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So... Apparently AMD has released a beta "blockchain" driver that, at least on the Vega 56, grants a good 25% increase in hashrate, at least for ethereum.

Sigh.. At least AMD could have waited before the Vega 56 was released.

I got attacked for even mentioning that Vega's success was directly tied to coin mining because it obviously wasn't blowing last year's Pascal parts out of the water when it came to actual graphics performance (and don't even start about efficiency).

Given that AMD just went out of its way to release a driver that optimizes for.. no, not games... but coin mining, I think the writing should *really* be on the wall as to where these cards are targeted.

More power to AMD if it means they can get sales and make money, but there's been a lot of disingenuous stuff about how only AMD cares about gamers and how Ngreedia is gouging consumers. It looks like reality doesn't necessarily line up with the stories we've been told.

chuckula wrote:

More power to AMD if it means they can get sales and make money, but there's been a lot of disingenuous stuff about how only AMD cares about gamers and how Ngreedia is gouging consumers. It looks like reality doesn't necessarily line up with the stories we've been told.

You can hardly blame AMD for wanting to have their cake and eat it too. As others have brought up, AMD only has the compute-centered architecture. Sure, GCN may have been initially conceived as a "best-at-everything" architecture, but that was probably not very realistic as a long-term design philosophy and compromises have/had to be made at every step, with every generation. And compromising their compute prowess when that is the potentially more lucrative market is not a very realistic option.

I think AMD should keep selling the Vega 64 has their current high-end gaming solution, with slightly reduced clocks/power profiles, and for as long as they maintain an edge in cryptocurrency minning and HBM2 is scarce, sell all Vega 56 (any cut down versions of the 64 that don't need as much power) as mining cards for like $20 less (since they seem to mine as fast as Vega 64). No, the gaming crowd won't like it, but this would be best for AMD's bottom line in the short term. If they continue to market the Vega 56 as a gaming card, the only difference will be that retailers will get the extra revenue rather than AMD.

I guess the question is can they safely build enough Vega cards for miners & gamers? Or will it still be on the conservative side ala Polaris?

I agree that blaming AMD for wanting to make their cards less attractive for non-gamers is a nonstarter. There's really not much more they can do other than crippling their "game oriented" cards, but doing so it tough for them to accomplish as they benefit from having as few designs as possible.

The bundle program is a decent compromise for now, hopefully they will (over)produce cards in response.

Nvidia released a mining-optimized driver to compete with AMD Polaris. Why can't AMD make similar improvements?

Chuckula is going to attack AMD for anything that they do or for anything that they don't do. Jerry Sanders must have sullied Chuckula's sister's honor on some unforgivable dark day in the past.

What, you mean AMD might design their product line around what makes the most money for AMD share-holders?

What a bizarro-world idea....

K-L-Waster wrote:

What, you mean AMD might design their product line around what makes the most money for AMD share-holders?

What a bizarro-world idea....

well betting on crypto is a rather short-term bet, if their gaming graphics card market share drops so low as to become irrelevant and their crypto mining revenue dries up, Radeon Technology Group wouldn't be worth much anymore. And that could happen relatively quickly

JustAnEngineer wrote:

Chuckula is going to attack AMD for anything that they do or for anything that they don't do. Jerry Sanders must have sullied Chuckula's sister's honor on some unforgivable dark day in the past.

That's very unnecessary and frankly a little disingenuous. I was calling out the types of comments that pillory Nvidia and Intel for making money while promoting AMD to some sort of sainthood. As I posted, I have no problem with AMD making money, just with the mythology and bias that is regularly repeated without factual support.

As for Jerry Sanders, if Microsoft isn't a monopoly (his words under oath about a week before Microsoft conveniently made public its support of AMD's x86-64 parts) then Intel's never been a monopoly.

https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/510 ... mer-on-wed

Firestarter wrote:

K-L-Waster wrote:

What, you mean AMD might design their product line around what makes the most money for AMD share-holders?

What a bizarro-world idea....

well betting on crypto is a rather short-term bet, if their gaming graphics card market share drops so low as to become irrelevant and their crypto mining revenue dries up, Radeon Technology Group wouldn't be worth much anymore. And that could happen relatively quickly

Absolutely. But then again, the mining boom could last another 6 months. Or maybe even a year with the rise of other cryptocurrencies that radeons are competent at. At that point, it's time to start the gaming hype machine up for Navi!

Regardless of what happens with mining in the next few months this is what AMD has got for a new GPU, so why not try to take advantage of that while it lasts. I wonder if the "blockchain" driver could provide some benefit to other GPU compute applications also. It's not very likely that we'll see wide spread adoption of a "beta" driver, but I wouldn't be surprised if there was some overlap there.

