Crypto miners are, alongside scalpers, the biggest competition for people looking to buy a graphics card for gaming. Until now, only Nvidia has announced a graphics card for miners. However, AMD could soon announce something similar.
What’s it about? In early March, there was an update for the Radeon graphics driver on Linux (via TomsHardware.com). Besides an update for the new “Radeon RX 6000” graphics cards, support for “Navi 12” graphics cards without video output was provided. This is likely referring to mining graphics cards that often do not have video outputs.
Nvidia announced that they would make the RTX 3060 worse for miners. At the same time, they introduced a graphics processor series called “Cryptocurrency Mining Processor” (CMP), which is aimed at professional miners.
That AMD now has the same interest in profiting from the current mining boom would not be surprising. Additionally, AMD or at least some board partners already have experience in the mining sector.
There are already mining graphics cards with AMD chip
An AMD mining graphics card would not be anything new. In mid-2017, there was already a major mining hype. Due to the rising value of cryptocurrencies, people primarily bought the Radeon RX 500 series (via GameStar.de).
Manufacturers like Sapphire (via Hardwareluxx.de) reacted to the boom and introduced a special mining graphics card based on the RX 570. These special mining cards are generally more interesting for miners than traditional gaming graphics cards, as they forgo gaming features.
The Sapphire variant also offers an additional, extended BIOS (via hardwareluxx.de).
What does this mean for me as a gamer? In principle, one can hope that people who want to mine cryptocurrencies will prefer to buy a mining graphics card.
Gamers generally have a better chance of getting their graphics card, as miners would likely opt for the mining variant, since they can forgo an HDMI connection, for example, or benefit from the adjusted BIOS.
How this will actually look in sales practice is a different question.
A Radeon “RX 5000” mining variant is likely
If you look at recommendations for which graphics card is currently best for mining cryptocurrencies (for example Techradar.com), you will find the RX 5700 XT as well as the RX 580.
The older Polaris graphics cards (Radeon RX 400/500) are expected to be replaced long-term by the RX 5500. The consideration that AMD and its board partners are developing a mining graphics card based on the RX 5000 series is not far-fetched.
This is also supported by the model indication in the graphics card software.
That’s why an RX-6000 variant is unlikely: The new graphics cards from AMD rely on a special “Infinity Cache” and now offer ray tracing. These are both technologies that do not benefit mining. Additionally, the availability of the latest graphics chips is anyway very low.
The poor availability is expected to change little with the recently introduced RX 6700 XT from AMD. Here too, interested buyers fear that the graphics card will either be sold out immediately or that miners will snatch up the graphics cards.
