AMD and NVIDIA Dive Into the Graphics Card Mining Business

Graphics card manufacturers NVIDIA and AMD are preparing to release models of their cards for cryptocurrency mining. They have began to eye the digital coin market, because customers have been buying up cards to the point of depleting their supply. 

Also read: Global Supply of Graphics Processing Units Depleted Due to Mining Craze

According to a Videcardz press article, both companies plan on releasing a version of their cards in order to satisfy people’s hunger for mining cryptocurrencies. The site said, “NVIDIA is said to launch GeForce GTX 1060 with GP106-100 GPU, a custom edition for mining. This card would lack display connectors and most likely it would not support any gaming at all. According to our sources, these cards, unlike normal editions, would only have 90 days warranty.”

According to these circulating rumors; AMD is also planning to produce a Polaris model for mining, but there are currently no more details on the nature of this miner. Some good news is that the NVIDIA graphic card miners will be cheaper than their gaming counterparts.

AMD Stock Price Climbs

As a result of all the people desiring these cards for use in mining, the stock price of AMD has climbed 7% on Tuesday. According to various news sources, this increase stock price occurred as the demand for their product has skyrocketed. The demand comes, of course, as a result of people buying cards for the purposes of mining.

An AMD spokesperson provided CNBC with a comment,

“The gaming market remains our priority. We are seeing solid demand for our Polaris-based offerings in the gaming and newly resurgent cryptocurrency mining markets based on the strong performance we are delivering

GPU’s not Suitable for Bitcoin Mining; That’s “Fake Fews”

It is good to remember, however, that these GPU miners are not being used to mine bitcoin, but rather to mine ethereum and other altcoins. During the early days of bitcoin mining these GPU’s were hot products and almost always sold out.

According to Jamie Redman, writing for bitcoin.com; “Back in the early days throughout 2010 through 2013 graphics cards were a hot item when it came to bitcoin mining accessories. During that time many manufacturers and suppliers constantly ran out of stock for AMD series graphics cards, Nvidia, and other types of GPUs. Since then within the current bitcoin mining environment, most miners have pivoted to using application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs)”

Also, a recent article came out from barrons.com suggesting that news sites have been releasing “fake news.” Allegedly, these sites are saying that the graphics cards have been being used to mine bitcoin. The article read, “Steves writes it’s ‘fake news’ that either Nvidia’s or cards from AMD are being used to mine Bitcoin.” The site continued, “Alluding to ‘reports’ to that effect, Steves writes today that ‘this is not the case as Bitcoins are mined using ASICs and without becoming too technical about the terms, mining Ethereum is ‘ASIC resistant’ making it unprofitable.'”. Even so, there have been some instances of ASICs or sorts directed toward Ethereum’s algorithm.

Regardless of the fake news, it is interesting to see these manufacturers starting to produce cards specifically for the purpose of mining altcoins. No telling where the future will go in terms of GPU mining setups.

What do you think of this graphic card use craze? Let us know in the comments section below.

Images courtesy of Shutterstock and rebeltech.co.za

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