AMD sales going good guns down to mining?

[Garz]

As per title.

So far this year nVidia have been the king of the GC hill, however in light of AMD cards being better GPU crunchers the increase in mining currencies has kept the cards flying off the shelf.

Recently the prices of these cards have taken a tumble with the anticipation of AMD Q4 release post "Hawaii", more are still being bought.

The announcement of the next gen console hardware using AMD things certainly are looking brighter for them.

With regards to mining, are you going to be purchasing more GPU's soon?

I for one have always crunched for science (protein folding etc) and these cards are great for it. It will be good for the consumers to see the GPU market come down in price a bit.

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[HellDiverUK]

Bitcoin mining is a minuscule percentage of overall GPU sales.  Anyone buying GPUs to mine coins now needs their heads looked at.

So, really, the answer is a resounding no.  It's got nothing to do with mining.

[Garz]

Whilst I agree with regards to Bitcoin.. other currencies using the Scrypt methods that utilise GPU work surely are being bought for this reason no?

Why are there threads with rigs being displayed got plenty of GPU's and risers if you say they are "nothing to do with mining"?

[HellDiverUK]

You really have no idea about how many of these things are sold to gamers.  Millions a year. 

How many people have multi-GPU mining rigs?  A few thousand, at most.

Seriously, bitcoin mining is a drop in the ocean to AMD.

[ChrisB92]

Anyone buying GPUs to mine coins now needs their heads looked at.

No, not really. I've been picking up multitudes of 5850's / 5870's off eBay for £30-40 and mining scrypt-based currencies. Currently using middlecoin (until I get round to creating my own pool), payback for each GPU is 30-45 days.

You're right about miners buying GPU's being a completely insignificant amount though, compared to all the gamers, etc, out there.

[HellDiverUK]

Yeah, buying old, used cards is different to going out and buying a 7970 or 7990, though.

I've bought used GPUs, used them for a while and sold them off with little to no losses, but I don't think I'll be doing that any more. 

I've only got 4 GPUs now, which are mining LTC.  I'll be selling them off in 6 months, they'll be both mining and keeping the house warm all winter. 

[ChrisB92]

Agree - you'd have to be nuts to go out and buy a 79xx with the intention of using it solely for mining lol.

And absolutely, bring on winter!

[Garz]

You really have no idea about how many of these things are sold to gamers.  Millions a year. 

How many people have multi-GPU mining rigs?  A few thousand, at most.

Seriously, bitcoin mining is a drop in the ocean to AMD.

I may not have an idea, no.

However you have indirectly answered my question without wanting to. They have contributed to the sales! If nVidia's cards were equally useful at mining then I think the % of AMD sales would have been much lower. To say it's a drop in the ocean is bull just look at the amount of dedicated mining rigs people have invested in - seriously having multiple GPU's in one machine, not the one per unit you are referring to when sold for just gaming. 

I always go for the best value card, it also happens to be something I like my cards doing should I not be using the PC.

[HellDiverUK]

Bitcointalk.org forum - 143,000 users.  Probably a good percentage are spammers or noobs.  But I think most people mining any coins will have an acocunt here.  Generous estimation that 50,000 people run multi-GPU rigs.
Steam - 5,700,000 concurrent users, 33% of which run ATI.  That's just Steam users over the past 24 hours. 

I think GPU miners are indeed a drop in the ocean.

[Garz]

I think GPU miners are indeed a drop in the ocean.

But how many of them Steam users have new cards?...

Anyway, thats just my thoughts. We post on forums to get other people's and discuss.

[kslavik]

Agree - you'd have to be nuts to go out and buy a 79xx with the intention of using it solely for mining lol.

And absolutely, bring on winter!

I just bought used 7950 from Amazon last week for $199 with free shipping and game coupon (which I will sell on ebay for $30).
http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/B007NG3WR2/ref=sr_1_1_olp?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1377110033&sr=1-1&keywords=7950+msi&condition=used

7950 is now the best GPU considering Hash/$ mining scrypt coins. My average return mining scypt is 3x of the BTC mining with the same card. Only 20% of my mined coins are going towards power bill (I pay $0.08 per kWh)

Am I doing something wrong buying 7950 now? Am I nuts?

[Garz]

Not in my eyes however Chris might have something to say. Like mentioned earlier you wouldnt want a decent AMD card just for mining  .. however if I was buying a card at this moment I think it is a great choice of card.

