Nvidia to release mining-only GPU?

[ZimmyK]

FWIW, over at forum.z.cash there is a posting from May 26 where the poster, a Chinese miner, tells about an upcoming Nvidia product which is tailored to mining only - no video ports, no game playing. He says:

https://forum.z.cash/t/nvidia-to-release-mining-only-gpus-soon/16257

"Ok bit of news from China... Nvidia will be releasing Mining Only GPUs soon... These will be GPUs without any display panels, no DP, no HDMI, no DVI... just a card and cooler. They will only be able to mine, they will not work for things such as playing games or rendering video, etc...

"Just a heads up on whats to come... If your thinking of building an Nvidia mining rig now... might be best to wait...

"I'm trying to find out more, cousin works for nviida, she told me about htem a week ago, and people are talking about them all around in ZCash groups in china now... when i find out any more I will update.

"Otherwise I think it would be smart to wait and see... i dont think they they will be overpriced if they are aimed at miners and mining farms.. else why would they make them... ?

"There would be no point in making a mining specific card that does nothing else but mine ... and then charge more than the gaming cards... no one is going to pay more money for less hashrate per dollar invested in the GPU.

"Nvidia doesn't like miners using their mainstream gaming cards for mining, they do not like dealing with warranty issues on the cards, so instead of fighting it, they are starting to embrace mining (as far as I can see).

"Even if they do end up costing 2000 or 5000$ a GPU, if the hashrate is worth it and makes it a better buy... then it is a better buy... and if they are coming out with these cards... we should wait to see if these cards will kill the current hashrate on existing GTX cards.

"I just dont think its smart to build a GTX miner without knowing more about these cards, as they will be coming out ... so..."

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[bathrobehero]

Here are my thoughts, some of which might be wrong;
 - display ports are cheap and easy to put on cards so it's kind of a pointless excercise to remove them;
 - virtually nobody is mining with stock nvidia cards; aftermarket cards is where it's at;
 - knowing nvidia, I can't imagine these cards not just costing less than their gaming counterparts, they'll very likely be more expensive for maybe slightly more cores but there's no way they'll be better in terms of price per performance. Every specialized (enterprise) cards are disgustingly overpriced;
 - nvidia not liking miners is just nonsense; GPUs owned by miners rarely ever get faulty, maybe only a couple of percentages more RMA than regular users but the increased number of sales should more than make up for it. (There's a reason as to the length of the warranty periods);
 - nvidia might have zero idea what features mining cards need, therefore they could be useless outside of a few coins (similarily to ASICs);
 - but if they do, what would be scary/awful is if nvidia would also provide their closed source miners.
 - these cards would have massively reduced resale value, just like ASICs.

I certainly don't hold my breath and kind of certain/hopeful that it will flop.

The single most beneficial thing of GPU mining is that virtually everyone has one which can be used for mining, eg. distribution of GPU-friendly PoW coins is great. Introducing a specialized hardware for miners would turn GPU mining into the same old  lifeless industrial world of ASICs with poor coin distribution since not everyone is going to have one of these.

[64dimensions]

Such a card would have a much smaller residual value.

[Billz007]

One of the reasons we like stock GPU's is that they have a resale value, they can be used for gaming or what not after we are done with them.  Look at the outdated ASIC's, they are mainly boat anchors.  My old 280x's from the last round of mining from a couple years ago sold recently for $100+ dollars each. 

[MA3A]

There is probably misunderstanding occurred... what i could imagine is nvidia will do is some sort of a ACCELERATOR Card, perhaps something like NEC POWER VR did back in the 90's
 - i have doubts it will be specifically designed for mining, too many protocols, card has to be universal, so why try to re-invent a bicycle ?

[bustomi]

I think if you use nvidia gtx more often, make sure the cooling system also installed with it, because temperature frequently begin to raise even hotter when do mining

[dragonmike]

Think about it from a competition perspective... What cards are currently sold out everywhere? 1080Ti's? No. 1080's. No. 1070's? Nope. 1060's? Niet, nope, non.

AMD Rx 570's and 580's.
Because they're miner cards.

If they want to bury AMD they have to fight them where they have most to lose.

A dedicated mining GPU from nVidia would hurt AMD massively.

