Friday, August 4th 2017
AMD RX Vega Mining Performance Reportedly Doubled With Driver Updates
Disclaimer: take this post with a bucket of salt. However, the information here, if true, could heavily impact AMD's RX Vega cards' stock at launch and in the subsequent days, so, we're sharing this so our readers can decide on whether they want to pull the trigger for a Vega card at launch, as soon as possible, or risk what would seem like the equivalent of a mining Black Friday crowd gobbling up AMD's RX Vega models' stock. Remember that AMD has already justified delays for increased stock so as to limit the impact of miners on the available supply.
The information has been put out by two different sources already. The first source we encountered (and which has been covered by some media outlets solo) has been one post from one of OC UK's staff, Gibbo, who in a forum post, said "Seems the hash rate on VEGA is 70-100 per card, which is insanely good. Trying to devise some kind of plan so gamers can get them at MSRP without the miners wiping all the stock out within 5 minutes of product going live."
The fact that a staffer from OC UK is actually looking for ways to prevent miners from wiping the stock speaks more to the credence of the information than the "70-100 hash rate" claim. Apparently, this information was conveyed to Gibbo from an AMD AIB partner, who remains unknown at time of writing. This information has already been sort of confirmed by a second source, coming out of Videocardz's Why Cry. In a post, the editor reported how he already had come in possession of similar information through his sources, who put the hash rate of RX Vega close to double that of the Frontier Edition's original hash rate, which was ~30 MH/s in Ethereum mining. This means the hash rate could be ~60 mark, which is still close to OC UK's Gibbo's reference to a "70-100" hash rate. This increase in hash rate was apparently indirectly enabled by updated driver features for the RX Vega cards. Apparently, these were included in the drivers to improve features and gaming performance - which also indirectly resulted in increased mining capabilities.
We had already covered in our Vega Architecture Technical Overview article that AMD's Vega NGCU computation capabilities were bolstered through added support for over 40 new ISA instructions, which result in increased IPC over Polaris - and which were also mentioned by VSG at the time as being "very relevant for GPU mining."
Adding to this story is the fact that recent optimizations from a Reddit user to a Monero mining program and an underclock to 1.3 GHz have brought the Frontier Edition's mining hashrates to around 1.16 kH/s - 34% faster than a GeForce GTX 1080 Ti (around 0.76 kH/s according to Nicehash), and 43% faster than a single Radeon RX 580 8 GB. This means that the $999 Frontier Edition currently stands at double the mining performance of the GTX 1080 on Monero - and the gaming RX Vega, with its $499 price-tag, should follow suit. And these are optimizations achieved by a single user, for a cryptocurrency that is admittedly not as popular as Ethereum or others. But increasing levels of performance in some mining algorithms really does leave the door open for exploration of improved speeds on others, and you can rest assured that miners will, at the very least, attempt to achieve these optimizations in other cryptocurrencies.
All in all, if true, these reports lend credence to AMD's take on the RX Vega delays for stock build-up. And the situation seems to be less straightforward than one might hope when it comes to disabling these instructions, or only enabling them at a latter date, after gamers had already had some time to purchase their desired cards. Because these driver-level updates were apparently done with the intent to bolster gaming performance, I believe it's safe to assume AMD can't easily neuter the mining improvements without putting the increased gaming performance at risk as well. Let's see how this pans out, but consider yourselves at least warned - the RX Vega may see much reduced stock and increased pricing throughout if this scenario pans out. in the meantime, those Radeon Packs with both their shortcomings and opportunities are looking like an increasingly interesting way to get ahold of one of AMD's latest...
Sources:
OCUK's Gibbo, Videocardz, NAG, Dirtbagdh @ Reddit
The information has been put out by two different sources already. The first source we encountered (and which has been covered by some media outlets solo) has been one post from one of OC UK's staff, Gibbo, who in a forum post, said "Seems the hash rate on VEGA is 70-100 per card, which is insanely good. Trying to devise some kind of plan so gamers can get them at MSRP without the miners wiping all the stock out within 5 minutes of product going live."
We had already covered in our Vega Architecture Technical Overview article that AMD's Vega NGCU computation capabilities were bolstered through added support for over 40 new ISA instructions, which result in increased IPC over Polaris - and which were also mentioned by VSG at the time as being "very relevant for GPU mining."
216 Comments on AMD RX Vega Mining Performance Reportedly Doubled With Driver Updates
So money is only as stable as the government or liquid assets backing it, crypto has no government and is the first to be so, and the value is an arbitrary amount that few have most of the control of. That sounds like a recipe for disaster at some time in the future.
So very different.
Are you implying that cash sort of sits in it's own little special place ? It doesn't , it's money that you made , just like the money you get from your job.
Jul 8 Anyone buying hardware to mine Ethereum is going to lose
Jul 11 Ethereum Mining is Dead: Price Drops, Difficulty Booms
Jul 20 Cryptocurrency mining deflates, used GPUs hit eBay
It's like an addiction: the highs are high but the lows are low.