[ChrisB92]

Agree - you'd have to be nuts to go out and buy a 79xx with the intention of using it solely for mining lol.

And absolutely, bring on winter!

I just bought used 7950 from Amazon last week for $199 with free shipping and game coupon (which I will sell on ebay for $30).
http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/B007NG3WR2/ref=sr_1_1_olp?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1377110033&sr=1-1&keywords=7950+msi&condition=used

7950 is now the best GPU considering Hash/$ mining scrypt coins. My average return mining scypt is 3x of the BTC mining with the same card. Only 20% of my mined coins are going towards power bill (I pay $0.08 per kWh)

Am I doing something wrong buying 7950 now? Am I nuts?

That sounds good to be honest. Perhaps I should have been more specific.

In the UK, it doesn't (seem) to make sense to buy 79xx+ cards specifically for mining. Looking at the same cards on Amazon UK they're getting on for costing twice as much here.

Just for the sake of comparrison (US/UK):

Card	Price	KH/s (scrypt)	KH/s per $
5850	£35 (ebay.co.uk) / $45 (ebay.com)	375 KH/s	UK: 0.1456  |  US: 0.12
7950	£150 (ebay.com) / $165 (ebay.com)	575 KH/s	UK: 0.4069  |  US: 0.2869

Prices listed are the best I could find anywhere (used - Amazon, eBay, etc on US and UK versions of each site). KH/s per $ done by current £ -> $ exchange rate (1.56). Comparison is in KH/s (scrypt) since you have to be beyond nuts to consider mining BTC with GPU's.  

From my little table, 5850's appear to be the most economical buy (strictly for mining) in both the US and UK... but especially UK.

[Garz]

Good pricing explanation.

I would like to add that I too would not buy (Graphics Cards) to mine Bitcoin, it would however influence my decision for something like LTC.

Also the time I started 'buying' or changing rigs to set this activity up was months ago when it was feasible.

Previously I crunched for Folding@home and BOINC stuff before this so I do not have to be participating for profit or to justify spending, it is was purely moral.

If I just gamed then nVidia would be equally bearing down on my decisions, but I dont get time these days..

[Garz]

That sounds good to be honest. Perhaps I should have been more specific.

In the UK, it doesn't (seem) to make sense to buy 79xx+ cards specifically for mining.

From my little table, 5850's appear to be the most economical buy (strictly for mining) in both the US and UK... but especially UK.

I have an old generation of rig (Opteron CPU) so when I changed from a 8800GT I managed to get hold of two HD 7770 for a total sum of £75 a few months ago which at the time was a steal!

My mobo can crossfire so I set these up and after some faffing got the cards playing smoothly on PS2 etc so was happy with that, I then set them onto mining which they are pretty pants for to be honest but they are quite efficient on the power draw.

When I do upgrade sometime I should be in a good position to get the next gen of processor (Haswell) and have visibility on the new 9xxx range which may then twist my arm to purchase a new system which I hope again to get ~ 4 years from. 

[kslavik]

Agree - you'd have to be nuts to go out and buy a 79xx with the intention of using it solely for mining lol.

And absolutely, bring on winter!

I just bought used 7950 from Amazon last week for $199 with free shipping and game coupon (which I will sell on ebay for $30).
http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/B007NG3WR2/ref=sr_1_1_olp?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1377110033&sr=1-1&keywords=7950+msi&condition=used

7950 is now the best GPU considering Hash/$ mining scrypt coins. My average return mining scypt is 3x of the BTC mining with the same card. Only 20% of my mined coins are going towards power bill (I pay $0.08 per kWh)

Am I doing something wrong buying 7950 now? Am I nuts?

That sounds good to be honest. Perhaps I should have been more specific.

In the UK, it doesn't (seem) to make sense to buy 79xx+ cards specifically for mining. Looking at the same cards on Amazon UK they're getting on for costing twice as much here.

Just for the sake of comparrison (US/UK):

Card	Price	KH/s (scrypt)	KH/s per $
5850	£35 (ebay.co.uk) / $45 (ebay.com)	375 KH/s	UK: 0.1456  |  US: 0.12
7950	£150 (ebay.com) / $165 (ebay.com)	575 KH/s	UK: 0.4069  |  US: 0.2869

Prices listed are the best I could find anywhere (used - Amazon, eBay, etc on US and UK versions of each site). KH/s per $ done by current £ -> $ exchange rate (1.56). Comparison is in KH/s (scrypt) since you have to be beyond nuts to consider mining BTC with GPU's.  