[Eliovp]

Think about it from a competition perspective... What cards are currently sold out everywhere? 1080Ti's? No. 1080's. No. 1070's? Nope. 1060's? Niet, nope, non.

AMD Rx 570's and 580's.
Because they're miner cards.

If they want to bury AMD they have to fight them where they have most to lose.

A dedicated mining GPU from nVidia would hurt AMD massively.

You'd be surprised how many nvidia cards are already being sold/bought for mining purposes.

RX cards, they're not mining cards, they're gaming cards, we miners just use them.

They don't want to bury AMD, you'd be surprised how much respect they have for each other, they're still competitors though, true, but none the less, they respect each other.


It would cut into the profits of AMD, but it'll be ok.

Every AMD gpu out there that has been sold already and is actively mining right now, imagine a time when mining is a lost cause... they'd all end up on the second hand market, that, my friend, that would hurt AMD A LOT more.

So to speak of it, this has happened before... not that long ago...

[joblo]

I don't get it. A GPU is just a vector co-processor that can run any compatible software application.
Different architectures perforrm differently for different applications, just like a CPU. Mining is not
an singular application but a group of applications (kernels), each with their own performance
profile.

So what is a mining GPU? Does it have more cores to improve compute-bound applications, or a faster
memory interface to improve I/O bound applications? It depends on the algo.

So what features could their be that define a GPU as a mining GPU? Just removing the video ports won't
reduce the cost enough to draw miners, or anyone. to buy it instead of a regular GPU.

I suspect it's just going to be a marketing campaign to miners. They may brand a card as mining vs gaming
but it will only be cosmetic.

[OhGodAGirl]

One of the reasons we like stock GPU's is that they have a resale value, they can be used for gaming or what not after we are done with them.  Look at the outdated ASIC's, they are mainly boat anchors.  My old 280x's from the last round of mining from a couple years ago sold recently for $100+ dollars each. 

What the bloody heck do you have for a boat? o.o

I don't get it. A GPU is just a vector co-processor that can run any compatible software application.
Different architectures perforrm differently for different applications, just like a CPU. Mining is not
an singular application but a group of applications (kernels), each with their own performance
profile.

So what is a mining GPU? Does it have more cores to improve compute-bound applications, or a faster
memory interface to improve I/O bound applications? It depends on the algo.

So what features could their be that define a GPU as a mining GPU? Just removing the video ports won't
reduce the cost enough to draw miners, or anyone. to buy it instead of a regular GPU.

I suspect it's just going to be a marketing campaign to miners. They may brand a card as mining vs gaming
but it will only be cosmetic.

There are stark differences between what would be a mining card and a gaming card. Perhaps it's in the hardware. Perhaps it's in the software. Perhaps - just perhaps - it's in other things, like the VBIOS, or the power useage, or the memory speed, or even the bandwidth.

You'd be surprised at what could be removed on both AMD and NVIDIA cards to make them cost effective for miners.

Here are my thoughts, some of which might be wrong;
 - display ports are cheap and easy to put on cards so it's kind of a pointless excercise to remove them;
 - virtually nobody is mining with stock nvidia cards; aftermarket cards is where it's at;
 - knowing nvidia, I can't imagine these cards not just costing less than their gaming counterparts, they'll very likely be more expensive for maybe slightly more cores but there's no way they'll be better in terms of price per performance. Every specialized (enterprise) cards are disgustingly overpriced;
 - nvidia not liking miners is just nonsense; GPUs owned by miners rarely ever get faulty, maybe only a couple of percentages more RMA than regular users but the increased number of sales should more than make up for it. (There's a reason as to the length of the warranty periods);
 - nvidia might have zero idea what features mining cards need, therefore they could be useless outside of a few coins (similarily to ASICs);
 - but if they do, what would be scary/awful is if nvidia would also provide their closed source miners.
 - these cards would have massively reduced resale value, just like ASICs.

I certainly don't hold my breath and kind of certain/hopeful that it will flop.

The single most beneficial thing of GPU mining is that virtually everyone has one which can be used for mining, eg. distribution of GPU-friendly PoW coins is great. Introducing a specialized hardware for miners would turn GPU mining into the same old  lifeless industrial world of ASICs with poor coin distribution since not everyone is going to have one of these.

