Linuses GPU Mining Adventure, did he drop the ball?

[Master Disaster]

So this video just popped up in my YouTube suggestion feed...

 

Basically he reckons Linus messed up by choosing Nvidia over AMD for the experiment and that by choosing Vega64 (or even 500 series Radeon) he would have gotten a different outcome.

 

I'd love to hear opinions on this as I'm a mining noob (honestly saying I'm a noob is being generous) and it would be interesting if Linus could explain the decision behind Pascal over anything from AMD.

[Syntaxvgm]

I just set my 970 and 1080 to mine a few days ago, got like 15$ so far, probably 90 per month at this rate. Decently profitable, just long ROI, poor choice if you're buying hardware to mine specifically. 

Plus it takes a few months to determine if buying x was the right choice. For example, I think the antminer L3+ was like 1200$ a month a few months ago, now it's already down to 500$ and will keep going down. Buying one at launch was certainly a good choice but now it's uncertain. The profits are almost always on a downward trend, especially on nicehash. 

[Lurick]

11 minutes ago, Master Disaster said:

I'd love to hear opinions on this as I'm a mining noob (honestly saying I'm a noob is being generous) and it would be interesting if Linus could explain the decision behind Pascal over anything from AMD.

I can almost guarantee it has to do with the available cards he has. He probably only had a couple decent AMD cards to mine with (480/580/etc) and the Nvidia cards were just more abundant and available at the time. This was an off the cuff, so to speak, video that they just threw together.

[AshleyAshes]

1 minute ago, Lurick said:

I can almost guarantee it has to do with the available cards he has. He probably only had a couple decent AMD cards to mine with (480/580/etc) and the Nvidia cards were just more abundant and available at the time. This was an off the cuff, so to speak, video that they just threw together.

This.  It's super clear that LTT used what materials it had in stock rather rather than building an 'ideal' machine.  Anyone who didn't pick up on that (I mean, they outright admitted it was redonk to use a dual socket machine, but it just had the bajillion PCIE slots they needed to get started quickly) is just looking for a reason to get mad.

[Princess Luna]

Every one knows the RX580 is mining king in performance per dollar/watt.... throw as many as you possible can in the system.

[Master Disaster]

Just now, Princess Cadence said:

Every one knows the RX580 is mining king in performance per dollar/watt.... throw as many as you possible can in the system.

According to the video I posted it's Vega64 that's king now.

[Princess Luna]

3 minutes ago, Lurick said:

I can almost guarantee it has to do with the available cards he has.

While this is true, a worthier title would be "Is mining still profitable with NVIDIA GPUS?" something on those lines at least to make it more accurate and specific, they throw these vague titles as if they will cover the entire thing only that they didn't.

[Princess Luna]

1 minute ago, Master Disaster said:

According to the video I posted it's Vega64 that's king now.

It depends where you're from, the RX580 is still a solid pick every where while Vega64 is still only offered in reference model at GTX 1080 Ti price level in the greatest majority of countries outside USA.

[Master Disaster]

1 minute ago, Princess Cadence said:

It depends where you're from, the RX580 is still a solid pick every where while Vega64 is still only offered in reference model at GTX 1080 Ti price level in the greatest majority of countries outside USA.

Fair point though the guy does specifically say he is ignoring cost to buy (as Linus did) in his calculations. That doesn't exactly translate to the real world though.

[Wanaknow]

I believe, correct me if i'm wrong, the question in the LTT video was more a general questing. Is mining profitable?
Is gold mining profitable, not what tools are the best for the job. But rather the act of mining itself. If i spend time mining for gold, silver,.. will i get some actual profit? or will i just waste time and effort? Are these cryptocurrencies actually worth mining?
and for the selection of the tools, yes, i believe they just took whatever they had available and suited their own preference.

[Princess Luna]

18 minutes ago, Wanaknow said:

I believe, correct me if i'm wrong, the question in the LTT video was more a general questing. Is mining profitable?
Is gold mining profitable, not what tools are the best for the job

I'm sorry but this logic is flawed as having the right tools for the job is a crucial point in whether it can be profitable or not in the first place.

[Wanaknow]

17 minutes ago, Princess Cadence said:

I'm sorry but this logic is flawed as having the right tools for the job is a crucial point in whether it can be profitable or not in the first place.

they do have the right tools for the job. their cards do mine don't they? you don't need the perfect tools for a job to do a job.

[Princess Luna]

1 minute ago, Wanaknow said:

they do have the right tools for the job. their cards do mine don't they? you don't need the perfect tools for a job to do a job.

Yes and people cave mines with spoons because it gets the job done and they're being paid by the hour right? lol

[michaelocarroll007]

54 minutes ago, Master Disaster said:

Fair point though the guy does specifically say he is ignoring cost to buy (as Linus did) in his calculations. That doesn't exactly translate to the real world though.

