These days, Bitcoin is experiencing another hype as currently the price for 1BTC skyrocketed to a whopping $2'290 US. That means the value of one Bitcoin tripled within just a few weeks. As it always is with Bitcoin mining there a big hype kicks in when the exchange rate explodes as it just did.


According to industry reports, users are still buying gaming graphics cards to mine cryptocurrency such as Bitcoin. DigiTimes suggests that this kind of activity is currently boosting sales of graphics cards, since they have been observing strong sales numbers in the second quarter. However there is also a side effect too, since at the moment all all AMD Radeon RX 570 as well as RX 580 GPUs are sold out.

According to DigiTimes, AMD and NVIDIA might be planning to release stripped down cards, which have been geared towards crypto miners. The cards will have lower hardware specifications, like less display outlets or they will pack features that are only important to cryptocurrency mining and will therefore be cheaper.

AMD for instance might release Bitcoin-mining graphics cards based on redesigned entry-level 400 series pixel accelerators, while NVIDIA might introduce a new GeForce GTX 1060-100 GPUs for mining only. These products will only be covered by a 90 day warranty, which would help lowering the price.

Currently these are rumors but it looks like especially AMD has been caught off guard again regarding the latest cryptocurrency mining hype. Therefore the company might be looking for strategies to avoid making the same mistakes over and over again. Releasing stripped down cards could therefore be an option to be able to shorten the production process, which in turn would allow for faster responses to such trends.







Source: DigiTimes