As someone who managed to snag a Vega 64 AC on launch day for just £450 avoid it like the plague. The card and drivers are horrendous and forget the 750w PSU it won't do the business. RTG needs to hang their heads in shame after releasing this garbage. Disappointed doesn't even come close and I only bought it because I have a freesync monitor. This card could kill freesync completely it's that bad. Luckily I have a 14 day no quibble refund which I will be using very shortly. A 1080ti here I come.

cynan wrote:

Firestarter wrote:

K-L-Waster wrote:

What, you mean AMD might design their product line around what makes the most money for AMD share-holders?

What a bizarro-world idea....

well betting on crypto is a rather short-term bet, if their gaming graphics card market share drops so low as to become irrelevant and their crypto mining revenue dries up, Radeon Technology Group wouldn't be worth much anymore. And that could happen relatively quickly

Absolutely. But then again, the mining boom could last another 6 months. Or maybe even a year with the rise of other cryptocurrencies that radeons are competent at....

Exactly. There have been a few of these Radeon-friendly coins in the last few years (before Ethereum there was litecoin, dogecoin, and prolly a bunch of others I completely missed.) I doubt it's a coincidence, and it will likely happen again.

Would be silly of AMD not to take the pattern into account.

Lordhawkwind wrote:

...and forget the 750w PSU it won't do the business.

Yes, yes it will.

Any good 500W PSU will power a high-end rig + Vega except in the most extreme of cases. If your 750W PSU can't cut it, you've got a dying or crap PSU.

Lordhawkwind wrote:

As someone who managed to snag a Vega 64 AC on launch day for just £450 avoid it like the plague. The card and drivers are horrendous and forget the 750w PSU it won't do the business. RTG needs to hang their heads in shame after releasing this garbage. Disappointed doesn't even come close and I only bought it because I have a freesync monitor. This card could kill freesync completely it's that bad. Luckily I have a 14 day no quibble refund which I will be using very shortly. A 1080ti here I come.

So I guess all the good ones went to the reviewers?

Pville_Piper wrote:

So I guess all the good ones went to the reviewers?

I'm going to go with buyer's remorse and a large helping of hyperbole, myself.

Considering the short windows where a GPU is the best way to chew through cryptocurrency - before the specialized ASICs come out - I it might be AMD's best bet to cater to that fleeting market immediately. It seems like most miners will gladly pay launch-day prices, whether they end up making an actual profit or not. If they had held the mining optimizations back until gamers get their fill, it may have been too late.

Waco wrote:

Pville_Piper wrote:

So I guess all the good ones went to the reviewers?

I'm going to go with buyer's remorse and a large helping of hyperbole, myself.

My guess as well, along with a heaping helping of unreal expectations...

AMD might as well just release a dedicated mining card and roll with it. That would be the best thing AMD could do if they truly wanted to separate miners from the gamers so gamers didn't end up paying an inflated mining tax to the retailers just to replace gaming cards.

Bitcoins were introduced eight years ago, and coins are more popular now than ever before, used at more places now than ever before, and every time some alt-coin fades away more continue to replace it. I'm sure the current bubble will burst, but it wasn't the first bubble nor will it be the last, there will undoubtedly be more mining bubbles after this one ends.

Kougar wrote:

AMD might as well just release a dedicated mining card and roll with it. That would be the best thing AMD could do if they truly wanted to separate miners from the gamers so gamers didn't end up paying an inflated mining tax to the retailers just to replace gaming cards.

Bitcoins were introduced eight years ago, and coins are more popular now than ever before, used at more places now than ever before, and every time some alt-coin fades away more continue to replace it. I'm sure the current bubble will burst, but it wasn't the first bubble nor will it be the last, there will undoubtedly be more mining bubbles after this one ends.

AMD would probably release dedicate SKUs for "miners" under the Instinct brand would but it is quite clear that there's isn't enough HBM2 production to satiate demand. It is a redux of HD 5870/5850 shortage but this time it is the memory that is the cause of the shortage not the silicon itself.

Kougar wrote:

AMD might as well just release a dedicated mining card and roll with it. That would be the best thing AMD could do if they truly wanted to separate miners from the gamers so gamers didn't end up paying an inflated mining tax to the retailers just to replace gaming cards.

Bitcoins were introduced eight years ago, and coins are more popular now than ever before, used at more places now than ever before, and every time some alt-coin fades away more continue to replace it. I'm sure the current bubble will burst, but it wasn't the first bubble nor will it be the last, there will undoubtedly be more mining bubbles after this one ends.

