Quote from: Billz007 on May 31, 2017, 02:07:17 AM

One of the reasons we like stock GPU's is that they have a resale value, they can be used for gaming or what not after we are done with them. Look at the outdated ASIC's, they are mainly boat anchors. My old 280x's from the last round of mining from a couple years ago sold recently for $100+ dollars each.

What the bloody heck do you have for a boat? o.o

Quote from: joblo on May 31, 2017, 10:06:31 PM

I don't get it. A GPU is just a vector co-processor that can run any compatible software application.
Different architectures perforrm differently for different applications, just like a CPU. Mining is not
an singular application but a group of applications (kernels), each with their own performance
profile.

So what is a mining GPU? Does it have more cores to improve compute-bound applications, or a faster
memory interface to improve I/O bound applications? It depends on the algo.

So what features could their be that define a GPU as a mining GPU? Just removing the video ports won't
reduce the cost enough to draw miners, or anyone. to buy it instead of a regular GPU.

I suspect it's just going to be a marketing campaign to miners. They may brand a card as mining vs gaming
but it will only be cosmetic.

There are stark differences between what would be a mining card and a gaming card. Perhaps it's in the hardware. Perhaps it's in the software. Perhaps - just perhaps - it's in other things, like the VBIOS, or the power useage, or the memory speed, or even the bandwidth.

You'd be surprised at what could be removed on both AMD and NVIDIA cards to make them cost effective for miners.

Quote from: bathrobehero on May 30, 2017, 10:12:20 PM

Here are my thoughts, some of which might be wrong;
- display ports are cheap and easy to put on cards so it's kind of a pointless excercise to remove them;
- virtually nobody is mining with stock nvidia cards; aftermarket cards is where it's at;
- knowing nvidia, I can't imagine these cards not just costing less than their gaming counterparts, they'll very likely be more expensive for maybe slightly more cores but there's no way they'll be better in terms of price per performance. Every specialized (enterprise) cards are disgustingly overpriced;
- nvidia not liking miners is just nonsense; GPUs owned by miners rarely ever get faulty, maybe only a couple of percentages more RMA than regular users but the increased number of sales should more than make up for it. (There's a reason as to the length of the warranty periods);
- nvidia might have zero idea what features mining cards need, therefore they could be useless outside of a few coins (similarily to ASICs);
- but if they do, what would be scary/awful is if nvidia would also provide their closed source miners.
- these cards would have massively reduced resale value, just like ASICs.

I certainly don't hold my breath and kind of certain/hopeful that it will flop.

The single most beneficial thing of GPU mining is that virtually everyone has one which can be used for mining, eg. distribution of GPU-friendly PoW coins is great. Introducing a specialized hardware for miners would turn GPU mining into the same old lifeless industrial world of ASICs with poor coin distribution since not everyone is going to have one of these.

Do you really think NVIDIA would enter this market without consulting some of the brightest in the cryptocurrency space? Furthermore, do you really think NVIDIA would create a card that would be more expensive than their gaming counterparts? That makes no sense. Why would anyone ever buy a cryptocurrency card then, when they can just buy gaming?

Aftermarket cards are just slightly modified NVIDIA reference cards - generally the VRM, heatsink and fan are modified, along with the VBIOS.

Software support will come. Maybe not from NVIDIA. I will say this:

I'm on team green. And you should be too, in the upcoming months.