Sapphire RX 470 Mining Card

[LooneyJuice]

http://hexus.net/tech/news/graphics/107296-sapphire-radeon-rx-470-mining-edition-card-sale-uk/

Just saw this, already read about something brewing. I was a bit surprised at first that they'd take such a leap to produce these, but there they are. I'm wondering how many 470 cores Sapphire has to actually start and maintain this product line. I was assuming they'd have already scaled down significantly due to the 500 series.

 

 

Quote

Over the weekend a Reddit user spotted OC UK had started to list the Radeon RX 470 MINING Edition 4096MB GDDR5 card. In the specs Sapphire claims that card can achieve 23-26MH/s with "low power 122W", and it is "perfect for mining". In the more regular specs we usually consider for graphics cards this RX 470 offers 32 CUs with 2048 Stream Processors, a GPU boost clock of 1236MHz and a memory clock of 1750MHz giving an effective 7000Mbps.

The Sapphire Radeon RX 470 Mining Edition looks identical to the modern graphics cards from Sapphire we have reviewed since last year except for the obvious - there are no monitor connection ports. Remember those were cut to save cost, and warranties are reduced too, this one has just a one year guarantee. The price of the card I have detailed above is £248.99, for pre-order.

 

[Teddy07]

I am really happy even tho I do not mine due to high electricity cost. AMD can need the money.

[LooneyJuice]

Just now, Teddy07 said:

I am really happy even tho I do not mine due to high electricity cost. AMD can need the money.

It's a good way to capitalize for sure, and meanwhile maybe alleviate the load on the 500 series actual gaming cards. But I think it's a pretty risky decision given the volatility of cryptocurrency. If they pump stuff out, they have to do it right now, and do it in quantity imo.

[TheRandomness]

Currently, seeing as how the price of ethereum is somewhat rapidly dropping, I'd say that these are too little, too late.

[LooneyJuice]

10 minutes ago, TheRandomness said:

Currently, seeing as how the price of ethereum is somewhat rapidly dropping, I'd say that these are too little, too late.

That's kind of where I was going too, yeah. Although having said that, it may just be an attempt to offload old stock that would have just fallen by the wayside otherwise. Possibly a limited run.

[cj09beira]

2 hours ago, TheRandomness said:

Currently, seeing as how the price of ethereum is somewhat rapidly dropping, I'd say that these are too little, too late.

ethereum is going down due to a new site that offers new services using the coin, there were so many transactions at the same time that the network wasn't able to keep up so the network stop for a bit to catch up, seeing that some people got scared and moved to other coins lowering the price o ethereum in the process.

after all the fuss calmed down it was discovered that the reason the network had a bad time with the transactions was because some of the bigger mining pools had some settings wrong, it was settings that defined how many transactions could happen in a block, the number was too low and that reduced the max number of transactions the network could handle 

[Doobeedoo]

It's good there are specific ones for it now. Though I wonder how it will be for Vega in time.

[LooneyJuice]

13 minutes ago, Doobeedoo said:

It's good there are specific ones for it now. Though I wonder how it will be for Vega in time.

You know what? Your post kinda hit me regarding something. This is probably a massive stretch, but I wonder if they're trying to flood the market with "mining cards" in a bid to also discourage miners splurging on Vega and stop AMD from completely bombing when it comes to targeted consumer supply and demand. It would cause a massive outrage if the targeted demographic couldn't get a hold of the cards actually aimed at them.

[dfsdfgfkjsefoiqzemnd]

7 minutes ago, LooneyJuice said:

This is probably a massive stretch, but I wonder if they're trying to flood the market with "mining cards" in a bid to also discourage miners splurging on Vega and stop AMD from completely bombing when it comes to targeted consumer supply and demand.

Except that miners will now be getting the mining cards and flooding the second-hand market with 1060s and 1070s.  Smart people will probably avoid these, but plenty of people will buy those cards instead of waiting for Vega.

[WereCat]

I really don't get this.

 

All the RX 470/480 cards are gone because of miners. So they make the exact same cards without display, which means they have to take the portion of chips that would supply the gaming cards and use them for mining cards.

How is that going to solve the shortage???? They will still be using the same die, just different cooler and no video output....

[KrumpetPirate]

37 minutes ago, LooneyJuice said:

You know what? Your post kinda hit me regarding something. This is probably a massive stretch, but I wonder if they're trying to flood the market with "mining cards" in a bid to also discourage miners splurging on Vega and stop AMD from completely bombing when it comes to targeted consumer supply and demand. It would cause a massive outrage if the targeted demographic couldn't get a hold of the cards actually aimed at them.

I for one would be furious if I can't get my hands on Vega because of the miners. I'm all for the concept of cryptocurrency, but frankly I've had enough of the GPU shortages.

[LooneyJuice]

39 minutes ago, Captain Chaos said:

Except that miners will now be getting the mining cards and flooding the second-hand market with 1060s and 1070s.  Smart people will probably avoid these, but plenty of people will buy those cards instead of waiting for Vega.

That's not necessarily a bad thing tbh. Ethereum/Zcash mining hasn't been shreding cards all that long, so if you can find them cheap enough, I'd call it legit. I'd say a lot of people would win out of a predicament like that. A market flooded with 1070s and 1060s f.ex means the used market value goes down. Even if it's a mining card, a cheap card is a cheap card.

21 minutes ago, WereCat said:

I really don't get this.

 

All the RX 470/480 cards are gone because of miners. So they make the exact same cards without display, which means they have to take the portion of chips that would supply the gaming cards and use them for mining cards.

How is that going to solve the shortage???? They will still be using the same die, just different cooler and no video output....

I think it offers a solution to the problem that the 500 series was supposed to be a complete replacement for the 400 series, and targeted consumers can't get a hold of the refreshed cards because of this. Maybe they're basically trying to divert them away from gaming cards. Hopefully it works.

13 minutes ago, KrumpetPirate said:

I for one would be furious if I can't get my hands on Vega because of the miners. I'm all for the concept of cryptocurrency, but frankly I've had enough of the GPU shortages.

Yeah, between that and the memory shortage, it's a really bad time to build a system, sadly. Here's hoping.

 

That being said, this is helping profit margins as usual, so public outrage aside, people are making money, for better or for worse.

[mtthwstddrd]

Was someone saying something about the price of ethereum being down? 

[Drak3]

Cool, the perfect card for crossfire. Now, if only MSI made one.