Why isn't there a video card targeted at miners?

[KingFatty]

Why doesn't AMD or Nvidia make a sort of custom video card that is optimized for mining litecoin? That way the video card enthusiasts can still get a video card, and the miners would be happy too?

I'm assuming it's possible to tweak a typical video card and make it better, maybe somehow beef up the memory system to enable really huge memory overclocks that litecoin mining seems to love - at least, put the memory overclockability on-par with the huge GPU overclockability.

 

[SlowSpyder]

I don't see any real advantages of making specialized mining cards. Miners and gamers both want the same thing, ever more powerful and more efficient video cards.

 

[IEC]

A litecoin-specific ASIC is going to suck at pretty much everything except scrypt mining.

 

[ethebubbeth]

Looking purely from recent aftermarket price hikes, that would be the point of the 7970/R9 280x/R9 290/R9 290X.

The GCN architecture in particular is quite well suited to BitCoin mining, and is generally strong in compute workloads.

If you want a card fully designed for GPU compute purposes, get a tesla

 

[MeldarthX]

Looking purely from recent aftermarket price hikes, that would be the point of the 7970/R9 280x/R9 290/R9 290X.

The GCN architecture in particular is quite well suited to BitCoin mining, and is generally strong in compute workloads.

If you want a card fully designed for GPU compute purposes, get a tesla

Tesla doesn't do as the amd cards; as nvidia's cards just don't handle it. Right now; for crypto script running ....its AMD or nothing.

 

[Erenhardt]

I firepro better than radeon for mining?

 

[KingFatty]

I guess what I mean is that you can take a regular old video card, like the 7950, and then augment the memory subsystem to improve the ability to overclock memory speeds.

See how then you've created a video card that accomplishes something that benefits miners and gamers, because gamers don't really care about this added feature, but miners would be willing to spend a bit more on this card due to the better memory overclocks.

I think gamers care more about overclocking the core to improve gaming, but miners care more about overclocking the memory to improve mining. Currently the enthusiast video cards seem to cater to big GPU overclocks, but I'm not aware of video cards that are all about huge memory overclocks?

So maybe you could go even further, and make a video card that is *LESS* desirable for gamers because it is not beefed up for overclocking the core, so gamers would get a poor GPU overclock and avoid that card. But miners don't care as much about high core speeds, and would want this card that could really overclock the video ram. Perhaps this card could be made even more cheaply than a standard video card because you could save on the heatsink for the core, since the core will be at a lower speed. I just figure this would be a win/win because gamers would get access to regular cards good for core overclocking, and miners would get access to this other card with good memory overclocking.

 

[SlowSpyder]

Again, I guess I don't see much difference. I don't know of any gamers who would rather have less memory performance vs. more memory performance. Gamers want faster memory and faster cores, much the same as those who mine. Memory overclocking may give you less returns in gaming compared to core overclocking, often times, but that doesn't mean a card with higher memory speeds would have to be geared towards one or the other.

 

[JBT]

I think there is. Its called any AMD card with the GCN architecture.

 

[OCGuy]

Because if they wanted to gamble on crypto currency, it would be cheaper to just purchase coins.

Sadly most people buying up over-priced cards right now don't realize that it would be better to purchase the coins, either.

 

[ethebubbeth]

Tesla doesn't do as the amd cards; as nvidia's cards just don't handle it. Right now; for crypto script running ....its AMD or nothing.

That's why I said for general gpu computing

GCN architecture is way better for most crypto currencies.

 

[ShintaiDK]

That's why I said for general gpu computing

GCN architecture is way better for most crypto currencies.

It isnt just GCN, its also VLIW5 and VLIW5. Its simply due to BIT_ALIGN instructions etc that needs emulation on nVidia.

And to the OP, it simply make no sense. Its also an extremely volatile market. And ASIC/FPGA are on the way into scrypt, making that useless for GPUs like SHA crypto. The volatile nature is also a double edge sword. You sell more cards now, but in maybe 6 months some of these cards will be resold back in the market. And thats a logistic problem for a GPU maker.

Not to mention as others have said, its simply better to trade the coins.

 

[justin4pack]

There's this... http://www.butterflylabs.com

 

[sandorski]

It just doesn't seem to make sense to spend R&D on such a thing that is so volatile to begin with. Bitcoin came out of nowhere and eventually went from Video card Mining to ASIC, then the newer currencies popped up to bring back vidcard Mining, but none of these were predictable in the first place and they quickly go from vidcard viable to unviable.

To spend 10s of millions of $ on such a specific Card, especially for AMD who already has that Market, is a great risk of losing all that R&D. When the current new fangled coins go beyond GPU viability, will there be another generation of coins to replace those? I really don't know, because that kind of thing simply can not go on forever, especially at the rate these currencies are being Mined, there are just too many huge Mining operations that can turn out big results in a short period. It is possible that there are enough of these that any big rush to buy vidcards in the future may not occur even if these currencies keep being created. In other words, at some point the only Sales will likely come from vidcards dying and needing replaced.

 

[moonbogg]

My first thought was, "most gamers are minors, so..." But then I got it.