From my little table, 5850's appear to be the most economical buy (strictly for mining) in both the US and UK... but especially UK.

I see your point about 5850, it does seem like a good deal now.

Couple corrections:
1. It looks like you have divided $ by kH, and it should be in reverse to come up with kH/$: (higher number is better)
5850: 375kH/$45   = 8.33 (which is a great ratio)
7950: 575Kh/$165  = 3.4

2. You took 576 Kh/s for 7950 which is kind of low: none of my MSI 7950 produce less than 650Kh/s. (small change to the ratio, but nevertheless), on the other hand you took 375kh/s for 5850, which a little high for that card: 350 kH/s is more likely.

3. When building rigs with those cards, other equipment (CPU, Motherboard, PSU, Memory) have to be also considered.
For the rate of let us say 3300Kh/s you would need to build 1 rig of 7950 cards, but 2 rigs with 5850, right?

1 rig of 5850:
GPU: 5*45 = $225
Memory: $78
CPU: $50
hdd: $50
Motherboard: $114
PSU (2x1000w): $198
OS:  $100
Raisers: 5x5$ = 25
-----------------
Total Price = $838
Total Kh/s  = 375*5 = 1875
Kh/$ = 1875/838 = 2.23

1 rig of 7950:
GPU: 5*165 = $990
Memory: $78
CPU: $50
hdd: $50
Motherboard: $114
PSU (2x1000w): $198
OS:  $100
Raisers: 5x5$ = 25
-----------------
Total Price = $1603
Total Kh/s  = 660*5 = 3300
Kh/$ = 3300/1603 = 2.05

So, 2.05 Khs/$ is in fact lower than 2.23 you would get from 5850 rig, but not by much.
There are other factors to considering when selecting cards for the rigs:
1. 7950 is a little more efficient power wise than 5850
2. You would have to manage less rigs with 7950 (for the same total KH rate)
3. It will be much harder to resale 5850 in 1 year for any price than 7950

Edit: if you are able to stick 6 cards into 1 rig, the ratios would change to 2.47 for 7950 and to 2.54 for 5850.
Edit2: if 350Kh is used for 5850 calculations, 7950 will have the same ratio for 5 cards rig and better ratio for 6 cards rig

[ChrisB92]

Good points, thanks for the corrections.

I didn't set out to make a bad case for the 7950 or anything - I didn't look too much in to it. Got the KH/s figure from a 7950 overclocking thread on here and I guess if people were buying GPU's specifically for mining, the chances are they'll be filling out a rig with 6 GPU's.

The prices for all electronics (from computer components to guitar amps) are terrible in the UK vs USA. Also, $0.08/kWh is very cheap! On average in the UK, it's £0.15-16 ($0.23-25) per kWh!

[Garz]

Also, $0.08/kWh is very cheap! On average in the UK, it's £0.15-16 ($0.23-25) per kWh!

This is a game changer tbh. Seeing as the utility companies are already threatening another price hike 15p per kWh is pretty generous considering.

Under-volting is an option but long term it's not looking optimistic should the running price creep up. If you do not pay for your electric however is a different story.

[kslavik]

Good points, thanks for the corrections.

I didn't set out to make a bad case for the 7950 or anything - I didn't look too much in to it. Got the KH/s figure from a 7950 overclocking thread on here and I guess if people were buying GPU's specifically for mining, the chances are they'll be filling out a rig with 6 GPU's.

The prices for all electronics (from computer components to guitar amps) are terrible in the UK vs USA. Also, $0.08/kWh is very cheap! On average in the UK, it's £0.15-16 ($0.23-25) per kWh!

Well, the actual price per kWh is $0.049. The rest $0.03 is for other charges from the evil power company and from the governments: Customer Charge, State Tax, County Tax, Franchise Charge, Distribution charge, Standard Metering charge, Transmission charge.

But you are right, only because electricity is so cheap in my area, I can stay profitable mining with GPU much longer then the rest of the world. So, I think GPU scrypt mining would be there for a while until there is a scrypt ASIC on the market.