Do you really think NVIDIA would enter this market without consulting some of the brightest in the cryptocurrency space? Furthermore, do you really think NVIDIA would create a card that would be more expensive than their gaming counterparts? That makes no sense. Why would anyone ever buy a cryptocurrency card then, when they can just buy gaming?

Aftermarket cards are just slightly modified NVIDIA reference cards - generally the VRM, heatsink and fan are modified, along with the VBIOS.

Software support will come. Maybe not from NVIDIA. I will say this:

I'm on team green. And you should be too, in the upcoming months.

[Epsylon3]

indeed, basically removing the "G" part of the gpus... You may know you can already use a second card dedicated to PhysX computations in games in the nv control panel. Good idea so

[QuintLeo]

Actually, it's not a new idea - "computation-only" stuff already exists at the high end where Tesla lives, and AMD has had their Firepro-S series around (abet WAY overpriced like all "workstation" cards) for quite a while now.

 The trick for a "mining-specific" card would be to just not charge workstation-specific type OVERPRICING on them.

 The resale market would be a lot more limited than on standard consumer-type GPUs, but it's there.

 I could see EVGA in particular pushing such a card to their "Folding Bucks" participants.

[Guvn0r]

Just found this youtube video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7VpsJ6j2nZo

The video guy says they are expecting to see the cards to release around june 23rd according to some source.

30 Mh/s Eth Possible on 1060?

Good News?

[PanneKopp]

I won´t take any products with only 90 days of warranty in the EU.

[Zivdafast]

Just found this youtube video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7VpsJ6j2nZo

The video guy says they are expecting to see the cards to release around june 23rd according to some source.

30 Mh/s Eth Possible on 1060?

Good News?

It is not possible for 1060 unless it uses different number of cores and memory.

[sp_]

The gtx 1060 has a 192 bit bus.

Are they planning to change to a 256 bit bus?

[Aquazi]

I won´t take any products with only 90 days of warranty in the EU.

You can't release electronics with less than 2 years warranty in the EU regardless.

It's straight illegal.

[Ayers]

Just found this youtube video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7VpsJ6j2nZo

The video guy says they are expecting to see the cards to release around june 23rd according to some source.

30 Mh/s Eth Possible on 1060?

Good News?

it depend how much is the cost, if they cost much more than a 1060 but earn more also, it's good for density, maybe they will just change the amount of cuda and redo the pcb, but that news look a bit fake too me, and just rumors, i will trust it when there will be something official from nvidia or amd

[Guvn0r]

All the pics on the zcash forum where original discussion started looks photoshopped to me, also some of them i found out they are pics taken from a miner called Pangolinminer (china).

Not sure what they are trying to do with spreading news like this.

[dustreveal]

Guys, it is real.
NVidia cards 1080 or 1060 without display ports.  50,000 chips in this batch.  6 cards in a mining rig with a mother board , cpu,RAM all tunned for mining ,  sales price may vary from  RMB 18,000 or 2650USD to 21,000 RMB or 3000 USD per rig.

But, it won't be available to most of the miners. it is pre-ordered,These rigs are under the name of strategic defence initiative from NVidia against AMD cards or so they call it.

so, go back to the point that was discussed before: no need to hold on your nVidia farm plan cause: this batch is very small, if you don't know it from months ago, you won't be able to get them.

[Vaccinus]

Guys, it is real.
NVidia cards 1080 or 1060 without display ports.  50,000 chips in this batch.  6 cards in a mining rig with a mother board , cpu,RAM all tunned for mining ,  sales price may vary from  RMB 18,000 or 2650USD to 21,000 RMB or 3000 USD per rig.

But, it won't be available to most of the miners. it is pre-ordered,These rigs are under the name of strategic defence initiative from NVidia against AMD cards or so they call it.

so, go back to the point that was discussed before: no need to hold on your nVidia farm plan cause: this batch is very small, if you don't know it from months ago, you won't be able to get them.

where are the photo to see if this is real or not? also it seems that these gpu can not be sold to normal customers, but just for industry usage, becaue the 90 days warranty is illegal in europe

[nerdralph]

If nVidia is releasing a GPU for compute-only use, the cheapest way of doing it would be to use their existing GPU dies that have failed in areas that are only used for video output.  Those chips would otherwise be discarded, so it would almost be free money.  There wouldn't be a large percentage of chips that would only have failures in the output-dependent areas, but my guess would be in the 3-5% range.

