Nvidia Hints at New Crypto-Mining Specific GPUs
Mike Sanders / 4 years ago
With Bitcoin recently hitting a brand new record high of $40,000 (with it currently sitting at around $37,000) it might not be the news that gaming consumers wanted to hear, but without a doubt, Cryptocurrency, and specifically mining, is back and in a big way. – The biggest downside to this, of course, is the fact that with graphics cards from both Nvidia and AMD in such ridiculously short supply at the moment, this extra interest from mining organizations will only place further demand on the few models currently available to purchase.
Well, if that’s got you feeling down, then there might possibly be some good news on the way. Following a report via TechSpot, Nvidia may be considering the manufacture of brand new graphics cards specifically tailored towards the mining community.
Nvidia Talks Cryptocurrency Mining GPUs
Given that cryptocurrency mining only requires the graphics cards ‘power’ rather than the actual display capabilities, such Cryptocurrency specific models can be produced to sit in PCI-E slots without the need for any external display connectors or ports. Such as, for example, HDMI or DisplayPort 1.4. – While Nvidia has opened the doors to creating some new GPUs based on this design principle, they have said that they’ll only do so if they perceive there to be a real demand. Albeit, reading between the lines, what this really means is that Nvidia isn’t too sure whether this new Bitcoin boom is set to last for the long term.
“If crypto demand begins or if we see a meaningful amount, we can also use that opportunity to restart the CMP product line to address ongoing mining demand.” – Nvidia
What Do We Think?
Nvidia has already been caught attempting to ‘fudge the figures’ regarding how much of their revenue was generated by selling GPUs directly to industrial-scale mining corporations. To avoid such situations and PR faux pas again, they may, therefore, be tempted to attempt a separation of ‘church and state’ by creating cryptocurrency specific graphics cards.
Will they though? Well, as much as we all might like it, I personally have my doubts. Put simply, Nvidia can produce graphics cards and they will be purchased by both gaming and cryptocurrency consumers regardless of the requirement of output connectors. As such, I just fail to see why they would bother creating a GPU that, ultimately, would be of no use to gamers and, quite frankly, would run significant risks of becoming a total flop if mining organizations simply decided to ignore it.
In a nutshell, it’s just easier and less risky for Nvidia to simply concentrate on one product line rather than attempting to cater to a very specific, and certainly volatile, market. – I mean, just because Bitcoin is currently worth about $37,000 now doesn’t mean it will be anything close to that in 6-month’s time (and I’m not talking about it being worth more, although that certainly is a possibility). – So, if I was Jensen Huang, I don’t think I would bother. Then again, if I was Jensen Huang, I’d have a lot more fun checking out my bank balance each month.
What do you think? Do you think making Cryptocurrency specific graphics cards would be a good move by Nvidia? Do you think such a move would really help general gaming consumers? – Let us know in the comments!
