Sapphire's RDNA 2-based mining cards revealed

[midian182]

A hot potato: Given the chip shortage and its effect on graphics cards’ availability/prices, using gaming GPUs in mining cards is a controversial move, but it does happen. Joining the companies that engage in this practice is Sapphire, which has created the X080 and X060 mining cards based on AMD’s RDNA 2 architecture found in the Radeon RX 6000 series.

The images and spec sheets for the two graphics cards, the Sapphire GPRO X080 & the GPRO X060, were leaked by El Chapuza Informatico (via VideoCardz), showing their Ethash performance and other details.

The Sapphire GPRO X080 uses a Navi 22 GPU with 2,304 cores (36 CUs), a clock speed reaching 2,132 MHz, and features 10GB of 160-bit GDDR6 memory clocked at 16 Gbps, giving a bandwidth of 320 GB/s. It uses the PCIe Gen 4.0 x16 interface and only works with Linux. As with many other mining cards, it lacks any display outputs.

The Sapphire GPRO X080 offers around 38.05 MH/s@165W, though it can be tuned to ~41.6 MH/s@93W. For comparison, the Navi 23-based Radeon RX 6600 XT has a tuned mining performance of 32 MH/s@55W.

The GPRO X060, meanwhile, is a Navi 23 XL-based miner with 1,792 Stream Processors clocked at 2,044 MHz and a memory clock of 14Gbps. It features 8GB of GDDR6 memory across a 128-bit interface. The card works with both Windows and Linux, is sold in bulk, and, somewhat unusually, it has a DisplayPort and HDMI. Ethereum miners can get 28 MH/s at its default TGP of 100W and up to 30 MH/s@60W with tuned settings.

The GPRO X080 is priced at 750 Euros ($851), and the GPRO X060 is 550 Euros ($624).

Unlike Nvidia with its LHR and CMP cards, AMD has done little to address the problem of miners snapping up what few graphics cards are left. It was even forced to deny that it prioritizes its products for miners at the expense of gamers. Board partners are so concerned about the bad publicity that comes from creating mining-specific cards that many sneak them out under the radar, just like XFX did with this one.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/92422-sapphire-rdna-2-based-mining-cards-reveaked.html

 

[Dimitriid]

Well is not like they were being "sneaky" before: AMD went out of their way to promise the later 6600x and 6600 would have general availability without issues so they either lied or greatly underestimated the market, or guys like Sapphire have been selling direct to miners.

I do have one request out of the author and the site in general: Even if you get no replies or is a standard issue "We don't comment on rumors" you guys should contact AMD for comment and put that in the article as well, even if just to say "AMD declined to comment/Did not respond" or the aforementioned canned responses.

Sapphire (Or gigabyte or powercolor or MSI or EVGA or any of the AIBs for either Nvidia or AMD) feel comfortable in doing these kind of practices unchallenged and putting more pressure on them to deny the rumors (Which is self defeating since if true they'll be caught in a lie) or have no comment officially. (Which is self incriminating) might get them to be more upfront about their business practices.

 

[QuantumPhysics]

I see no reason to make "mining cards". Why not just make a huge chunk of computer with the cooling devices built in?

 

[Achaios]

Evidence already exists on YouTube that AMD's partners shipped whole containers of GPU's directly to Miners so them making more mining cards to salvage B parts isn't surprising.

 

[VitalyT]

Trying to put a cherry on top of a pile of s.

 

[Theinsanegamer]

I see no reason to make "mining cards". Why not just make a huge chunk of computer with the cooling devices built in?

It would make more sense if these were built on older nodes, liek the 14nm node, so as to not add any additional pressure on TSMC production.

then again when miners buy everything there is only so much you can do production wise....

 

[Neatfeatguy]

Companies are just outright selling any cards to miners on the backend. Record sales of GPUs are not happening on their own.

People are still in need of GPUs, yet they're scarce at retailers or so overpriced that you're just barely paying under scalper prices. Yet mining farms have been shown to have hundreds to thousands of GPUS.....

I guess it could just be coincidence?

 

[Uncle Al]

Anyone have any idea of what the monthly "productivity" and profit per machine is? I'm guessing it must be high since so many are into it ...... ???

 

[Daniele 00]

Why does company have to prioritize gamers over miners ? It's just business. MoneyMoney. Children can go play ball on the streets, and once the gaming videocards are back, childrens 'll go back in front of a pc, so what's the problem ? (business point of view)

 

[Shadowboxer]

These companies shouldn’t be hiding the fact that their mining customers are giving them a lot more money than their gaming customers. The only reason they are is because the gamers are acting all entitled and throwing their toys out of the pram over it. And to be honest it’s really obnoxious. Gaming is 100% privilege. It literally wastes time, at least miners are making money, paying for their lives, families etc.

 

[Dimitriid]

Why does company have to prioritize gamers over miners ?

They don't, we would just like them not to flatout lie about it that's all: just be upfront about it and do your miner sales out in the open.

Truth to be told, I don't even think they'd have as many of the long lasting repercussions they fear: gamers are exceptionally bad at holding on to grudges as we've seen in the past: Remember those Steam groups of people built with the explicit purpose of boycotting a COD game that later was found out to be mostly a steam group filled with people that mostly owned the same game they were claiming to boycott?

They just need to be more transparent and stop their advertisement and promotion targeted at gamers. In fact that might even save them money. They think that if they're open about it the boycotts and bad word of mouth might hurt them but if the blatant lies haven't by now it just won't.

It's just a case of corporations being compulsive liars for no good reason.

 

[Dimitriid]

Anyone have any idea of what the monthly "productivity" and profit per machine is? I'm guessing it must be high since so many are into it ...... ???

IIRC it's really not good for just what a normal person would have on a house hold: 1 to 5 mid to high end GPUs in some cases my end up paying for themselves in a few months of constantly using them for mining every second of the day they're not in use for gaming or general compute use. Nothing most people can actually live on for the most part, even if modestly.

I might be way off but it's never a good business proposition for regular people: Eth mining is only a decent proposition with much larger economies of scale: Once you're dealing with hundreds to thousands of cards and you have some way of saving on power consumption (Which on many places it's just much higher proportionally for regular household vs the "bulk" or industrial usage of a large mining operation) and even then it's not viable just about anywhere at all: they tend to end up mining on places that either have access to really cheap electricity or that have some way of cheating the system to not just pay for it as much: it's all about getting a quick ROI as soon as possible to start getting positive numbers earlier.

 

[letsgoiowa]

Anyone have any idea of what the monthly "productivity" and profit per machine is? I'm guessing it must be high since so many are into it ...... ???

Just having a 3070 has allowed me to pay for my wife's medical bills, so it's potentially life changing.

If you're in a low cost of living area, it's monumental amounts of money per GPU. I was making $8/day when eth was $2kish, so it works out to $16/day or almost $500 a month just mining on a single 3070. Profitability has roughly halved lately but eh, it's likely eth will still keep going up.

If you live in a poor country, $8/day is more than you might ever earn in your job.