rumor has it both nVidia and AMD arel preparing dedicated crypto currency mining cards

[NumLock21]

2 minutes ago, Dabombinable said:

The courts.

For what?

Only having a 90 day warranty?

[Dabombinable]

1 minute ago, NumLock21 said:

For what?

Only having a 90 day warranty?

Breaking the law.

[NumLock21]

Just now, Dabombinable said:

Breaking the law.

Having a 90 day warranty is breaking the law?

So not breaking the law is to have a 1 year warranty or what?

[Dabombinable]

3 minutes ago, NumLock21 said:

Having a 90 day warranty is breaking the law?

So not breaking the law is to have a 1 year warranty or what?

Prtetty much along those lines: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-06-07/broken-but-out-of-warranty-you-still-have-rights/2749924
Note that even old graphics cards with electrolytic capacitors can expect to survive at least 10 months at 100% load in a hot case or pretty much the thermal limits of the capacitors (the life span of course increases the lower the temperature, preferably 65^oC and under), so its uite reasonable to expect a modern graphics card which omit electrolytic for far longer lived solid capacitors to last at least a year.

 

We all know that Nvidia would try to deny returns after the 90 days.

[NumLock21]

2 minutes ago, Dabombinable said:

Prtetty much along those lines: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-06-07/broken-but-out-of-warranty-you-still-have-rights/2749924
Note that even old graphics cards with electrolytic capacitors can expect to survive at least 10 months at 100% load in a hot case or pretty much the thermal limits of the capacitors (the life span of course increases the lower the temperature, preferably 65^oC and under), so its uite reasonable to expect a modern graphics card which omit electrolytic for far longer lived solid capacitors to last at least a year.

 

We all know that Nvidia would try to deny returns after the 90 days.

So basically lifetime warranty then?

IMO 3 to 5 years is plenty and by the time it dies, better things will come out anyway.

[AnonymousGuy]

31 minutes ago, Dabombinable said:

*sigh* Try a 90 day warranty in Australia you pricks, see how far that gets you.

They just won't offer them for sale in AUS.  You act like they're forced to sell them there and adhere to AUS consumer production laws.  Nope-zors.  And even if they do sell them there, if I were running a business I'd just bake the added warranty risk into the cost and charge more there v.s other geos.

[Dabombinable]

2 minutes ago, NumLock21 said:

So basically lifetime warranty then?

IMO 3 to 5 years is plenty and by the time it dies, better things will come out anyway.

Remember, most electronics have a finite lifespan, even CPU though that's measured in decades for them (I love my 386DX-40).
 

3 minutes ago, AnonymousGuy said:

They just won't offer them for sale in AUS.  You act like they're forced to sell them there and adhere to AUS consumer production laws.  Nope-zors.  And even if they do sell them there, if I were running a business I'd just bake the added warranty risk into the cost and charge more there v.s other geos.

Remember, due to online shopping location is a moot point. 

[leadeater]

9 minutes ago, AnonymousGuy said:

They just won't offer them for sale in AUS.  You act like they're forced to sell them there and adhere to AUS consumer production laws.  Nope-zors.  And even if they do sell them there, if I were running a business I'd just bake the added warranty risk into the cost and charge more there v.s other geos.

Those same/similar consumer laws exist in other countries too. It come's down to what is the expected life of the product and not in the eyes of the manufacturer but what is widely accepted by the consumers.

 

It doesn't matter if the manufacturer warranty is 90 days or 1 year and the product is designed to fail, if it's generally accepted that the product should last 3 years then you're covered for 3 years. Washing machines are good examples of this but at least that industry has cleaned itself up in the last few years.

[yian88]

9 hours ago, zMeul said:

are you peeps for real!?

 

• fan(s) will rattle
• the back of the PCB under the GPU will be slightly charred
• etc

you know i can buy such cards take their fans off and plastic/metal shroud and just slap 120/140mm chinese fans and then place the old ones back when reselling, that leaves you with the "charred" identifier which is a fake one, whats charred is the dust that sticks to components which can be cleaned and the card would look/smell fine, if you dont have any software testing method to tell you how much life your silicon/vrm/vram has left like SSD's by calculating how much time the card was used, at what average power, at what average load and have that saved inside a flash chip rom inside the gpu that cannot be written only read by users, unless there would be a way to hack that aswell 

[Cheddle]

probably worth noting that mining on cards is NOT 100% load...

