-mine while you view content on web pages.

What better way to implement that, than to have a browser- and GPU-supported API that web sites can use to trigger background coin-mining, implemented in graphics drivers.

This is the future folks, whether we like it or not. Coin-mining (in the background), is here to stay!

If Adobe Flash was still a thing, they'd add coin-mining for their advertisers that use it.

Use Skype? Mine for Microsoft in the background.

Hey, we all collectively said that we hate ads, right? Distracting, pop-ups, video, audio, etc.?

Well, HERE'S YOUR SOLUTION.

Adguard and Noscript ftw

 

[VirtualLarry]

https://www.pcgamesn.com/amd-threadripper-cryptocurrency-mining

AMD "supports" mining?

 

[TheELF]

Hey, we all collectively said that we hate ads, right? Distracting, pop-ups, video, audio, etc.?

Well, HERE'S YOUR SOLUTION.

Yeah great solution... /s
Especially for portable devices that work on a battery,just great,evenmoreso for android devices where it's hard to close sites when surfing...

Hey every time I meet someone on the street who's talking to me I steal any loose change they have in their pockets, now that's a great solution for me being poor wanting more money... /s

Adguard and Noscript ftw

So much so, this!
If you really like a site and want to contribute to keeping it alive search for the donate option.

 

[BSim500]

This is the future folks, whether we like it or not. Coin-mining (in the background), is here to stay!

It really isn't. People already use no-script + uBlock to "remind" web hosts who actually owns their PC, and there are already anti-mining extensions (NoMiner, etc) that block "crypto-jacking" specific scripts. It's also pretty trivial for Firefox, Chrome, etc, to block this on the browser level simply by implementing CPU/GPU usage monitoring by tab then auto-forcing constant high load tabs to idle / suspend, which is the ultimate end-game of where this is going to end up.

 

[nOOky]

I dunno, people don't even want to do folding@home anymore, who wants to leave their computer on and run up the electricity bill for basically nothing much less a good cause...

 

[VeryCharBroiled]

why bother doing it in a driver? most miners have an intensity setting so you can tune it to minimize its effect on gaming/videos. and im sure at some point some miners will build in something that monitors for gaming/video loads and scales back its mining activities.

heck just write a batch file to fire up your game that closes your miner and reruns it at a lower intensity during the game. then does the opposite when the game exits.

as far as a driver mining all the time in the background? uh, no. i will control when and what it mines. and if i want a gpu idle, it better be at idle.

 

[EXCellR8]

I'd much rather they hard code in a kill switch, which fries the card and voids the warranty. Either that or a background process in the driver that diverts all of your crypto "earnings" over to Chinese marketing companies, who in return will send you ads on how crypto is the future.