Tuesday, July 4th 2017
BIOSTAR Intros VA47D5RV42 Mining Graphics Card with "RX 470D" GPU
BIOSTAR posted technical specifications of its first graphics card designed for crypto-currency mining, bearing the model number "VA47D5RV42." This card, which is based on the design of its RX 470/480 graphics cards; is built around the Radeon RX 470D chip, and endowed with 4 GB of GDDR5 memory. The RX 470D is a "lite edition" or LE variant of the Polaris 10 silicon, which never made it to the DIY channel market, but occasionally reared its head in the pre-built OEM market. It features fewer stream processors than the RX 470, at 1,792 vs. 2,048. The chip is clocked at 1200 MHz (boost), with 7.00 GHz (GDDR5-effective) memory. Interestingly, unlike most "mining" graphics cards we've seen so far, this card appears to feature a full complement of display outputs, which includes three DisplayPorts and one each of HDMI and DVI. The company didn't reveal pricing.
23 Comments on BIOSTAR Intros VA47D5RV42 Mining Graphics Card with "RX 470D" GPU
For GPU cards to be made for a specific market (mining xor gaming), mining cards have to be unusable in games (e.g. no video output) and gaming cards have to be pointless for mining as much as possible.
Having a single DVI or HDMI would always be nice. Price/MH/s is what matters.
Still looks like shit.
What is different about a proper currency is that it is guaranteed by the state that issues it.
"Toy money" is unnecessary pejorative, but so is "monopoly money".
In the end only one question is important...
Would you invest your life savings (e.g. your retirement account) in Bitcoin?
I'm talking about (basically) preserving the value. About minimizing risk. That's why I mentioned retirement account. :-D
You might be risking a portion of your saving in BTC, but you're still keeping most of it in USD or instruments priced in USD. That's because USD is stable. It's safe money.
Mind you, there are countries on Earth that don't have a privilage of stable state money. They actually put their saving in something else, usually... USD (or other currency considered safe, like EUR or CHF).
I'm from a country that had such problems 20 years ago - maybe that's because I value state money so highly, while people in US don't know how it is to live with >100% inflation. But no offence - good for you...If you invest in US, your investments are most likely evaluated in USD. So you're implicitly investing in USD as well, just with very low risk. When you keep USD cash at home, you're also investing in USD.
It's like trading currency pairs on FOREX. When I buy a pair, e.g. EUR/USD, my profit depends on performance of both currencies.
And companies are not investing in cryptocurrencies as money. They try to utilize the concept of blockchain, because it solves a lot of problems. But this has nothing to do with mining. Actually, it has nothing to do with the currencies you know today. Corporations create in-house, "closed" blockchains. And they're mostly designed for improving internal processes.
So yes, there might come a day when you'll be able to pay your electricity bill or insurance with Bitcoin. But this is not what electric and insurance companies see as the actual benefit of blockchain (something worth investing billions).