Radeon RX 6500 XT is bad at cryptocurrency mining on purpose, AMD says

[Hydrogen]

AMD will begin selling its latest budget GPU, the Radeon RX 6500 XT, on January 19th. Its retail price is $199. But the ongoing GPU shortage, caused in part by cryptocurrency miners and scalpers who are snapping up every card they can get, has made it mostly impossible to get any graphics card at its list price over the past year.

Whether the 6500 XT will be any different depends partly on supply, but AMD has also apparently designed the card to make it deliberately less appealing to miners while retaining its usefulness as an entry-level graphics card. Speaking to journalists in a press roundtable earlier this week, AMD Radeon VP Laura Smith talked about how the 6500 XT had been “optimized” for games (a transcript from a now-apparently-deleted PCWorld article is preserved here).

"We have really optimized this one to be gaming-first at that target market," Smith said. "And you can see that with the way that we configured the part. Even with the four gigs of frame buffer. That’s a really nice frame buffer size for the majority of AAA games, but it’s not particularly attractive if you’re doing blockchain-type activities or mining activities.”

Indeed, if you look at the spec sheet of the 6500 XT, you’ll notice a few things that stick out compared to the last-gen RX 5500 XT. For starters, there isn’t an 8GB version of the 6500 XT. The 6500 XT also uses a 64-bit memory interface, which is exceedingly rare in modern GPUs—you’ll sometimes see it in low-end dedicated laptop GPUs like the GeForce MX 450, but discrete GPUs released within the last couple of generations have mostly stuck to 128-bit memory interfaces at a minimum. Both of these decisions make the 6500 XT bad for Ethereum mining in particular, since it needs more than 4GB of video RAM and really likes memory bandwidth.

To make up for the slower memory interface and help the card compete with the RX 570-class cards that AMD wants it to replace, AMD has boosted the clock speed of the RX 6500 XT way up. Its maximum boost frequency is 2815 MHz, up from 1845 MHz in the RX 5500 XT. Even the top-tier 6900 XT only boosts up to 2250 MHz—it just has a lot more GPU hardware and much more memory bandwidth to work with in the first place.

Nvidia has also taken steps to limit its GPUs’ mining capabilities, most notably when it re-issued “LHR” (or Low Hash Rate) versions of the RTX 3000-series cards in mid-2021. But the underlying hardware remains capable of better hash rates, and determined miners have used everything from alternative BIOSes to special software to buggy drivers to restore all or part of those cards’ mining performance. The 6500 XT shouldn’t have those problems—it’s generally not possible to hack more video RAM onto a graphics card. What remains to be seen is whether the design decisions that make the 6500 XT sub-optimal for mining also make it sub-optimal for gaming.


https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/01/amd-says-rx-6500-xt-is-optimized-to-be-good-for-gaming-and-bad-for-mining/

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It appears new GPUs are designed to restrict features which make them good options for crypto mining.

I think it won't necessarily impair production of GPU hardware. Other semiconductor producers could seize an opportunity by producing GPUs specifically for crypto mining markets spurned by AMD and nvidia. Its been said that nature abhors a vacuum. Free markets also tend to abhor neglected niches where profits can be made.

It is also possible hardware modders could buy GPUs designed to be poorly equipped for crypto mining. Remove limiting restrictive components while soldering in new modchips which make them better options for mining. Similar to hardware modders altering gaming consoles to remove regional game restrictions.

How does everyone envision the future of the crypto mining industry panning out?

[1714970844]

1714970844

[dothebeats]

Even Nvidia is releasing newer generation graphics cards that are extremely poor at mining so that miners wouldn't snag them off of gamers' hands, and that the supply would at least be stable. They should have done this a long time ago after they have received reports of massive gpu farms mining altcoins from 2015 onwards. That decision might have pushed back their sales for a bit but shortages and the likes wouldn't get so bad now had they done it.

IMO, graphics cards for PC should have their mining capabilities sealed or locked, with no vulnerabilities to exploit it whatsoever so that miners wouldn't even think of buying them at all.

[odolvlobo]

It's a weird response to the huge demand for their product. Instead of increasing production to make more money, manufacturers intentionally cripple their product to reduce demand.

On the other hand, demand for graphics cards for mining is very volatile. Perhaps manufacturers would rather sell fewer cards than risk committing to a huge production run that they potentially can't sell.

[Hydrogen]

IMO, graphics cards for PC should have their mining capabilities sealed or locked, with no vulnerabilities to exploit it whatsoever so that miners wouldn't even think of buying them at all.

Some might find the following interesting:

Ford Combats F-150 Lightning Scalping With No-Sale Provision

Scalpers have made it almost impossible to find next-gen consoles, graphics cards, or even novelty products like the Razer Zephyr face mask at their normal price. Ford is reportedly trying to avoid its upcoming F-150 Lightning from suffering a similar fate by allowing dealerships to use a No-Sale provision that would prevent buyers from reselling the vehicle for at least a year.

https://www.pcmag.com/news/ford-combats-f-150-lightning-scalping-with-no-sale-provision

Even automakers like ford appear to have the same issues as AMD and Nvidia.

They're limiting sales of their upcoming electric truck, the F-150 Lightning to 1 year without resale to prevent scalpers from buying and reselling it en masse.

