Not a bad idea really, as it would free up graphics card sales for gamers. A new Linux patches seem to point towards a cryptocurrency-focused graphics card from AMD, that the patches add descriptions ... AMD is working on a Navi 10 GPU dedicated to cryptocurrencies
It seems great, but you need to consider that the chips for it still have to be manufactured by someone. Also, I'm not sure if the cards would be as appealing since they have very little resale value, because you can only use them for mining.
Who cares about resell value if the solution might be way more cost efficient? I would guess that they sell these type of cards way cheaper to make them attractive for crypto miners, hence the lack of outputs.
I wish all the relevant countries in the world banned crypto currencies. A massive amount of coal has been burned and atmosphere polluted for the sake of absolutely nothing, to power that idiotic scheme only useful for drug dealers and others like that. Of course AMD/Nvidia were glad to sell the GPUs and power companies the electricity, but that's it.
Not in my opinion. Gold is actually useful for something. Electronics and jewelry industries, among others, need it. If it's sitting in vaults, it's because it has market value, a solid demand ready to buy if someone sells. Crypto currencies are only useful as long as people/companies are sure they can be exchanged into real currencies. Of course real currencies are theoretically the same, but they are all backed by countries. Crypto currencies are backed by... I don't know, drug cartels? You'd have to ask who has the most to lose if a significant crypto currency suddenly ceased to function/exist. Even the crypto exchanges are shams founded to be robbed once they have accumulated enough virtual wealth, as history has proven. Crypto miners around the world consume as much power as a small, developed country. Just think about that for a moment. It's utterly insane. All those systems are doing nothing but crunching meaningless numbers.
Anyone buying these cards for mining cares. Although I agree that your point is valid, it just depends on the price of these cards. If they are as good for mining as regular cards and their value is less than the gaming card + whatever you can get by selling it later, then these will be interesting. Otherwise I think not.
Actually, I'd say that being independent on any country and/or bank is the biggest advantage of cryptocurrencies. Banks by itself are also not making any value, their operation is typically speculative and when they make mistakes and go under, they ask the state to bail them out with tax money. All while their operation is something which no physical person can do, e.g. giving out loans on assets that do not exist. Cryptocurrencies are an alternative to that. I don't think they can replace a bank as it is now, but maybe sometime in the future it will. E.g. paper money also didn't spring out of nothing, it took several tries in most cases and I guess you can see value in paper money, even though they inherently hold no value beyond what we give to it.
Actually that's not true - these GPUs are fantastic for compute purposes (like render farms or BOINC). You pay less for hardware that most likely has better cooling than a normal GPU (because it can vent heat out the back more easily). Meanwhile for gamers, you could have a sort of game "server" and use Steam Link. Use something like an iGPU or a GT 710 to run a display but the headless gaming GPU for rendering and you've got yourself a bargain remote gaming experience. Currently I'm not in the market to get a GPU like these but if the resale value on ebay becomes terrible enough to be 1/4 the MSRP, I might seriously consider getting one. EDIT: Hmmmmmm... there are headless 1060s on ebay for $60 including shipping. That's already looking super enticing to me, since I've been considering building a CUDA rig.
How much energy do you think has been spent producing mining equipment, mining the rocks for gold, melting it down into bars, shipping it around the world. Storing it in heated vaults.. it's probably not far off similar levels. Gold in vaults isn't used for electronics at all, it's just sat there as a hold of value. Same as cryptocurrency. They're backed by legitimate companies that will exchange into other "real" currencies. Drug cartels use actual cash and fiat money just as much. It's irrelevant it exists. What matters is that there is a finite source to producing more. Same as with cryptocurrency. That's what gives it it's value.
Someone already said it, but gold is concrete material. All that crypto is nothing at all. It's just random bytes. Someone pulls the plug and it's gone. Actually much of it might be gone as soon as quantum computers really start working. Fiat money isn't that different, theoretically in many ways, but as long as a stable country maintains it, it will work. The energy used to mine gold results in metal gold that isn't going anywhere. It's easy to understand why and how the energy was spent. Crypto mining, however, is just using a lot of power to solve equations that don't really make any sense and only exist to be difficult to solve. You aren't simulating weather patterns or protein interactions. You aren't doing anything at all with that computation time used. In a sense you could say it's similar to a dude running on a treadmill. Calories are burnt, yet nothing of note is produced. Except the dude will be stronger and healthier. However, your GPU doesn't really need exercise, haha, so mining crypto does nothing good to the GPU.
I find it funny that people on a digital forum are arguing over what matters and/or is valuable in a digital sense while they waste resources by powering devices to post on said digital forums, wasting resources/coal/etc. On digital games, and often are likely to be people who leave their devices turned on doing absolutely nothing with them just to not have to boot it up when they decide to use it. Don't be a hyprocrite.
For gold, apart the energy spent, i m more worried of all the problem behind. Gold is basically all in poor countries and mined by poor people in terrible conditions. To get around gold export regulation there is a whole criminal system involving most of the rich countries buying illegal gold and washing it for the big brands of jewelery. Is really a shame, since gold apart some grams for some important equipment is just an investment or as someone pointed out a useless shiny thing. Rant end.
