Bitmain is about to release F3, the ethereum ASIC miner. It’s reported that every miner is mounted with 3 mainboards. On each mainboard there are 6 ASIC processors, each of which has 32 1GB DDR3 memory. Therefore, one unit of F3 miner contains 72 Gigabyte DRAM memory.
The Antminer F3 would have a Hash Rate of 200 - 250 MH / s and a price of 2500 - 3000 dollars. To give us an idea, an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti has a Hash Rate around 37.7 MH / s being used to the maximum and with overclocking. Now imagine that each GTX 1080 Ti round 865 euros at best with a reference model in Stock. 6x GTX 1080 Ti would give us a Hash Rate around 225 MH / s, an investment of 5,200 euros and better not to mention the consumption.
Not only would the miners stop buying the graphics cards, but they would try to sell their cards second-hand, flooding the market and causing a big drop in prices.
Really nice news ! But there’s still other coins to be mined of course. Yet, if ETH is not mineable with GPU anymore, then that surely would be awesome news, GPU prices will drop for sure!
I think it’s a bit optimistic to think this is going to end the shortage of graphics cards. It can help, but there are several things to note:
AMD has said a big part of their shortage is due to not being able to source enough memory. This thing uses a massive amount of memory so it could contribute to the shortage.
If we go by these rumored numbers, it’s not going to be the video card killer it might seem at first glance. Say it runs at 200MH/sec with a price of $2500. Even at the inflated prices, you can get RX 580’s from Newegg regularly for $360 each, which hash at around 30 MH/sec each. That’s about $2500 for even more hashrate than this, sure you’ll have to add a couple hundred for the rest of the PC, but it’s still not that much more than this price.
Bitmain has a history of using most of their own inventory for their own mining, then selling a bit here and there to the general public. They usually have several month wait times and don’t seem to ever have enough to satisfy demand.
So, good news, but don’t expect anything dramatic unless something else happens with the price of ethereum or proof of stake or something.
210/30 = 7 videocards needed for equal hashing rate. 7 * 360 = $2520 already only in GPU’s ! Then you need 3 pc’s to power them, cost is going to be much higher. And I also wonder about the power usage,
I’d say the F3 is going to be more power efficient than those 3 pc’s with 7 cards.
Besides that, 30 MH/sec seems really optimistic for that videocard, I just googled, people seem to get lower averages, more around 25 mH/sec, mostly somewhere in the 20-30 range if you check several forum posts here: RX 580 Hashrate — Ethereum Community Forum seems to depend on ability to overclock and bios mods (with stock running about 22MH and after all overclock and bios mods in some situations indeed almost 30 MH/s)
So at $2500 the F3 would definitely be the (much) better choice. Unless GPU prices drop
Either way, this is just an AWESOME development. If this thing works as expected, then you bet it’s not the last ASIC ETH miner that hits the market! Then it’s here to stay.
Well, I’m running some right now at 28 MH/sec with just a simple memory overclock. I can push them to 30 but then it starts to output too much heat for my closet. You also don’t need 3 pc’s to power them, there’s motherboards now that can run up to 19 cards at once. I’m not saying the Bitmain device won’t be a good value, just that it might not be enough to end the shortage anytime soon. Step in the right direction though.
Yeah a couple of my cards are running on extensions like that. You can’t use it for gaming when it’s connected to a 1x slot but it works just fine for mining
This is actually bad for nVidia. We’re about to see a flood of bargain basement used 1080ti’s. Even if nVidia releases a new gpu model, gamers may opt for the much cheaper, used 1080ti vs a state of the art $800 gpu. Then again, you’re taking a risk buying a used, crypto mining gpu, because most of its useful life is already gone.
Awesome video to see that B250 mining expert in action. I had no idea this was even feasible with a “normal” PC. So yeah that does put the ASIC miner a bit in perspective. Still, even if it’s the same price, it would at least lower the pressure somewhat on GPU sales.
Current ASICs are already quite a bit more powerful than GPUs for mining. The problem is they are expensive and very very backordered (watch the full series of Linux Tech Tips on mining, there’s one where he gets into ASICs). So this news doesn’t help.
If you want to get a new video card for your upcoming Pimax, use nowinstock.net - the site keeps a constantly updating list of where you can buy the things. They sell out super fast, though, so these days you have to sign up for a special nowinstock Google Group (since Google can send updates much more quickly), and be ready to jump as soon as you get an email that what you want is in stock.
I just used this method to buy a Zotac AMP! Edition 1080ti for $850, just $130 over MSRP.
This may help with the amd cards but I don’t expect to make much of a difference with the nvidia cards
after all nvidia cards are better off mineing other Algorithms head over to https://whattomine.com
and you will see what I meen
According to rumors, nVidia would be making a “graphic” card designed expressly for mining, cheaper by removing everything necessary only for graphics.
Like others have mentioned, do not expect this to make any difference at all.
For starters, the general public will have pretty much zero chance of buying one of these. They have very limited stocks and they will all be bought up by large mining farms. This will leave everyone else still sat in queues for graphics cards.
With regards to hoping nVidia will release a dedicated mining card, once again this will make no difference. Ethereum will be moving to proof of stake at some point in the not too distant future, at this point mining won’t be possible for this coin. So as a miner, do I go out and buy 7 cards that can only be used for mining and are likely to be useless in 12 months. Or do I buy 7 GFX cards which cost less (Yes their previous attempt at a mining card cost more than a GPU) and have the benefit that when I have finished mining, the cards will still be useful for building gaming PC’s.
Also as others have pointed out the performance of these things is not actually that great. When ASICs came to bitcoin, they took off because they could destroy the performance of any GPU based rig. These things however are in the same ballpark as a GPU rig so the difficulty of the network will not change very much and mining will remain profitable. My 7 GPU RX570 rig mines at 195MH/s.
There is also the issue that Ethereum was designed to be ASIC proof. This means that they can change the algorithm on the fly which in theory would render any ASIC useless. From what I have read nobody knows if they have built in a kind of flashable firmware to these ASICs so they can be updated at a later date. But even if this is the case it will certainly make like difficult for them which will make people carry on using GPU’s anyway because they will be less hassle. Imaging having a farm of 5000 of these things and having to go around re-flashing firmware to all of them everytime they change the network algorithm.
I just don’t get it. Crypto prices has been stagnate for over a month now. Yet I just got an email from Nvidia that a 1080Ti was available and they were already sold out within an hour.
Where is the money to be made by miners if the price of crypto isn’t climbing?? When is the saturation point when all the miners have the equipment they need??
This sucks.
EDIT: I guess it’s fine because the headset is months away…but still frustrating.
[quote=“MoreTrife, post:20, topic:5283”]
Yet I just got an email from Nvidia that a 1080Ti was available and they were already sold out within an hour.[/quote]
As you know, there is a pent-up demand from gamers for this card. It’s entirely possible that the majority of these cards were actually bought by gamers, who were faster to respond than you were. (It still sucks though.)
I have a 980Ti and I’m convinced that the 1080Ti won’t be sufficient to drive the Pimax 8K at the quality settings I desire, so I’m committed to wait for the next top-end gamer card from NVidia. In the meantime, I’ll make-do with the 980Ti. The headset delays (while expected) make the wait for a new graphics card a (somewhat) moot point.