[Mahanton]

It's a weird response to the huge demand for their product. Instead of increasing production to make more money, manufacturers intentionally cripple their product to reduce demand.

On the other hand, demand for graphics cards for mining is very volatile. Perhaps manufacturers would rather sell fewer cards than risk committing to a huge production run that they potentially can't sell.

Quite odd eh? Instead of making more mining capable gpu cards they do rather make out things to be bad at mining in purpose which is really a dumb thing to be done since these companies are business then its
understandable that they should making more which is capable on doing mining and more efficient and with this and with the industry of mining crypto is getting bigger then potential of bigger
demands is on next in line but looks like they arent interested on it or something that boggles them in terms of some regulation or been have limiting or restricted?

[franky1]

what you will start to see  is any altcoin which has lasted a test of time and has some utility, will start to see ASIC's made fro them.
as for the other coins (crapcoins) they will die out as people shift their existing efficient gpu to the more long lasting/utility coins.


yes AMD can make alot more money by appeasing the miners by offering mining efficient asics. but that requires scaling up production to meet the demands of both gaming and mining industries. they seem to be preferring not to scale up to meet both industry neds and instead want to concentrate on purely appeasing the gaming industry demand by removing things that the mining industry want it for.

the main reason i could see them doing this. is because when mining, many 'overclock' or have GPU running 24/7 at high processing rates, which can kill a GPU quick. which can affect AMD's warranty replacement rate, causing AMD more costs.

[VasilyS]

A serious disadvantage of Radeon RX 6500 XT is low bandwidth of the memory bus (64 bits), as well as use of only 4 PCI-E lanes. This greatly reduces performance of the memory subsystem. However, given the presence of 16 MB of third-level cache (AMD Infinity Cache), throughput of the RX 6500 XT is declared by AMD at 232 GB/s. This value is achievable when performing operations with small data packets and can seriously increase hashrate on some mining algorithms (like lyra2z330).
Similair improuvment is observed on CPU Intel i5-4570R with 128 MiB of L4 cash (article about mining performance of this CPU is here: https://www.cryptoprofi.info/?p=11239).

[swogerino]

It's a weird response to the huge demand for their product. Instead of increasing production to make more money, manufacturers intentionally cripple their product to reduce demand.

On the other hand, demand for graphics cards for mining is very volatile. Perhaps manufacturers would rather sell fewer cards than risk committing to a huge production run that they potentially can't sell.

Quite odd eh? Instead of making more mining capable gpu cards they do rather make out things to be bad at mining in purpose which is really a dumb thing to be done since these companies are business then its
understandable that they should making more which is capable on doing mining and more efficient and with this and with the industry of mining crypto is getting bigger then potential of bigger
demands is on next in line but looks like they arent interested on it or something that boggles them in terms of some regulation or been have limiting or restricted?

They want to please the gamers also and to be honest as much as I love AMD their flagship card RX 6900 XT does only 65 Mhsh in mining,meaning against its main competitor is almost half of performance,RTX 3090 does 115 Mhsh easily.I don't get why so much debate if they want to create a low end card like this one for gamers,they will be happy and finally shut their mouth about miners.
We have enough mining cards from Nvidia,all the RTX series do very well at it and also AMD is not behind with the RX 5700 and above cards.

[HashingTower]

Its looks like AMD finally released their own version of LHR GPU  wonders will never end they say anyways good AMD GPU for mining starts from 6600xt and they are cheap so why would anyone want to buy the more lower GPU anyways? Still all good to me 😊

[ccplz]

IMO, graphics cards for PC should have their mining capabilities sealed or locked, with no vulnerabilities to exploit it whatsoever so that miners wouldn't even think of buying them at all.

Some might find the following interesting:

Ford Combats F-150 Lightning Scalping With No-Sale Provision

Scalpers have made it almost impossible to find next-gen consoles, graphics cards, or even novelty products like the Razer Zephyr face mask at their normal price. Ford is reportedly trying to avoid its upcoming F-150 Lightning from suffering a similar fate by allowing dealerships to use a No-Sale provision that would prevent buyers from reselling the vehicle for at least a year.

https://www.pcmag.com/news/ford-combats-f-150-lightning-scalping-with-no-sale-provision

Even automakers like ford appear to have the same issues as AMD and Nvidia.

They're limiting sales of their upcoming electric truck, the F-150 Lightning to 1 year without resale to prevent scalpers from buying and reselling it en masse.

do people really scalp vehicles? what the fuck is going on with this world

[JayDDee]

It could be spin but it doesn't look like LHR to me. It's just a cheap GPU that isn't any good for mining.
It doesn't look like they're trying to punish miners the way Nvidia is.

[FP91G]

64-bit memory interface and 4 GB of memory will not make this video card popular for mining.
I will definitely look at the tests of this video card in mining, but I did not plan to buy this video card. 6600xt is now very expensive, maybe the release of 6500xt will reduce the price in stores for other video cards.

[odolvlobo]

Ford Combats F-150 Lightning Scalping With No-Sale Provision
...

do people really scalp vehicles? what the fuck is going on with this world

It's not typical. There is a two-year waiting list for that truck, and plenty of people would pay extra to get one earlier.

[CoinToMine]

Back in time you could directly buy GPU from AMD and Nvidia and they would ship any thing you wantend at the quantity wanted..