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NVIDIA To Launch Graphics Cards Specifically Designed For Digital Currency Mining (cnbc.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the sole-purpose dept.

Digital currency mining is in high demand, causing GPU prices to skyrocket. Nvidia is planning to capitalize on this trend by releasing graphics cards specifically designed for cryptocurrency. From a product listing on ASUS' website: "ASUS Mining P106 is designed for coin mining with high-efficiency components -- delivering maximum hash-rate production at minimum cost. ASUS Mining P106 enhances the megahash rate by up to 36% compared cards in the same segment that are not tailored for mining. The new card is also engineered to be seriously durable, enabling 24/7 operation for uninterrupted coin production." The ASUS Mining P106 uses an Nvidia chip, according to the specifications page on the website. CNBC reports: Nvidia, AMD and ASUS have not officially announced the digital currency mining cards, according to their website press pages. It is not certain when the cards will be available for sale. Nvidia is likely making the cards designed for this use so that the surging digital currency demand doesn't affect its ability to serve the lucrative PC gaming market.

7 of 105 comments (clear)

  1. Re:What a pain in the ass by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Selling shovels to gold miners is a much better and more profitable business than gold mining.

  2. Pure marketing by locater16 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This is pure marketing on the part of ASUS, all they did was cut out all the display ports and call it "Mining oriented!" It doesn't really do anything beyond a normal GTX 1060. It should be noted that AIBs have almost no control over GPUs, they are there to slap branding on it and take over warranty duties. They're a bit like car dealerships, in that they're middle men and I'm not sure why they exist anymore. Which isn't to say AMD and Nvidia won't be putting out newer GPU types that'd get more out of AI/Sim/Mining etc. eventually. Just that they haven't yet, and so any claim that an AIB has is bullshit.

  3. If only there were some secondary advantage... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Insightful

    The whole grinding for hashes is such a waste of time and energy. Imagine if, instead of simply grinding for some random number, that same amount of time and energy were applied to, say, any of a number of distributed computing projects that actually serve humanity in some sense? *ANYTHING* than just turning an expensive computer into a space-heating paperweight...

    > But...but...this makes me money!!

    While *some* may be making money off these schemes, until it's offsetting your electric bill, the cost of a rig that puts many gamers to shame, and pays your rent, it's a money pit and little more. This doesn't even consider the lack of any kind of economic backing; there's no commodity, no production, that backs these cryptocurrencies. Their value is reflected by the speculation of its holders. You may as well trade baseball cards.

  4. Joe Kennedy moment by Spy+Handler · · Score: 3, Insightful

    In 1929 when Joe Kennedy (JFK's dad) was getting his shoes polished, the shoe shine boy told him a tip about some hot stocks to buy. That's when he realized it was time to GTFO of the market, and so he remained a rich man and later was able to finance his son's career in politics.

  5. If only.... by Neo-Rio-101 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If all the graphics card used by the miners were put to use for folding@home or SETI, we would have cured cancer, Parkinsons, and Alzheimers by now.. .... AND we would have found aliens.

    But oh no.... gotta waste the world's resources on make believe instead for personal greed.
    Humanity sucks.

    --
    READY.
    PRINT ""+-0
    1. Re:If only.... by Kjella · · Score: 1, Insightful

      If all the graphics card used by the miners were put to use for folding@home or SETI, we would have cured cancer, Parkinsons, and Alzheimers by now.. .... AND we would have found aliens. But oh no.... gotta waste the world's resources on make believe instead for personal greed. Humanity sucks.

      Let's for the sake of argument say that all the 21 million Bitcoins was mined at no profit at $3000/BTC in electricity for $63 billion, a ridiculous exaggeration but whatever. It's still only about 1/10th of the US military budget for one year. If you want to count money wasted on make believe I'd start with religion, including the money spent because other nutcases are religious like the IS. More greed, less god has made the world a more peaceful place because money is color blind. It takes humans to hate.

      --
      Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
  6. Re:NVidia is too slow - All mining will end soon by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    you have no idea what you are talking about if you think that bitcoin has even a percentage of a percentage of a chance of moving to proof of stake. everyone who knows anything knows that proof of stake is worthless. the only reason vitalik is championing it is because he loves silver bullet solutions to perpetual motion problems. we will "solve the mining problem" with proof of stake. we will "solve the scaling problem" with sharding. this is coming from the guy who before ethereum he was executing a scam whereby he was seeking out investors to fund a quantum computer to mine bitcoin