The GPU industry finally acknowledges cryptocurrency mining

Let me begin by stating I'm not a miner. However, I'm a GPU enthusiast, so my perspective will be from the GPU side of things.

Back in late 2013, AMD released one of the finest graphics cards ever made, the Radeon R9 200 series. Coming in at $549, the R9 290X edged out the then $1,000 GTX Titan. The R9 290 was an even better deal, beating the $650 GTX 780 for $400! These were great at the time, and they have gotten even better. The GPU community likes to call it AMD FineWine technology in jest, but it's true that the four and a half year old R9 290 is still remarkably great, going toe to toe with today's $200 mainstream graphics card. Crucially, the GTX 780 is no longer in the picture, and the R9 290 even beats the much newer GTX 970!

But there's something else the R9 290 revolutionized - GPU cryptocurrency mining. In late 2013 through early 2014, the R9 290 and 290X were constantly out of stock. Meanwhile, the Bitcoin GPU mining scene was booming. It was no co-incidence - it was clear that Bitcoin miners were buying up R9 290s by the truckloads.

Yet, the GPU industry at large were largely ambivalent, if not negligent, to this market. There was a lull for a few years while Bitcoin went ASIC, but Ethereum and RX 480 reinvigorated GPU mining. Meanwhile, several NVIDIA friendly algos started popping up as well.

Of course, as we know, Ethereum has soared through the roof, and at current prices ETH mining will ROI on an AMD RX 400/500 card in less than 2 months!

AMD's newly released RX 500 series cards are well out of stock, and nowhere to be found, despite AMD promising strong supply.

At last, they have come out and released an official statement to CNBC -

The gaming market remains our priority. We are seeing solid demand for our Polaris-based offerings in the gaming and newly resurgent cryptocurrency mining markets based on the strong performance we are delivering

Further still, we're seeing rumours of both NVIDIA and AMD releasing mining-specific SKUs. Based on GTX 1060 and RX 580, these mining GPUs will not feature display connectors, and only 90 days warranty. My hunch is that these will also be salvaged dies that didn't meet qualification. What miners will gain instead is a cheaper price. A win-win for both GPU makers and miners alike!

It's not just GPU makers, even motherboard vendors want a piece of the pie, with ASRock first to announce a mining motherboard with no less than 13 PCIe slots!

We're even seeing mainstream hardware sites publish Ethereum mining benchmarks as detailed as their gaming benchmarks!

One last thing, a correlation worth pointing out. Right after these news, AMD's stock went up 7%. Not willing to call it causation just yet, but an interesting data point. With Ethereum switching to PoS, which coin will drive demand for GPU mining in the future?