Bitcoin Forum

What are everyone's thoughts on the next gen gpus? I'm tempted to wait until they are out, but part of me thinks that when they come out;

availability will be limited
price will be high
performance of an 1180 will not be materially greater than a 1080ti
it will be a while before they are released anyway (3-6 months)

What does everyone else think?

I guess the fact nVidia have a monopoly makes me a bit a pessimistic about the new cards...

If the next gen Nvidia GPU's are based on the Volta architecture, I would expect higher prices due to various factors such as supply logistics and increased manufacturing costs from moving to a smaller process architecture. If that's the case the new cards will be more efficient for mining, but shouldn't make the current Polaris lineup obsolete in terms performance/hash and ROI timeframe.

Maybe they will not make the Polaris line of RX series obsolete but they surely will be the best choice for mining as they will be with GDDR6 memory which is supposed to be twice the performance of GDDR5.

The price will be really high in the beginning as they will try to market the GDDR6 as the first manufacturers of a graphic card with such memory. If you can find the 1080 ti even used below 600 dollars price you should buy them.

I thought it was memory bandwidth, not speed, that matters most for e.g. eth mining.

I think need buy 1080ti, new arch gpu will be locked by drivers for high performance mining, because nvidia prepairing turing gpu cards

Yes it is the memory bandwidth but also the transfer speed is increased. For more you can read this article which explains that the GDDR6 memory is aimed toward the segment of high end computers, cryptocurrency mining and artificial intelligence AI

https://graphicscardhub.com/gddr5-vs-gddr5x-vs-hbm-vs-hbm2/ (https://graphicscardhub.com/gddr5-vs-gddr5x-vs-hbm-vs-hbm2/)

Well 2 of your factors are already a problem now, as availability is limited and price is high with the current cards.  If you can get a current card at retail or below then I think its still a good buy right now, as the new cards won't be out until the fall more than likely.   Paying a premium for a card now though is completely stupid in my mind.  I plan on slowly starting to sell my cards this summer.  Even if it means I have to take a month off of mining, I think it will be good to have sold them for what I paid and have cash on hand to replace them with the next model.

That article fails though to point out how shitty gddr5x is.  On paper it sounds good, in reality, I don't think it ever got implemented correctly.  There is a reason it has only been used on 3 cards and then thrown in the trash.  Hell even when they released their Pascal Tesla cards they used GDDR5 instead.  That should be very telling.

Any chance that GDDR6 will flop, or at least greatly undershoot expectations, along the lines of GDDR5X?

I doubt it, if you do a simple google search you will see that Samsung has already got a lot of awards for their upcoming GDDR6 memory. The fact that they can have easily 16 GB of VRAM is a fact teller that this type of memory will be the best we will have available when it will come out.

As an IT I know RAM greatly limits computing power for the moment so whenever I see a jump in RAM technology like the one from GDDR5 to GDDR6 I cannot do anything else except welcome it and so should do everyone if you love computers and technology.

I'm assuming they will be underwhelming in terms of an upgrade in efficiency or profitability. They might be able to increase your hashrate per slot, but that will probably be about it, if it even achieves that. My suggestion has been to find cheap 1080TIs that you can be confident are in good condition. People are selling them off now that prices have dropped and profitability has taken a dip. Many miners are jumping ship, so you can get a good deal on 1080TIs right now, if you look in the right places. I'm assuming the new GPUs will remain extremely high in price and sell out everywhere rather quickly, but performance to dollar will probably remain in favor of the 1080TI for a while.


As it should my friend, as it should.

New series will be around %20-30 faster and expected to be released in July as I've read from several articles. Considering that the prices probably more or less will be the same, It makes more sense to wait. If It were possible to make ROI in 3-5 months, I wouldn't wait and buy 1080ti's right away because in that case, the time would be a more expensive asset to spend. In our case, by waiting for ~3 months, you won't be missing much.

iirc they will be introduced in July, so add another month or so for reference versions to hit retail, plus another month or two for the decent stuff to appear :) Mid-autumn at best, I think.

You wrong about that, volta gpus with gddr6 256 bits will be way above polaris, i myself see 50% more hashrate minimum, to be competitive amd will have to crash rx 580 to $200 from $450 but as amd probably has still selling rx 580 for $200, what will happen is, people will simple stop buying polaris and the price will crash. amd will not slash the prices cause i think amd never changed polaris price at all, still msrp at $220, people will stop buying at $450 and it will crash to $200.

avoid both and buy coins with that cash? ;D

It all depends on how much you have to pay for current 1080ti,if its the same price before the mining hype started(about 800$) then i would say go for it but if you need to pay 1k for it then the answer is wait it out.Problem is that we dont really know when new model will come out and if you will be able to by it when it comes out(depends from where you are from,no way for me to get it on start)

@ op

I have used 1080tis at good prices

let me know if you want to buy some.

I would also say it depends on the scale at which you are mining.  Scaling is really important to consider.  If you are just buying a handful of cards... let's say 4 or less, I would say you might consider just waiting.  But if you are on a bigger scale then you are going to generate more income and be in a better position to sell your old cards and buy new sooner. 

Also... sort of not really following your "monopoly" comment for Nvidia.  They aren't the only GPU producer.  They compete against AMD and that argument of which is better can go on for a lifetime. 

The problem I see with Nvidia and other manufacturers is this pricing issue and the assumption that miners will buy mining specific GPUs.  So far that hasn't panned out and I don't see that changing unless the prices come WAY down on the mining GPUs.  For now, miners are too smart to see the obvious value incentive of having a high resale value.

I can't bring myself to sell the amd rig as it still makes it's value in 5 months, also the second hand market seems to have a lot of sellers but not many buyers yet prices are quite high, guess no one is in a rush to sell.

Nvidia releasing cards later just means a bigger stack of coins to buy cards with (hey gamers  ;D)

apart from NVIDIA itself usually distributors and sellers will manipulation stocks and prices if they see in the market demand is very high but not all distributors or sellers do it there still have the seller with a normal price or sell the GPU isn't too expensive.

Wait for the new gpu, but get ready for it's high price.
But if you cannot wait, 1080ti is the fastest gpu beside the workstation class gpu
like the vega or titan. Even an used 1080ti card price is still high.

The initial price will not be so high as the miners have to wait to get confirmation about the mining performance.

No need to add another month if you plan ahead and pre-order. It's quite simple. And who said reference versions are bad? From what i've read online some people actually prefer the reference editions because they look nice and hash at almost the same rate. People have entire 1080ti rigs of reference version.

The new GPU will have to mine proportionately better than the 1080TI in relation to its price in order for the wait to be worth it. Otherwise you are paying a crazy premium for a card that is only giving a 20%-30% boost. The new architecture would have to pull a rabbit out of the hat in order for that price to be viable.


philipma1957 mentioned they have good prices on used 1080TI. You can get them for very good prices right now, because people are getting ready to upgrade their gear, worried about ASICs ruining big altcoin mining, dips in prices/profitability, etc. The list goes on and on, but you can get high-quality, gently-used cards for great prices right now and get going. You'll only make a few dollars a day per card, but even at that rate you'll ROI in a few months; if the price goes back up to $20,000 or any of your altcoins have a spike then you will be in good shape. Even if it doesn't, you'll be able to sell your cards off for maybe even a profit.