 

its closer to 30-50% load - only an idiot mines at stock voltages/clocks - its a waste of power.

 

 

[Dabombinable]

23 minutes ago, Cheddle said:

probably worth noting that mining on cards is NOT 100% load...

 

its closer to 30-50% load - only an idiot mines at stock voltages/clocks - its a waste of power.

 

 

In other words the few months or so of 24/7 F@H on my GTX 970 G1 Gaming (which was already having serious problems with overclocking+noise) were far harder on it than crypto currency mining.

That means that Nvidia is probably going to use the GPU that are pretty much the bottom of the barrel when it comes to the silicon lottery, and encourage manufacturers (while doing it themselves) to use low quality components which are prone to having a shorter lifespan than those found in standard graphics cards.

[Zodiark1593]

11 hours ago, NumLock21 said:

I know they are a business. They should do something about it, so those who really need a video card can have a chance to buy one. 

Mining is a compute based task. So do you mean to prevent consumer video cards from being used for compute tasks? (as this would be the only reliable way to target mining). 

[H0R53]

12 hours ago, zMeul said:

source: https://videocardz.com/70162/amd-and-nvidia-preparing-graphics-cards-for-cryptocurrency-mining

 

it is known that the crypto currency mining craze has hit both nVidia and AMD quite hard with the launch of the new generation

chinese coin mining farms have bought video cards in bulk just to use them in coin mining while gamers were desperate to find cards in stores

according to VideoCardz, both nVidia and AMD are preparing special Pascal and Polaris cards dedicated solely to compute tasks

90d warranty I think it's not attainable in certain markets where products must have a minimum of 1y warranty - depends on the country

Well, there goes the market for just about everything.

 

And wouldn't that just be a Tesla card? I think VideoCardz needs to do some more homework.

[NumLock21]

2 hours ago, Zodiark1593 said:

Mining is a compute based task. So do you mean to prevent consumer video cards from being used for compute tasks? (as this would be the only reliable way to target mining). 

They could make those miner cards unique, so miners will buy those instead of standard video cards. Similar to workstation vs consumer ones.

[Mooshi]

Please let this cancer die

[Zodiark1593]

1 hour ago, NumLock21 said:

They could make those miner cards unique, so miners will buy those instead of standard video cards. Similar to workstation vs consumer ones.

GPGPU is essentially running whatever code you want on the GPU (the speed is up to how the program is coded). Mining is simply one such GPGPU application, and driver-sided implementations to single out mining can be bypassed. Aside from neutering GPGPU on gaming cards (which I guarantee will piss off a lot more than just the mining community), in what way could mining cards be made unique or advantageous that would entice miners to buy them instead of gaming cards?

[Kamina]

What we needed. Tired of gaming cards getting price gouged. 

[leadeater]

47 minutes ago, Zodiark1593 said:

in what way could mining cards be made unique or advantageous that would entice miners to buy them instead of gaming cards?

• Optimize pipelines for compute-shaders
• Less VRAM while also operating at lower speeds so cheaper supply can be used
• Lower quality power delivery circuitry

There is likely a large number of GPUs that are functional but not at the required standards or stability to be sold as a gaming graphics cards but could be made to work as mining cards so to no take away GPU supply.

 

Dunno, just some ideas but I'm sure there is something they can do while not hurting us that may or may not help. Who knows maybe miners will buy these to extinction and the gaming cards too, it might do nothing other than give miners more cards.

 

[2FA]

5 minutes ago, leadeater said:

• Optimize pipelines for compute-shaders
• Less VRAM while also operating at lower speeds so cheaper supply can be used
• Lower quality power delivery circuitry

There is likely a large number of GPUs that are functional but not at the required standards or stability to be sold as a gaming graphics cards but could be made to work as mining cards so to no take away GPU supply.

