Radeon RX 6500 XT is bad at cryptocurrency mining on purpose, AMD says • Hacker News Board

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

#81

Post by ls15 » Tue, Jan 11, 2022, 10:21 PM UTC

gambiting wrote: post #49

xvector wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I pay for all my energy to be renewable. I don't see why my crypto mining needs to be banned. In fact, estimates peg Bitcoin's use of renewable energy to be between 50-75%. This is a fact lost on HN, which hates crypto at all costs.

That's not how this works. Even if you pay your supplier to buy only renewable energy on the open market, if your house is supplied by a coal power plant then your mining rig is powered by coal, regardless who you're paying for your electricity. Yes it feels good to pay for renewable electricity but ultimately that's not how it works. And crypto needs to be banned because it's all a gigantic scam that has a gigantic…

> And crypto needs to be banned because it's all a gigantic scam that has a gigantic environmental cost attached to it.

Is it worse than, let's say, Christmas in this regard?

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

#82

Post by qayxc » Tue, Jan 11, 2022, 10:21 PM UTC

YXNjaGVyZWdlbgo wrote: post #55

postalrat wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well is it cheaper than a 5 year old rx480?

It's the same MSRP.

"MSRP"

First partners selling the part in Europe already have a hefty 50% surcharge [0].

[0] https://videocardz.com/newz/amds-199-radeon-rx-6500xt-offici...

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

#83

Post by cedilla » Tue, Jan 11, 2022, 10:22 PM UTC

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…

You severely underestimate the power use of proof-of-work blockchains. It's on the scale of nations.

But the main difference is that whatever you compare with those blockchains, it will never have the critical flaw: the automatically increasing difficulty. Your dryer doesn't periodically flood the drum to make it harder because more people are interested in tumble drying.

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

#84

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Jan 11, 2022, 10:22 PM UTC

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…

[deleted]

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

#85

Post by waffle_maniac » Tue, Jan 11, 2022, 10:22 PM UTC

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…

You can wash your clothes in a bucket if you want to save even more energy. But I like the convenience of washers and dryers.

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

#86

Post by Tenoke » Tue, Jan 11, 2022, 10:23 PM UTC

vorpalhex wrote: post #74

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…

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…

It doesn't make sense to compare 1 person gaming or clothes drying to a specific mining machine. The consideration was about global bans and total outputs from those activities.

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

#87

Post by beachy » Tue, Jan 11, 2022, 10:23 PM UTC

dmm wrote: post #42

beachy wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or a carbon tax and solve the problem at source.

Wouldn't all the miners(and every other carbon intensive industry) just move to a place without a carbon tax?

Yes. That's why you need big players - like the US, EU - to use leverage to force the rest of the world to follow suit. But the change has to start somewhere.

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

#88

Post by politician » Tue, Jan 11, 2022, 10:23 PM UTC

1ris wrote: post #68

xvector wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No, that's not moving goalposts. If Bitcoin miners waste renewable energy, the users of energy in general move to renewable later. If everybody is using renewable energy exclusivity for everything, is still wastage. PoW only work by adjusting it's consumption upwards to create scarcity, e.g. one block per 10 minutes. At that point we will be useless solar panels, covering land uselessly, etc, etc. Bitcoin is arbitrar…

"Waste". The parent's point is who are you to say? Maybe we should closely audit your energy usage and ban those activities we find objectionable.

Authoritarianism isn't an ideal outcome.

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

#89

Post by waffle_maniac » Tue, Jan 11, 2022, 10:23 PM UTC

mdoms wrote: post #65

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…

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

Machine washing too.

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

#90

Post by FinalBriefing » Tue, Jan 11, 2022, 10:23 PM UTC

YXNjaGVyZWdlbgo wrote: post #5

saulrh wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that the entry-level card can run its clock 30% faster than the same line's top-end offering supports the story pretty solidly, IMO. Not supporting 8 GB of vram can't have given them enough breathing room to casually run the clock that fast, so this has to have been decided way up front. Like the article says, it remains to be seen whether this will also make the card bad at gaming, but I think that AMD at l…

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

It looks like it is just a different card designed for a different purpose. High clock speed, more power efficient, and a lot smaller...and $200 (supposedly).