AMD has no plans to limit the mining performance of its cards

[midian182]

A hot potato: Unlike rival Nvidia, AMD has confirmed the company does not plan to nerf the mining capabilities of its graphics cards. Following team green's introduction of an Ethereum mining limiter alongside the RTX 3060—and rumors that its future products would have the same restrictions—many wondered if AMD would follow suit. But don't hold your breath: it has no plans to implement something similar.

Speaking about a potential mining limiter during a Radeon RX 6700 XT pre-briefing call, Nish Neelalojanan, a product manager at AMD, told PC Gamer, "The short answer is no. We will not be blocking any workload, not just mining for that matter."

"That said, there are a couple of things. First of all, RDNA was designed from the ground up for gaming and RDNA 2 doubles up on this. And what I mean by this is, Infinity Cache and a smaller bus width were carefully chosen to hit a very specific gaming hit rate. However, mining specifically enjoys, or scales with, higher bandwidth and bus width so there are going to be limitations from an architectural level for mining itself."

Nvidia recently admitted that a developer driver it made public to devs under the Windows Insider Program unintentionally removed the hash rate limiter from most RTX 3060 cards. It's since been pulled, but copies will doubtlessly be circulating within mining communities.

The Radeon RX 6700 XT, which you can read our review of here, offers around the same Ethereum mining performance as the RTX 3060—with the limiter-removing dev driver applied to Nvidia's card. Though AMD’s flagship RX 6900 XT (55-64MH/s) can’t match the RTX 3080 (~85MH/s) or the beefy RTX 3090 (up to 120MH/s).

Neelalojanan did reiterate that while AMD has no plans for mining limiters, it prioritizes gamers above all others.

"All our optimization, as always, is going to be gaming first, and we've optimized everything for gaming. Clearly, gamers are going to reap a ton of benefit from this, and it's not going to be ideal for mining workload. That all said, in this market, it's always a fun thing to watch."

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/88967-amd-has-no-plans-limit-mining-performance-cards.html

 

[envirovore]

While it may not be able to match the hash rate offered by nVidia GPUs, maybe this will be an incentive for miners to switch to team red for their fake currency, knowing that their precious waste of power and money won't be messed with by the manufacturer.

Hahahaha, who am I kidding...

PcGamer have an article up right now about how the Radeon VII is a better mining GPU than the 3090. All comes down to memory bus width.

 

[VitalyT]

That's because AMD cards are not good for mining anymore, LOL.

Vega64 was the last card that was good for mining.

 

[Shadowboxer]

To be honest I don’t think Nvidia had serious plans to limit the mining performance of its cards either.

The thing is these companies don’t want to upset gamers who were their customers for years and will be once the miners have eventually gone. Personally I’d rather they were honest about it “look guys miners pay us more money for our products so we as a business can’t really do anything to hurt them”.

It’s a **** situation but it will change eventually. Maybe not this year but one day.

 

[QuantumPhysics]

Buy Nvidia stock.

Buy AMD stock.

Buy Coinbase stock when it comes to market.

No matter what crypto wins...you win.

And even when crypto bubbles pop, the gamers will still keep you moving forward with gains.

 

[emmzo]

I appreciate the honesty and the truth is you can`t force anyone to use a card just the way someone else wants. Mining is here to stay so, that being said, I think I`ll be playing chess for a very, very long time...

 

[jbc029]

Might be time to admit that gpus aren't primarily used for graphics anymore. They're massively parralel processors that happen to have display outputs on them and they can be used for gaming on the side. This may be the first generation where it's primary use, for its entire production cycle, was not for graphics. And it may not ever go back.

 

[terzaerian]

Friendship ended with Nvidia, now AMD is my best friend

 

[NightAntilli]

That's because AMD cards are not good for mining anymore, LOL.

Vega64 was the last card that was good for mining.

Nah... Both the Radeon VII and the 5700XT were and still are good for mining.

 

[Nobina]

As much as I prefer GPUs being used for gaming primarily, I would never want AMD or Nvidia to restrict mining.

They should have no say in what you do with the GPU you paid for. And if you let them they can use that later to restrict other things as well. What those things might be doesn't matter.

 

[terzaerian]

Serious question though: if one liquidates their old Nvidia hardware at inflated scalper prices, but then buys a scalped AMD card, is it ethically net neutral?

 

[envirovore]

Serious question though: if one liquidates their old Nvidia hardware at inflated scalper prices, but then buys a scalped AMD card, is it ethically net neutral?

Yes, but only as unfortunately that's how the market is playing right now.
Moving the old GPU at a traditionally more reasonable price for a GPU will offset any potential guilt, though probably will be snagged up by a bot anyway.

 

[Bl00dyMinded]

Buy Nvidia stock.

Buy AMD stock.

Buy Coinbase stock when it comes to market.

No matter what crypto wins...you win.

And even when crypto bubbles pop, the gamers will still keep you moving forward with gains.

Is against mining... but it's ok to profit from it. Practice what you preach dude.

 

[Peter Farkas]

All comes down to memory bus width.

True for ETH mining, but not necessary for all the other altcoins.

 

[envirovore]

True for ETH mining, but not necessary for all the other altcoins.

As ETH tends to be the "big news" as crypto related GPU shortages go, I went with blanket statement. Correct, I should have been specific.

 

[EdmondRC]

I don't really see why they should. I don't do mining, but they are customers too. It might seem 'unfair' to gamers, but mining is not the only reason that GPU prices are high and they are hard to find. The reality of chip shortages right now is affecting other markets as well. Honda and Toyota both had to halt US production temporarily and part of the reason was chip shortages. It's been four months since the PS5/XSX launch and you still can't find them anywhere. Even the Nintendo Switch, which just turned 4 years old a week ago, is hard to come by.

 

[grumblguts]

Think its bad now.
wait 20 years.
coin miners will consume more power than the united states and china.

 

[Mr Majestyk]

Like we actually care anymore, can't buy AMD graphics cards anyway.

 

[0dium]

As much as I prefer GPUs being used for gaming primarily, I would never want AMD or Nvidia to restrict mining.

They should have no say in what you do with the GPU you paid for. And if you let them they can use that later to restrict other things as well. What those things might be doesn't matter.

They don't have any say in what you do with gpus you paid for. On the other hand they can do whatever they want to future gpus.

 

[magnusfl]

Think its bad now.
wait 20 years.
coin miners will consume more power than the united states and china.

in less the 20 year bit will collapse due to new government regulation coming and fact it smoke mirrors with zero assists with no security

 

[lipe123]

Think its bad now.
wait 20 years.
coin miners will consume more power than the united states and china.

In 20 years we will have vibranium unobtanium fusion nuclear flux capcitor reactors that make 10 jiggawiggawatts of power and produce no waste..
So what does it matter?

If that outfit with the batteries that can be charged at 1C takes off, those things will use WAYYYYYYYY more power than anything else.
Even charging that little scooter battery in 5mins was done at close to 1Kw of power draw.

 

[Gregtombstone]

Bit mining is a massive ponzi scheme promoted by fraudsters . It a serious waste of energy and is the darling of the black market.

 

[zamroni111]

They only plan to limit the production because zen3 is much more profitable per transistor than rdnax, more over if the dies end up as epyc server processor