I was hoping to find out details on the power consumption but doesn't look he did it. His bill was probably $1000/mo. If this keeps up, I wouldn't be surprised if power companies add surcharges for people that surge in power consumption.
This card's hype was built on HBM2. Not HBM. It's HBM2; "two" - new, better, more.
If not for this, it'll be just another GPU - no one would care.
Same for Zen. It's not just an MCM CPU with some interconnect solution. It has Infinity Matrix - a name instantly attractive and familiar to Millennials.Yes, it's income. But it's not profit.
If your rig is not effective, i.e. using more electricity than it creates value in coins, you still have an income (maybe a big one). But you're not making a profit.It's meaningless to check if you're actually earning money on your work/investment? Seriously?But you also have some costs of your job! E.g. you have to cover commuting. If you work in an office, you usually have to get formal clothes. And so on.
I don't recognize commuting as a job cost, because I'd buy a monthly bus ticket anyway. But I do spend around $50 / month on clothes that I only use at work. And I also eat out often because of my job: that is another $100 / month.
Things like this add up... a job with a higher salary might not be the job with higher profit.
Yes, there is income, but the point is that is not the same as profit.
You are missing the point: let's say you had an income of 10,000, if your cards and electricity cost you 8,000, you only made a profit of 2,000 ...
Thus 40k of profit is very different to 40k that also includes all the expenses. My comment was that 40k PROFIT would be very nice.
It's not the same "income" as you are calling it as an income from a job where the same 40k would already have all the taxes etc. paid on it when you get it and you have it to spend. That would be the same as profit in the mining instance.
Maybe go and look up the definitions of the words if I'm not explaining it well enough. ;)
That's such a good exam question for next years kids.
EDIT: like your power company surcharge idea, it would be justifiable for companies to charge you a secondary business rate for electricity usage. After all, if you are consuming 5 households worth of energy and that trend increased, we'd be more prone to blackouts in vulnerable times. People need to release fast that energy isn't infinte.
All you would do is play "the business man" while in reality you aren't one. Look at it whichever way you want.
AMD also made a big deal about using "AI" for branch prediction, because you know, everything has to use the "AI" gimmick these days. What it actually does is keeping a list of the results from last few conditionals, so when it runs into a loop it can use it for branch prediction. It's just simple statistics, just like Intel does. But of course it sounds much better when it's presented as "AI" that analyzes and optimizes your applications. You'll have to give them credit, AMD are masters of PR.
I remember back in February when some claimed Nvidia were anxious about the coming Vega and had to release GTX 1080 Ti to counter it… (look how that turned out)
inflation considering the FE has increased 11%. guess i'll order a Aqua package before new egg and amazon Jack-up prices. you wait a few months and who knows that new Vega you ordered may be a repackaged miners card :).
Depending on the card you choose and electricity tariff, power draw will usually consume between 20 and 50% of the mining income. You still think it doesn't matter?
And I'm talking about the modern GPUs. An older card (and most CPUs) will not make a profit at all (electricity cost > mining income).
I'm sorry to say this, but this discussion does suggest that you're not really in control of your home budget. Although I have to consider a possibility that you're 12 and you're still not thinking about such things - I'd say that would be OK (I was already a "business-type" back then, but thankfully not everyone has to be one :-)).I admit that Infinity Matrix is indeed a nice name. But there have been some poor choices as well, like the "Threadripper". And there's the EPYC fail... I mean... sorry, but I can't imagine myself making a presentation for the Board recommending EPYC CPUs for the server.
Maybe this will be acceptable in USA, but outside it'll just generate jokes and facepalms on business meetings.
Where is this going next? Will we see a DUDE or something like that?I can't blame them for this. AI (and Big Data) is in fact the hottest topic now.
But as you've described, the "AI" in Zen is not that special or unique. They're actually quite late (compared to Intel).I much preferred them being masters of innovation and performance, like when my PC was full of AMD/ATI parts (Athlon 1700+ and R9500Pro).
Maybe AMD should close their semiconductor business and become a PR agency? Many Chinese companies struggle to understand Western culture and I'm pretty sure they're ready to pay more than AMD earns from current ventures.
So think again 7970 for the price of a 750ti is a screaming scam. Not idiots at all.
Or do you mean mining? If so, I also am a bit confused on what you are doing. What did you build, and what's your selling pattern?If you PM'd me next Friday, I will have an answer for you. Until then I really won't have had the time to fully set up and and flash everything to full stability. But those are my estimates from forums.
Don't be surprised if it matches your 1060's though. I cannot say this enough to people: Nvidia. Isn't. As Good. As AMD. For Mining. Only the 1070 beats the efficiency of Polaris, and that's while costing twice as much. I mean even my used 290X I picked up on craigslist does 31 MH/s for like 175w. That's a 3 generation old card somewhat close to everything else Nvidia has now.And what if they were used for mining? I have never had a card break from mining lol.
But yeah go a buy a 750 Ti over something stronger than the 770 lmao. Yeah that makes you smart /s
And by the way you can just simply buy a GTX 680 for the same or even less money that is equal to a 770/7970.That would make you smart.
Where's the evidence that this card that survived a month was ever used for mining?