There are very limited number of places which can compete considering price of the equipment and availability of enough cheap electricity (not much you can mine even if electricity is included in your apartment rent but you cannot put more than couple of rigs without triggering a circuit breaker)

[BeepBeep2]

You really have no idea about how many of these things are sold to gamers.  Millions a year. 

How many people have multi-GPU mining rigs?  A few thousand, at most.

Seriously, bitcoin mining is a drop in the ocean to AMD.

I think you're a bit off on your figures.
Top end cards are a drop in the ocean to AMD. Midrange/lowend/OEM and APU are the bread winners of the product lines.

[Garz]

You really have no idea about how many of these things are sold to gamers.  Millions a year. 

How many people have multi-GPU mining rigs?  A few thousand, at most.

Seriously, bitcoin mining is a drop in the ocean to AMD.

I think you're a bit off on your figures.
Top end cards are a drop in the ocean to AMD. Midrange/lowend/OEM and APU are the bread winners of the product lines.

Well his contradictory posts in other threads (indicating to buy multiple cards to mine) which as you quite rightly put are in the companies mid-high end range. This is why even if they are a "few thousand" customers each with say three cards per machine starts to now equate to Tens of thousands...

Tens of thousands high end will be a big chunk as these cards are/were going for £250 - £600.

The low end cards or previous gen typically start around £30 - £120 which will be one per rig. Budget systems will have the onboard graphics too. 

[polarhei]

The Sales good is not only on mining but the optimization.

Normally before work, you will need to pass the CPU for the array. But AMD acts slightly differs. AMD includes some CPU on their GPU called GCN to shorten some complex steps in order to speed up. One more thing, Lowest cost with impressive performance for every aspect.

Additionally the Integer operation is well optimized for performance-per-watt.

[Garz]

Which leads the roundabout back to mining and AMD being the better performer than their counterparts (nVidia). This has buffed their sales enough to focus on their next target leaving them in a good position.

[forevernoob]

Just curious; any of you guys holding AMD stock?

[DeathAndTaxes]

Just curious; any of you guys holding AMD stock?

Not any more.  I held AMD for a long time but Intel is a ruthless competitor.  I began buying AMD back in the 90s and continued through the end of the decade.  For a while things looked bright but post 2002 AMD has struggled and that is more to due to Intel then any failure at AMD.  I sold out the last of my relatively large position in the mid 2000s.  The situation has only gotten worse since then.

As much as I like AMD the company I would not recommend anyone buy AMD the stock.  Intel is just very good at what they do and being "second best" is a bad spot to be in.  With NVidia and AMD/ATI they trade top spot back and forth.  However for pretty much the last decade Intel has been solidly on top.  Gone are the P4 days where they were sloppy and chips were overpriced.  Today they are a full process node ahead of AMD, their "tick tock" strategy has been solid for a half dozen product upgrades, and they can manipulate margins to squeeze AMD out.  Intel can build chips cheaper than AMD and they simply set the price points of various models in the lineup to minimize AMD margins.  Intel pricing isn't just to maximize current dollars for Intel but also to prevent AMD from gaining the resources necessary to become a better competitor in the future.  I doubt Intel will ever risk AMD going bankrupt (monopoly investigations) but they have essentially cornered AMD into a lower margin, lower share business.  Given Intel will keep AMD alive if I absolutely had to put money into AMD it would be AMD corporate bonds.  In the GPU space AMD buying ATI was pure genius and well timed however there is less and less need for more and more CPU cores so expect more "CPU" die space to be devoted to GPU.  As on die GPU become better and better is squezes the discrete graphics market.  Not many people know this but Intel has 70%+ of the GPU space.  All low end but the low end is getting better.



To link back to the OP all the GPU are a rounding error for AMD annual sales.  Total GPU mining was ~25 TH/s.  Lets be generous and say that ended up costing ~$1 per MH/s (GPU cost only).  So we are talking $25M in GPU sales directly due to mining.  Now some of those were existing sales converted to mining but lets ignore that.  Still $25M isn't in one year, GPU mining has been going on for three years, so say ~$8M annually is increased sales.  AMD average sales for the last three years were $5.8B annually.  So we are talking <0.2% of gross sales. Now hypothetically if ASIC/FPGA were impossible then maybe someday it might have been more important.

[Garz]

Nice info, thanks D&T.