This makes a lot of sense to me. We already have Radeon/Geforce for gamers and Firepro/Quadro for workstations, mining is clearly a legitimate market segment with its own specific needs. Like the Firepro vs. Radeon price difference, they could charge 25% more for that 25% extra hashrate.

This actually reminds me of using ethanol for fuel. Goodbye rock bottom food prices!

If producing cards with lower volumes can survive at lower prices, then higher demand should be able to survive at even lower prices long term. Eventually mining will ebb and there will be oversupply to drive prices rock bottom for people waiting to upgrade :fingerscrossed:

SpotTheCat wrote:

This actually reminds me of using ethanol for fuel. Goodbye rock bottom food prices!

Not that I don't agree with you as I'm still against ethanol, but corn prices are back to what they were 12 years ago.

SpotTheCat wrote:

If producing cards with lower volumes can survive at lower prices, then higher demand should be able to survive at even lower prices long term. Eventually mining will ebb and there will be oversupply to drive prices rock bottom for people waiting to upgrade :fingerscrossed:

People thought coins would ebb, but every time it started to fade it'd come surging back. Bitcoins are now worth an all time high, over 4x what they used to be hitting 4500 per coin not that long ago. Coins are never going to go away now, not with that kind of appreciation as a potential. 4x appreciation in four years is better than a lot of traditional investments, and you don't even have to pay taxes on it.

And all these copycat coins are just fueling their own small bubbles, but people will chase every one of them for either short-term booms or on the off chance they turn into another bitcoin. I don't see it going away for a long time, if at all.

CuttinHobo wrote:

Considering the short windows where a GPU is the best way to chew through cryptocurrency - before the specialized ASICs come out - I it might be AMD's best bet to cater to that fleeting market immediately. It seems like most miners will gladly pay launch-day prices, whether they end up making an actual profit or not. If they had held the mining optimizations back until gamers get their fill, it may have been too late.

Sure, miners have more money than gamers, in general; however, it seems like everyone "should" pay launch day as apparently launch day prices are not the real prices...

Topinio wrote:

Sure, miners have more money than gamers, in general; however, it seems like everyone "should" pay launch day as apparently launch day prices are not the real prices...

Holy crap!

Now, to be clear, we haven't seen anything official from AMD on the pricing model mentioned in that article... but if it turns out that's legit, that sounds flat out illegal. I don't think anywhere allows bait-and-switch pricing.

So than Jeff needs to update the Vega article, wow, launch day only rebates. edit: if you're going to have real 1070/1080 prices(instead of MSRP) in the value charts

Waco wrote:

Pville_Piper wrote:

So I guess all the good ones went to the reviewers?

I'm going to go with buyer's remorse and a large helping of hyperbole, myself.

Hawkwind is primarily active at Rage3d forums. You can read his "journey" with Vega in this thread: http://www.rage3d.com/board/showthread.php?t=34045172

His card is faulty. Not really buyer's remorse. His comment about a 750W PSU being inadequate are, unfortunately, a misdiagnosis from the mob.

K-L-Waster wrote:

Topinio wrote:

Sure, miners have more money than gamers, in general; however, it seems like everyone "should" pay launch day as apparently launch day prices are not the real prices...

Holy crap!

Now, to be clear, we haven't seen anything official from AMD on the pricing model mentioned in that article... but if it turns out that's legit, that sounds flat out illegal. I don't think anywhere allows bait-and-switch pricing.

How is that bait and switch? They DID sell cards at $499....even if it was only 275 of them. Giveaway games like that are never "free"

DPete27 wrote:

K-L-Waster wrote:

Topinio wrote:

Sure, miners have more money than gamers, in general; however, it seems like everyone "should" pay launch day as apparently launch day prices are not the real prices...

Holy crap!

Now, to be clear, we haven't seen anything official from AMD on the pricing model mentioned in that article... but if it turns out that's legit, that sounds flat out illegal. I don't think anywhere allows bait-and-switch pricing.

How is that bait and switch? They DID sell cards at $499....even if it was only 275 of them. Giveaway games like that are never "free"

Telling the world and dog that the price is $499 with no mention of it being a limited introductory price leads to the expectation that that will be the price (oddly enough). It also leads review sites to post comparisons with competing products that are misleading.

For example, Jeff's scatter plot will tell a completely different story if the 64 is actually priced at $599. Instead of being performance and price competitive with the 1080, it's performance competitive with the 1080 but price competitive with the 1080 TI.

EDIT: or maybe it's all a misunderstanding -- in which case, no harm no foul.

http://techreport.com/news/32417/amd-we ... ontroversy