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Radeon RX 6500 XT is bad at cryptocurrency mining on purpose, AMD says

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101–110 of 264 posts

Re: Radeon RX 6500 XT is bad at cryptocurrency mining on purpose, AMD says

#101
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

any infrastructure dedicated to the mining of crypto is opportunity cost. Even if you use renewables, that energy could instead replace traditional energy sources which could be turned off. This is an example of Jevon's paradox, namely that increases in efficiency or quality are offset by increases in demand. It's one of the reasons why we have globally barely made a dent when it comes to the increase of renewables a…

> that energy could instead replace traditional energy sources which could be turned off. This is not true. Often, renewables aren't available to some locations but abundantly available in others. Other times, some people buy electricity from renewable providers and others don't. With 50-75% of Bitcoin mining being renewable, one thing is clear - it's helped the adoption of renewables and made them cheaper.

"...helped the adoption of renewables and made them cheaper." How so?

Miners are chasing profit margin so they'll use whatever's cheapest. If that's renewable where some of them are, so be it. And if everyone else start reducing use of coal and that becomes cheap, miners who exploits that to derive higher profit margin will grow faster I imagine.

I would attribute growth and economies of scale that renewables have achieved to renewable proponents, industries, government subsidies and loan prorams. Crypto miners are energy consumers and some of them use renewable energy. But how do we go from there to miners being some kind of force for good in this context?

Re: Radeon RX 6500 XT is bad at cryptocurrency mining on purpose, AMD says

#103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A single miner uses 1,300W (Antminer S9) and runs 24/7. That is 218,400Wh for a week. A gaming computer at ~400W, left on 24/7, is 67,200Wh. That assumes you are playing 24/7 - your idle wattage in sleep is If you run your dryer every night of the week for an hour, you are using about 38,400Wh. You can game 24/7 and dry your clothes every night of the week and STILL use less power than a modern, efficient single mine…

Yes, but the real question always is: Who will make a decision as to what is considered frivolous. Not to search very far, I consider trucks in US for non-contractor use to be frivolous, but I don't go around telling people those need to be banned.

Trucks move people and items. Bitcoin allows us to buy porn, pot and run scams on a mostly centralized network.

Re: Radeon RX 6500 XT is bad at cryptocurrency mining on purpose, AMD says

#104
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Machine drying clothes unnecessarily is right up there in the wastefulness stakes.

Machine washing too.

Ha ha. But clothes dry themselves. Clothes do not wash themselves.

Re: Radeon RX 6500 XT is bad at cryptocurrency mining on purpose, AMD says

#105
post #45
post #28

World really needs a ban on PoW cryptocurrencies. I guess on one side lot of people is not caring about it as long as they make some money of it, and in the other side maybe other people in power, is not caring as that would make a perfect excuse to ban any kind of cryptocurrency. I guess too we all will care as soon as the devastation caused by the climate change becomes a massive life threatening issue.

Imposing global technological bans so willy-nilly seems like a nice idea only on the surface. Things like machine drying your clothes at home in the US (uncommon in Europe so seems frivolous) uses as much if not more energy. Others might consider gaming or self-hosted servers or who knows what else equally inefficient. Do you really want to put things so easily on the potential chopping block even if this one thing y…

Would you support Visa and Amex if their next generation networks required you to burn x minutes of natural gas or x pounds of coal to complete a transaction? Why is this an acceptable architecture for Blockchain? It is a race to the bottom.

Re: Radeon RX 6500 XT is bad at cryptocurrency mining on purpose, AMD says

#106
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My 1060 3GB can still run every game I throw at it (except Cyberpunk). MS Flight Sim runs great at high, for instance, especially after the performance update.

What FPS do you consider "great"?

For a flight sim, 45fps. Forza Horizon 5 runs at 60+ on high settings (despite telling me I need more memory, it doesn't crash). I mostly play CS, which runs at 200+ (yes I know it's an older game, Doom Eternal also runs at 60+ on high).

Re: Radeon RX 6500 XT is bad at cryptocurrency mining on purpose, AMD says

#107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we look at the benchmarks of the 5500XT vs the RX480 I expect it to maybe be 5-8% faster if at all. AMD basically released this card 3 times now but this time they scrubbed the whole encoding feature set.

> AMD basically released this card 3 times now but this time they scrubbed the whole encoding feature set. Do you not see the difference between GCN, RDNA, and RDNA 2? At a minimum, this RDNA 2 6500 XT has raytracing cores that the two previous versions do not have. I'd assume that most video gamers care more about the raytracing feature (especially as more and more games are using it) than H265 encoding. Remember: R…

Are you suggesting that you could use Raytracing at all in modern games on a low end card like the RX 6500 XT? If you would use it you would lose the marginal performance increase of the updated architecture. Also content creation is a big point for younger generation if it is livestreaming, recording clips or general gameplay. This will both not be doable with this card if you don't have a good cpu. There is no discussion that more cards are good in the market we have right now. The card is 50% over MSRP right now at most retailers.

Re: Radeon RX 6500 XT is bad at cryptocurrency mining on purpose, AMD says

#108
post #28

World really needs a ban on PoW cryptocurrencies. I guess on one side lot of people is not caring about it as long as they make some money of it, and in the other side maybe other people in power, is not caring as that would make a perfect excuse to ban any kind of cryptocurrency. I guess too we all will care as soon as the devastation caused by the climate change becomes a massive life threatening issue.

PoW really is the tragedy of the commons epitomized. The only way it could be more on the nose is if mining literally required a random human being to die.

The sad reality is that people will die from the excess carbon and pollution put into the atmosphere by mining crypto.

Re: Radeon RX 6500 XT is bad at cryptocurrency mining on purpose, AMD says

#109
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Machine drying clothes unnecessarily is right up there in the wastefulness stakes.

Machine washing too.

Machine washing is a significant labor and time saver.

People are usually opposed to line drying clothes because of aesthetics and feeling like it makes their neighborhood look “poor”. Luckily quite a few states have passed laws making it illegal for landlords or HOAs to ban putting up clotheslines.

Re: Radeon RX 6500 XT is bad at cryptocurrency mining on purpose, AMD says

#110
post #41
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’d only partially solve it: we don’t want to waste renewable power which could be going to something of value.

You are moving the goalposts. If Bitcoin miners pay for renewable energy, they are no longer harming the environment. Who are you to dictate what someone does with energy they pay for? Just because you do not like what they do, doesn't mean you can ban it if it's not harming you. There is no evidence that Bitcoin's usage of renewables is preventing others from paying for renewables too.

> Who are you to dictate what someone does with energy they pay for?

IMO this is the strongest case for a carbon tax - it respects individual freedom.

You want to cruise in your diesel-sucking massive launch? You want to take your personal 747 out for a joy ride to the Bahamas?

Fill your boots, do what you want without any guilt - your environmental impact has been offset by your higher fuel bills.

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