Feel like ignoring cost to buy makes no sense Either. and doing just show would mean your targeting people who are just going to use whatever GPU they have on hand already. Very similar to what Linus is actually doing aswell then.

 

Linus Should have showed mathematically the cost of all the parts for a RX 5 series or Vega Cards then explained how long it would take the money back ect.

 

Then did the same segment he did to a degree and set up builds with cards he had lying around to give a realistic example of what 99% of his viewers can do use there current hardware and see if it might be profitable that way.

 

i feel like it just needed better explained overall. on which side there looking at people buying in and becoming acutall miners or overnight while im not gaming miners

[LAwLz]

Monthly reminder that you should never take anything shown/said on LTT/TechQuickie videos as facts. They have next to no credibility in my eyes, and neither should them in your. Always double and/or triple check things from LMG.

Their videos often contains a lot of misinformation or miss crucial details which can lead people to the wrong conclusions being made (either by LMG, the viewers or both).

 

They make entertainment videos, not information videos.

[Wanaknow]

3 hours ago, Princess Cadence said:

Yes and people cave mines with spoons because it gets the job done and they're being paid by the hour right? lol

no but you could still do it with a simple prospecting pan in a riverbed. actualy that would be more like CPU mining. what they used to do before they started using pickaxes/GPUs.
the LTT way would be using a bunch of overly expensive pickaxes that are not the best for gold mining (maybe better for marble or somethng =p) and are realy exhausting to use.

and have a few rgb lights.

[Terryv]

3 hours ago, LAwLz said:

They make entertainment videos, not information videos.

They're the top gear of the tech world.

 

Joking aside, they do get stuff right most of the time.

[Damascus]

51 minutes ago, Wanaknow said:

no but you could still do it with a simple prospecting pan in a riverbed. actualy that would be more like CPU mining. what they used to do before they started using pickaxes/GPUs.
the LTT way would be using a bunch of overly expensive pickaxes that are not the best for gold mining (maybe better for marble or somethng =p) and are realy exhausting to use.

and have a few rgb lights.

Yes, but the question is “is this profitable” not “does it work”

 

I tell you, if I buy a fantastic tree stripper for a million dollars and the start mining gold with it not only will it never be profitable it won’t actually mine gold.  

[Wanaknow]

30 minutes ago, Damascus said:

Yes, but the question is “is this profitable” not “does it work”

 

I tell you, if I buy a fantastic tree stripper for a million dollars and the start mining gold with it not only will it never be profitable it won’t actually mine gold.  

now why would you try it with a tree stripper. that makes no sense

[Damascus]

1 hour ago, Wanaknow said:

now why would you try it with a tree stripper. that makes no sense

That’s my point, mining with any gpu running gddr5x is atrocious.  When a 580 outperforms a 1080 ti, costs less upfront and takes less in terms of power over time it is profitable (thus, mining is profitable by extension) 

 

if if you take a 1080 ti that barely makes profit because of how power hungry it is in comparison mining is no longer profitable (enough to be worthwhile) according to that sample size

[Master Disaster]

@LinusTechCare to respond to this one?

[Brodz]

I can't stand that guy's voice... Or that guy

[LAwLz]

On 11/16/2017 at 6:58 PM, Terryv said:

Joking aside, they do get stuff right most of the time.

Depends on what you mean by "most of the time". Most of their videos are extremely light on real information to begin with so that's not really a big accomplishment.

Whenever they try and do something that requires even a tiny bit of effort or research then often get crucial parts wrong though. This is not limited to just LTT but also TechQuickie.

(Please bear in mind that I rarely watch LTT videos anymore so that statement is based on feedback like this, and the rare instances where I actually watch a video).

 

If LTT wants to be known as the top gear of tech then fine, but if that's the case then they should become that. How often did you see Top Gear try and talk about technical information and consumer advice? Even in the very rare instances they did, people understood that they were mostly clowns and their statements should be taken with a shovel of salt. That's not the case with Linus because he posts a lot of videos with the intention of being informative.

 

I think Linus needs to choose what he wants to do. Does he want to make informative videos? Then he needs to actually man up and invest the time, effort and potentially money necessary to make proper informative videos. No taking shortcuts and just grabbing whatever they got on their shelves. No lying (Linus admitted to straight up lying in several of his water cooling videos when it came to using distilled water or whatever it was, because he didn't want people commenting about it). No half-ass research (their MAC-address video was painful to watch).

[Heffe_The_Boss]

I thought the same thing... A few months ago people were making their initial investments back in like 4 weeks while mining Ethereum, but then the difficulty started to pick up. 

 

Being in Canada, where electricity costs as much as water... if they were to setup a decent AMD mining setup, tuned it correctly... and ran something like claymore miner that will mines two currencies at a time.... I think they would have came up with a different outcome. 

 

Also, a lot of miners mine for future price of a currency... banking on the price of whatever they are digging out to worth more down the road. A lot of miners started mining Ethereum when it was 50 cents a coin... Now they live on the moon.