 

Dunno, just some ideas but I'm sure there is something they can do while not hurting us that may or may not help. Who knows maybe miners will buy these to extinction and the gaming cards too, it might do nothing other than give miners more cards.

 

Your first two points are the opposite of the features needed for mining Ethereum, the second most mined cryptocurrency overall and the most mined GPU coin. The algorithm (Ethash or sometimes called DaggerHashimoto) is heavily reliant on memory, much more so than on the core. AMD has better hashrates on Ethash primarily due to their wide memory interface. It also makes use of a file called the DAG that it loads into VRAM and its size is well over 2GB now. There are some parameters you can set to make it work on lower VRAM cards but it's usually better to just have enough VRAM.

 

Another coin, Zcash, could probably benefit from those points since it is much more reliant on upon the core. Also, if the lower quality power delivery makes power efficiency worse, miners won't like it as much.

[Space Reptile]

17 hours ago, zMeul said:

no one in their right mind buys cards that were used for mining

my 290 was used for mining , they are cheaper and perfectly fine Cards , no clue what the Problem is

[Zodiark1593]

3 minutes ago, Space Reptile said:

my 290 was used for mining , they are cheaper and perfectly fine Cards , no clue what the Problem is

Agreed. If the card fails, it was defective anyway. Thermal protection would probably irritate the miner long before damage would actually be an issue. 

 

I've ran renders on my card for several days straight with no ill effects. 

[Space Reptile]

7 hours ago, Cheddle said:

probably worth noting that mining on cards is NOT 100% load...

its closer to 30-50% load - only an idiot mines at stock voltages/clocks - its a waste of power.

true and also false , its not as much of a load , but when i mine core and mem Controller are on ~100% load

 

but i can run much higher clocks on stock Volts thanks to the differend load (1200mhz @ 1156mv) 

 

so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[Zodiark1593]

Just now, Space Reptile said:

true and also false , its not as much of a load , but when i mine core and mem Controller are on ~100% load

 

but i can run much higher clocks on stock Volts thanks to the differend load (1200mhz @ 1156mv) 

 

so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The shader cores and memory controller get utilized, but geometry units, rops, TMUs  and other such hardware goes entirely unused. 

[Space Reptile]

1 minute ago, Zodiark1593 said:

The shader cores and memory controller get utilized, but geometry units, rops, TMUs  and other such hardware goes entirely unused. 

yea pretty much

8 minutes ago, Zodiark1593 said:

Agreed. If the card fails, it was defective anyway. Thermal protection would probably irritate the miner long before damage would actually be an issue. 

i have my thermal Limit at 85c , fans at full blast (120mm Radiator fan)

the only wear These Cards see is dead fans , but w/ the Quality of modern graphic Cards fans that is no suprise

[leadeater]

29 minutes ago, DeadEyePsycho said:

Your first two points are the opposite of the features needed for mining Ethereum, the second most mined cryptocurrency overall and the most mined GPU coin. The algorithm (Ethash or sometimes called DaggerHashimoto) is heavily reliant on memory, much more so than on the core. AMD has better hashrates on Ethash primarily due to their wide memory interface. It also makes use of a file called the DAG that it loads into VRAM and its size is well over 2GB now. There are some parameters you can set to make it work on lower VRAM cards but it's usually better to just have enough VRAM.

 

Another coin, Zcash, could probably benefit from those points since it is much more reliant on upon the core. Also, if the lower quality power delivery makes power efficiency worse, miners won't like it as much.

 

Very little GPU memory is actually used while mining and memory speed has little impact, tested this myself on DaggerHashimoto. Average VRAM usage is 2.3GB so you can certainly lower the VRAM from 8GB on most cards on the market.

 

As for the memory speed this may be card/architecture dependent but on my 290X's changing the speed quite literally has zero impact but changing the core clock has a huge impact.

 

Edit:

1000MHz memory increase changes from 56.6 MH/s to 56.7 MH/s which is less than the margin of error, I would need to take way more samples to get a more accurate figure but it's clearly not enough to bother.