[Guvn0r]

Just found this youtube video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7VpsJ6j2nZo

The video guy says they are expecting to see the cards to release around june 23rd according to some source.

30 Mh/s Eth Possible on 1060?

Good News?

it depend how much is the cost, if they cost much more than a 1060 but earn more also, it's good for density, maybe they will just change the amount of cuda and redo the pcb, but that news look a bit fake too me, and just rumors, i will trust it when there will be somethign official from nvidia or amd

what they show on zcash forums and on videos as 8x nvidia gpu is very identical to what looks like a stripped down ethminer made by some Chinese company by the name PANGOLINMINER, the whole thing looks fake to me too.. I too wouldn't trust this news without something official from nvidia or amd.

[dustreveal]

Guys, it is real.
NVidia cards 1080 or 1060 without display ports.  50,000 chips in this batch.  6 cards in a mining rig with a mother board , cpu,RAM all tunned for mining ,  sales price may vary from  RMB 18,000 or 2650USD to 21,000 RMB or 3000 USD per rig.

But, it won't be available to most of the miners. it is pre-ordered,These rigs are under the name of strategic defence initiative from NVidia against AMD cards or so they call it.

so, go back to the point that was discussed before: no need to hold on your nVidia farm plan cause: this batch is very small, if you don't know it from months ago, you won't be able to get them.

where are the photo to see if this is real or not? also it seems that these gpu can not be sold to normal customers, but just for industry usage, becaue the 90 days warranty is illegal in europe

You are right, it is not targeting you guys. and they do not sell it in EU. if you want to buy it, you buy it from dealer who probably will add warranty. but again, it is not for individual customer and it is not intended to either that is why they use 1080/1060 cards and did no other modifications but just strip out video output so that it doesn't disturb the gaming market.

[Zivdafast]

Just found this youtube video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7VpsJ6j2nZo

The video guy says they are expecting to see the cards to release around june 23rd according to some source.

30 Mh/s Eth Possible on 1060?

Good News?

it depend how much is the cost, if they cost much more than a 1060 but earn more also, it's good for density, maybe they will just change the amount of cuda and redo the pcb, but that news look a bit fake too me, and just rumors, i will trust it when there will be somethign official from nvidia or amd

what they show on zcash forums and on videos as 8x nvidia gpu is very identical to what looks like a stripped down ethminer made by some Chinese company by the name PANGOLINMINER, the whole thing looks fake to me too.. I too wouldn't trust this news without something official from nvidia or amd.

The 1060 cards they showed do not have many display ports, so it might be real.

[QuintLeo]

what they show on zcash forums and on videos as 8x nvidia gpu is very identical to what looks like a stripped down ethminer made by some Chinese company by the name PANGOLINMINER, the whole thing looks fake to me too.. I too wouldn't trust this news without something official from nvidia or amd.

 It looks more like a NVidia variation on the Pandaminer - using mobile versions of the cards, possibly modified a bit, like the Pandaminer uses mobile RX series cards.

[thinkfar]

Here they come
https://image.prntscr.com/image/PIaVH9WNTBaRXQT_68e-IQ.jpg
https://image.prntscr.com/image/9huRieUyQjSG3MBDEDAKnQ.jpg
https://image.prntscr.com/image/N0OzudBvRvK7BxZU-z9Img.jpg

[YIz]

Here they come

Looks good. hopefully the will be cheap and relatively well-cooled.

[QuintLeo]

Fins should have been rotated 90 degrees for better cooling - that big back hole doesn't help much when most of the air is going UP out of the card not back-and-front.

[nerdralph]

No RAM cooling will limit memory overclocking.

[luvien]

Asus

http://www.coindesk.com/asus-announces-new-graphics-cards-focused-cryptocurrency-mining/

[QuintLeo]

Sapphire has 4 "mining-specific" RX 470 based cards on their website now, 2 of them are listed on NewEgg as "out of stock" but I suspect they haven't actually had any stock of the cards yet.

[Kevinatin]

Here they come

The cards do not have video output. Does it mean it has to to at least one card with video out?

[thesmokingman]

Here they come

The cards do not have video output. Does it mean it has to to at least one card with video out?

Either that or you use onboard video as primary