Cryptomining -- Ripping up a great ETH thread with AMD (Part 2)

Ripping up a great ETH thread with AMD (Part 2)

Whoo-hoo! AMD has finally launched the RX Vega 64 and RX Vega 56 graphics cards. So much hype has been built around these cards that it is hard to know what was to be expected, especially since AMD released the prosumer Vega Frontier Edition last month. Thankfully, all those benchmarks that pointed to RX Vega being totally inferior to nVidia’s Geforce 1070 and 1080 range is now a thing of the past. Benchmarks are showing remarkable performance and it seems that AMD was really holding back on performance reports so as to take nVidia by surprise.

AMD RX Vega series specifications
Here are the full key specifications for the liquid-cooled and air-cooled Vega 64s, along with the new air-cooled Vega 56, the Vega Frontier Edition, RX580 and competing nVidia GTX 1080Ti.

Of particular interest to note is the MSRP for the graphics cards. Essentially, AMD is offering some serious bang for the buck. This also places the new Vegas square in the sights of the nVidia GeForce 1080 and 1070 cards which are retailing for about USD550 and USD470 respectively, or the uber powerful 1080Ti which goes upwards of USD750 each.

To sweeten the pot, AMD is also offering special bundle packs, some presumably venture to say to (slightly) hamper cryptocurrency miners.

There are three bundle options for Radeon RX Vega:
Radeon Red Pack – Featuring the Radeon RX Vega 56, an air-cooled card priced at $499.
Radeon Black Pack – Featuring the Radeon RX Vega 64, an air-cooled card priced at $599.
Radeon Aqua Pack – Featuring the Radeon RX Vega 64 Liquid Cooled Edition, the most powerful of the Radeon RX Vega graphics cards, priced at $699.”

You’ll also get two top-end games, Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus and Prey, valued at about USD200. This may change depending on location and availability.

All seem pretty good news and people are already queuing up for these bundles. I know I will be. As will hundreds of other Ethereum miners! Why, because there are already reports that the new Vegas will perform very well at mining Ethereum with its compute units.

The Vega range offers single precision computing of 11 teraflops and half-precision computing upwards of 22 teraflops! In fact, it is going to outperform the much vaunted RX570 and RX580 by a factor of about two-and-a-half to three times. Even the low-end Vega 56 has a performance of 10.5 TFs, which is very close to that of the GTX 1080Ti which costs almost twice the price!

What is even more incredible is the hash rate for mining ETH, where the Vegas are expected to range between 70-100 megahashes per second, while the RX 580 hits about 25MH/s, and the expensive GTX 1080 Ti offering a measly 32MH/s. With such performance numbers, miners will be crunching numbers at more than thrice the speed with about half the energy consumption.

In short, expect the same crypto-phenomenon causing RX 570 and RX 580 shortages! Unless, of course, AMD already anticipated this problem and has ramped up Vega production at the expense of the RX 570 and RX 580, which is why there is still no stock available other than the cards being re-sold by miners at exorbitant prices.

All well and good for AMD, enthusiasts and miners but I am afraid that the average gamer will be unable to get back on track with RX 570 and RX 580 graphics cards until late September at the earliest.

Optimistically, there may be some relief, albeit to gamers dissatisfaction, because miners will dump their RX 570 and RX 580 graphics cards at low prices so that they can get on the Vega platform. Expect ebay and Craigslist to have thousands of offers as the miners upgrade, but gamers should know that they will be getting a card that has been pumped to within a nanometer of its relatively short life in a mining rig or farm. Caveat emptor!

Other than the warehouse miners operating in barns next to power dams and solar farms, home-based ETH miners may also cause another phenomenon – AMD Threadripper scarcity.

AMD Ryzen Threadripper - huge CPU with only two active dies out of four. Hmm...

Why? Although CPUs are not used for mining Ethereum the Threadripper platform is going to be very interesting and suitable for those who would like to start mining with up to four graphics cards in one case. The AMD X399 platform will offer superb computing power without the complexity of additional risers, cables and fans, while empowering miners with multitasking capabilities while using the same rig. How much hashing power Threadripper itself can contribute will soon be evaluated and published but do not expect anything positive there.

Perhaps this is why the 8-core Threadripper and Vega 56 are slotted for release later, after a gap of a few weeks behind the more premium products. AMD is walking a delicate line among its user base, knowing full well that gamers are usually loyal fans while miners are not. The company is also not worried about nVidia as every card that AMD produces will be sold, if not for one purpose then for another. Isn’t it good to be wanted!?

Furthermore, AMD’s partners will also be releasing their own versions of RX Vega with their custom coolers and overclock tweaks. These boards are sure to fly off the shelves – if it reaches the shelves – at an unprecendented rate. I suspect people will queue outside the retailers shops on 14 Aug and also make online bookings.

On another front, AMD Threadripper is doing a real bang-up job of putting Intel in the doghouse. Not only are the price-performance figures remarkably ourstanding but their public relations efforts are paying huge dividends. Instead of paying out millions of USD in advertisement fees, they sent out media kits to Youtube reviewers and tech publishers which included a 1950X, a 1920X and a glass-cased engineering sample in a Pelican suitcase with engraved name plaque, a premium ASUS motherboard, memory kits, power supply, a solid state drive and CPU water cooler. Estimated cost per kit is less than USD2,000 for a total of USD500,000 for the campaign. Bravo! I would have done exactly the same if I was in their PR department.

Such success should be rewarded at the stock exchange, right? Think again. AMD shares are now being controlled by power brokers acting for mega corporations with huge financial war chests. Prices are being kept low so that the whales can scoop up as much as they can for low prices. There is a big play coming soon. If you like buying shares, this may be a viable counter despite the under performance and reported losses. However, if you had bought it last year you would already have doubled your profit. If you continue to hold on to AMD shares, expect big dividends later. (If it tanks because the economy crashes, “thems the breaks of investing, kiddo.”)

Which brings us to two more pressing questions to be discussed in the future:
Will AMD be bought out by (a) Apple (b) Amazon (c) Google (d) Foxconn?
Can AMD Threadripper include an on-die Vega GPU and become the uber APU?

I am sure I will be one among many who will be watching those developments with a keen eye!