 

[3DVagabond]

Basically, they don't need to. They have no competition. Why do anything more than what they are doing? The cards are flying off of the shelves.

The only thing AMD can do is make more cards. This has to be done in such a way though that it doesn't handicap them down the road. They don't want to be stuck with a lot of unsold product down the road if/when their mining market dries up.

 

[mindbomb]

wait, so shader performance isn't the main factor? memory bandwidth is?

i don't understand what the problem is for nvidia cards if this is bandwidth issue

 

[KingFatty]

Just based on what I've researched, the optimal mining rate is achieved when you overclock your memory as high as it will go, and then adjust the core to a fraction of that speed. So if your memory reaches 1600, you might set your core to 0.7 of the memory speed (or some other factor, depending on specific card etc.) so set the core to 0.7 * 1600 = 1120.

Granted, 1120 core speed would be a decent overclock for a 7950, but the GPU is still capable of going further so you are limited by the 1600 memory speed, which itself is a very nice memory overclock. So to a miner, the video card is memory-limited because the GPU could be pushed further, if only the memory could go higher. This is all in view of the desire to maintain the video memory/core ratio.

I think a miner would want a video card that could reach a memory speed that corresponded to the maximum GPU overclock available - something like a "balanced" card where you overclock the core to something like 1250, and in order to 'balance' the card using a 0.7 ratio, you would need a memory overclock to something like 1790.

It's counter-intuitive, but apparently your mining rate will increase if you take an unbalanced card and lower the core speed to achieve the balanced ratio? But I'm still researching this, I haven't put it to use yet but will be setting up my rigs tonight or this weekend to start mining.

Could this new style of miner-focused video card be achieved without expensive R&D? Could you simply use a higher-speed memory chip that was better at reaching higher memory overclocks? If you are just substituting out video memory chips, I think it's a slam-dunk in view of current extreme demand for video cards, and I think some vendors already customize their memory chips between hynix, elpida 50, elpida 60, etc.

 

[OCGuy]

Basically, they don't need to. They have no competition. Why do anything more than what they are doing? The cards are flying off of the shelves.

The only thing AMD can do is make more cards. This has to be done in such a way though that it doesn't handicap them down the road. They don't want to be stuck with a lot of unsold product down the road if/when their mining market dries up.

I promise you AMD is not going to up their orders from TSMC based on a Litecoin run. If anything, they are worried about losing gaming marketshare, as well as a glutton of Hawaii cards on the market once GPU mining is no longer viable.

Of course AMD is thrilled, but they aren't stupid. They will take the current gains, continue to make cards that mine well, without throwing bad money after good.



Edit: Dailyfinance.com explains it:

http://www.dailyfinance.com/2013/12/11/amds-graphics-cards-are-selling-out/

"AMD has struck short-term gold as Litecoin mining takes off, but the success of the cryptocurrency entails the eventual obsoletion of graphics cards as a viable mining method. This demand isn't sustainable, and NVIDIA could pick up share of the gaming market as AMD sells out of its high-end cards. This certainly isn't a reason to invest in AMD. In fact, it may be a reason to avoid it."

 

[blastingcap]

I promise you AMD is not going to up their orders from TSMC based on a Litecoin run. If anything, they are worried about losing gaming marketshare, as well as a glutton of Hawaii cards on the market once GPU mining is no longer viable.

Of course AMD is thrilled, but they aren't stupid. They will take the current gains, continue to make cards that mine well, without throwing bad money after good.



Edit: Dailyfinance.com explains it:

http://www.dailyfinance.com/2013/12/11/amds-graphics-cards-are-selling-out/

Dailyfinance explained squat, they just reposted a stupid argument on Motley Fool written by a guy who owns shares of NVIDIA. That self-serving Nvidia stockholder has been trying to argue that lunatic argument and we already covered his garbage in the other thread. Video cards over $200 are only 14% of the market even in regular times so there is limited impact on marketshare if you sell fewer of those cards to gamers. Right now the 14% is even smaller because it's not a regular time. Xmas 2013 is different. Most people do not have infinite money. Gamers who game on PC and console are buying XBO, PS4 this Christmas and many are not upgrading their video cards at these prices, especially for little gain (28nm to 28nm is a refresh, it's not a new generation of cards with massive performance increase). Others are waiting till video card prices drop to normal before buying. So the impact on video gamer market share of miners is very small right now. If the problem persists for several months or more, then it may adversely affect AMD's gaming market share, but in the meantime they get full price for every high-end card they sell, and the inventory of midrange and lower cards is still good--you can still find 78xx and 270X cards and lower at good prices.

P.S. There ARE devices built for mining, they are called ASICs. They will come to scrypt eventually as well. They already have purpose-built devices specifically for mining Bitcoins which are 100x more efficient than video cards.

 

[Erenhardt]

Just based on what I've researched, the optimal mining rate is achieved when you overclock your memory as high as it will go, and then adjust the core to a fraction of that speed. So if your memory reaches 1600, you might set your core to 0.7 of the memory speed (or some other factor, depending on specific card etc.) so set the core to 0.7 * 1600 = 1120.

0.7 ratio may apply to thaiti gpu. My 7870 works best at 950MHz which is 0.76 of memory frequency.