[zvs]

Just curious; any of you guys holding AMD stock?

Not any more.  I held AMD for a long time but Intel is a ruthless competitor.  I began buying AMD back in the 90s and continued through the end of the decade.  For a while things looked bright but post 2002 AMD has struggled and that is more to due to Intel then any failure at AMD.  I sold out the last of my relatively large position in the mid 2000s.  The situation has only gotten worse since then.

As much as I like AMD the company I would not recommend anyone buy AMD the stock.  Intel is just very good at what they do and being "second best" is a bad spot to be in.  With NVidia and AMD/ATI they trade top spot back and forth.  However for pretty much the last decade Intel has been solidly on top.  Gone are the P4 days where they were sloppy and chips were overpriced.  Today they are a full process node ahead of AMD, their "tick tock" strategy has been solid for a half dozen product upgrades, and they can manipulate margins to squeeze AMD out.  Intel can build chips cheaper than AMD and they simply set the price points of various models in the lineup to minimize AMD margins.  Intel pricing isn't just to maximize current dollars for Intel but also to prevent AMD from gaining the resources necessary to become a better competitor in the future.  I doubt Intel will ever risk AMD going bankrupt (monopoly investigations) but they have essentially cornered AMD into a lower margin, lower share business.  Given Intel will keep AMD alive if I absolutely had to put money into AMD it would be AMD corporate bonds.  In the GPU space AMD buying ATI was pure genius and well timed however there is less and less need for more and more CPU cores so expect more "CPU" die space to be devoted to GPU.  As on die GPU become better and better is squezes the discrete graphics market.  Not many people know this but Intel has 70%+ of the GPU space.  All low end but the low end is getting better.



To link back to the OP all the GPU are a rounding error for AMD annual sales.  Total GPU mining was ~25 TH/s.  Lets be generous and say that ended up costing ~$1 per MH/s (GPU cost only).  So we are talking $25M in GPU sales directly due to mining.  Now some of those were existing sales converted to mining but lets ignore that.  Still $25M isn't in one year, GPU mining has been going on for three years, so say ~$8M annually is increased sales.  AMD average sales for the last three years were $5.8B annually.  So we are talking <0.2% of gross sales. Now hypothetically if ASIC/FPGA were impossible then maybe someday it might have been more important.

desktop video card sales are a very small portion of that $5.8B annually you're speaking of

[DeathAndTaxes]

Which hardly matters.  If a farmer sells tomatoes and beans and tomatoes only make up 10% of his gross revenue, then finding a way to boost tomato production 2% so that his gross revenue will increase 0.2% doesn't make a material difference.   Still if you have a breakdown for GPU sales then feel free to use that.  $8M (optimisticly unrealistic) is still a rounding error.

[ajw7989]

Most people that buy video cards use them for gaming, video editing ,etc not bitcoin mining otherwise they would make bitcoin video cards asap. Remember a corporation is there to make money

[forevernoob]

Most people that buy video cards use them for gaming, video editing ,etc not bitcoin mining otherwise they would make bitcoin video cards asap. Remember a corporation is there to make money

Yes, but one could argue that gamers and miners fall under the same category: "Enthusiasts"

It's interesting however whether or not mining is helping AMD win market shares in the Enthusiast category. Like D&T pointed out Intel has the biggest market share of GPU's. But that's counting all the GPUs.
Most Enthusiasts buy High-End which means either AMD or NVIDIA.

I realize this doesn't help AMD's profitability more than being popular amongst HTPC Enthusiasts or making really cheap laptops, but at least it's something.

No, I'm not a stock holder. But I wish the best for AMD since we all know competition is what drives innovation & technology forward.

[Garz]

Agreed.

Smudging over the fact that all these people buying mulit-GPU 'risers' to stash away and mine are hardly gamers now are they? 

They have not been bought to play games on, and at 4+ at a time starts making a dent into the what once was a predictable market. You also have an enthusiast (thanks for that word forevernoob) sector that doesn't just mine coins but crunch for science/aliens (whatever project that can utilise CPU/GPU processing power) and then the market widens somewhat.

Maybe when the goldrush settles and the ASICS take over there will be a hugh surplus of decent GPU's on the auction sites for us all to cherry pick at!

I too buy for value (Price/Performance) and have owned both camps in the familiar CPU/GPU brands but as highlighted above competition is key.