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

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

#71

Post by ray__ »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #21

Man, I'm glad I snuck a 1080ti purchase in a few years ago when BTC was crashing hard. Of course, being Nvidia means it'll suck if I have to transition to a Linux Desktop before the next cryptoshit market crash, but if it takes that long then they've probably managed to kill of high-end PC gaming along with the environment and I'll have bigger problems.

I started using Nvidia cards with Linux about two years ago and haven't had a single issue so far. It has always been Ubuntu, so that might be part of it, but I get the impression that Nvidia's beef with Linux isn't an issue anymore.

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

#72

Post by Barrin92 »

xvector wrote: post #52
Barrin92 wrote: post #38

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.

It has helped the adoption of renewables in the same sense how polluting the local river has helped the anti-pollution industry. This is broken window logic. The reason bitcoin uses renwables in the first place is because much of it happens in China where misguided state projects and subsidies have created excess capacity. It makes for a pretty decent joke though, the libertarian currency de jure runs on the misguided state planning of the Communist party of China.

Any excess capacity spent on crypto currency is waste. It could go to scientific computing projects, it could simply not be used. The chips for the equipment (we are in a global chip shortage) could go to something that actually contributes to the real economy.

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

#73

Post by YXNjaGVyZWdlbgo »

dragontamer wrote: post #23
YXNjaGVyZWdlbgo wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The RX 6500 XT is a worse card than the RX480 released 5 years ago https://i.redd.it/oyxyoxmch2a81.jpg .

I'd expect otherwise actually. RDNA is far more efficient at gaming. GCN was compute-focused (higher TFLOPs, but weaker in practice). Case in point, micro-benchmarks show that VRAM latency is ~100 nanoseconds on RDNA, but ~300 nanoseconds on GCN. RX 6500 XT is aimed at roughly the same specs as the RX480, but should perform slightly faster in practice, along with Raytracing support, Infinity Cache and therefore faste…

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.

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

#74

Post by vorpalhex »

Tenoke wrote: post #45
mrfinn wrote: 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…

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 miner node. About 50% less!

Bitcoin is a huge waste of electricity, and it is WAY worse than anything else you listed.

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

#75

Post by Tenoke »

mrfinn wrote: post #67
Tenoke wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Biggest problem about PoW coins, and that's something that everybody working on it knows, or should know, is that the need of power is steadily bigger each year. Where would be the limit of that? When that requires the energy of a big country? (We are quite away from that as far as I know [1] ) A heavily industrialized continent? More than the whole world? It's absolutely crazy. I know that there's a big lobby behind…

>Biggest problem about PoW coins, and that's something that everybody working on it knows, or should know, is that the need of power is steadily bigger each year.

They don't really require more power, they are just getting more valuable so it's been profitable for more people to increase their mining investments. The limit is that they are not infinitely valuable, and if anything mining rewards are decreasing.

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

#76

Post by DennisP »

GhettoComputers wrote: post #44
beachy wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or a carbon tax and solve the problem at source.

That solves nothing, it only lines politician’s pockets. The cost of electricity is the deterrent currently, which is why you don’t see everyone mining. If you want to make electricity cost more, it’ll “solve” more than crypto mining, it’ll just make mostly poor people have a lower standard of life.

The best carbon fee proposals refund the money to taxpayers, equal amount per person. If you emit less CO2 than average, as most poor people do, then you come out ahead.

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

#77

Post by politician »

vlovich123 wrote: post #66
Tenoke wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The typical drying machine pulls about 2-6 KW while running. A cryptomining rig pulls about ~1.2 KW while mining. A drying machine runs for an hour a week. Let's say 2 hours a week. That's 12kWh per week at the high end for drying. A cryptomining rig running 24/7 ends up using 201 KWh for the same time period. That's 16x more taking the most pessimistic clothes drying usage, so I'm not sure how you're concluding "use…

Most people living in the suburbs in the US have a drying machine while not everyone has a cryptomining rig running 24/7, so we could _easily_ be in a situation where drying machines in a region use more power than cryptomining rigs. And a lot of things are like that: Netflix, furnaces, AC, freezers.

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

#78

Post by Scoundreller »

vlovich123 wrote: post #66
Tenoke wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The typical drying machine pulls about 2-6 KW while running. A cryptomining rig pulls about ~1.2 KW while mining. A drying machine runs for an hour a week. Let's say 2 hours a week. That's 12kWh per week at the high end for drying. A cryptomining rig running 24/7 ends up using 201 KWh for the same time period. That's 16x more taking the most pessimistic clothes drying usage, so I'm not sure how you're concluding "use…

You forgot to account for the cost of the damage a dryer does to clothing. And how much conditioned air it pumps outside that needs to get sucked back in through my home’s cracks and re-conditioned.

And the fires!

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

#79

Post by the_snooze »

mrfinn wrote: post #67
Tenoke wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Biggest problem about PoW coins, and that's something that everybody working on it knows, or should know, is that the need of power is steadily bigger each year. Where would be the limit of that? When that requires the energy of a big country? (We are quite away from that as far as I know [1] ) A heavily industrialized continent? More than the whole world? It's absolutely crazy. I know that there's a big lobby behind…

>Biggest problem about PoW coins, and that's something that everybody working on it knows, or should know, is that the need of power is steadily bigger each year

PoW is wasteful by design. The more hash power you throw at the network, the more difficult the PoW becomes. Any efficiency gains necessarily have to go towards more hashing, instead of maintaining the same level of work at a lower power draw.

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

#80

Post by xhrpost »

vlovich123 wrote: post #66
Tenoke wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The typical drying machine pulls about 2-6 KW while running. A cryptomining rig pulls about ~1.2 KW while mining. A drying machine runs for an hour a week. Let's say 2 hours a week. That's 12kWh per week at the high end for drying. A cryptomining rig running 24/7 ends up using 201 KWh for the same time period. That's 16x more taking the most pessimistic clothes drying usage, so I'm not sure how you're concluding "use…

OP is probably talking cumulative energy. The vast majority of households probably have dryers in the US. The vast majority of households also DO NOT have crypto mining rigs.
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