Crypto mining - is it killing gaming?

Whats your opinion on mining?

  • No problem at all with it

    Votes: 18 25.0%
  • I dont like it and think its damaging to PC gaming

    Votes: 27 37.5%
  • Its fine in moderation, its the whales that are ruining it

    Votes: 13 18.1%
  • Im looking forward to cheap equipment once the crypto market dies

    Votes: 16 22.2%
  • its going to kill the second hand market if/when it floods the market with cheap, well used GPUs

    Votes: 8 11.1%

  • Total voters
    72
Crypto mining uses as much energy as the whole of Denmark does each year, that is a lot more than a single percent of energy wastage.
Thanks, didn't know that.
 
Not sure the energy use is much of a big deal to be honest, compared to a small ish workplace like mine who even on a nighstshift the average use mayb as much a 350kw+ average constant and thats just one place in the whole country so what is a few gpus here n there running even matter.
I could mine a multi gpu setup at work and nobody would even notice it's such low powrr in comparison (and ive thought about it)

Another thing i was thinking is why is the prices of gpus gone up? Is it because of this? Even if yes then why? Surely it makes no difference if a few million more gamers get into pc and buy gpus or miners buy them companys make money so why the price increase? To stop miners who seem to hunt for bargains more??
It's all weird tbh.

Just wish i'd grabbed a 1070ti like i very nearly did before christmas as im staying away untill priced go back to normal. Hurting sales more than making more money imo.
 
Supply and demand. The more people who buy cards, the higher the price becomes because of greedy retailers.
 
Not sure the energy use is much of a big deal to be honest, compared to a small ish workplace like mine who even on a nighstshift the average use mayb as much a 350kw+ average constant and thats just one place in the whole country so what is a few gpus here n there running even matter.
I could mine a multi gpu setup at work and nobody would even notice it's such low powrr in comparison (and ive thought about it)

Energy consumption is something to be concerned about though. Sure adding a couple of boxes here or there especially if there is already considerable load isn't going to make a difference there. However if lots of people do it is the scale that is an issue.

A recent report I read reckoned there was a lot of assumptions you could make but 3.4GW was mentioned as a useable figure that's nearly 10,000 of your data centres... That is just bitcoin:(

It's wasted energy imo and it only gets worse as you throw more processing power at it and the difficulty increases leading to more power consumption.
 
Energy consumption is something to be concerned about though. Sure adding a couple of boxes here or there especially if there is already considerable load isn't going to make a difference there. However if lots of people do it is the scale that is an issue.

A recent report I read reckoned there was a lot of assumptions you could make but 3.4GW was mentioned as a useable figure that's nearly 10,000 of your data centres... That is just bitcoin:(

It's wasted energy imo and it only gets worse as you throw more processing power at it and the difficulty increases leading to more power consumption.

That increase in power consumption for every bitcoin though means that there is a ceiling. There will come a point when mining the coins costs you the same or more than the electricity to get it, so ultimately it either peters out
 
I will be laughing so hard within 10 or 12 years when quantum computer which is 100 million times faster is all the rage, GPUs will be a thing of the past,and most any encryption that is done today will be easily broken without extreme upgrades. Bitcoin has already been hacked once. Unless there's a physical Item to back up money, It's all prone to being hacked.
 
So what is the point inprople buying mining rigs? Last time I paid any attention it was people mining for coins.
The very good thing about mining is that used cards that are one or two generations old will be dirt cheap, as without the latest gear miners can't keep up. For those people buying $100,000 worth of cards they will have to upgrade them every year. This is because for the same price of electricity the cost is just not worth not upgrading for the increased computing power. So except for the gaming elite, or those people who are typing their clan/guild/whatever, in the long run this will make an abundance of cards easily available to many people for less money. Used cards at some point, will be easily able to do most graphics on 4K machines.

Don't forget though technology is changing. There's already true holographic gaming available at sites as it's too expensive currently to have at home... Think 1980s arcades will eventually become to homes but they will be holographic. Perhaps before then most things will be virtual-reality or perhaps on 8K systems but that's where it ends. Within our lifetimes we will see the top of what is needed for eyes can only do so much.

They are much much further away from integrating these things directly to our brains. That I will not see in my lifetime. I suspect you won't see it in your child or grandchild's lifetimes either. However all of us that are fairly young will see quantum computing and quantum storage, which will be overkill for almost every computing task out there that MOST people take up. It will go from having multiple PCs in the house to having a central unit. We'll just circle right back around to where everything started.

For higher and computing needs such as genetics, extreme decryption, perhaps handling Google's needs as they grow, the higher and computing power will be needed. But unless we have holographic suites in homes, gaming systems will reach a pinnacle where only so much power is needed, much the way most people don't need 10 TB of hard drive space. Yet with quantum storage even that will be looking like one byte in the future relatively to today's storage in homes.
 
Besides all this crypto it's a bubble. It was up to $20,000, now down to $11,000. That's bitcoin. There's new crypto currencies being developed all the time. Even Ecuador has her own crypto currency what you're trying to get rid of physical money, but people I resistant to it heavily because it's so easily manipulated. Money used to be based upon the gold standard, and now it's based upon goods traded and the value of work. What is crypto currency based on? the ability to spend lots of money on CPU time, electricity, and hardware, in a get rich scheme, with almost no countries endorsing any single standard. it's truly a pyramid scheme. The first people in a new crypto currency become the richest and the last spending megadollars on getting coins are the ones that are the fools.
 
Supply and demand. The more people who buy cards, the higher the price becomes because of greedy retailers.
Conversely, the higher the price, the more likely they'll have some in stock.

If they were priced at the RRP, they'd be permanently sold out. Think about it.
 
Boy oh boy, I went away from PC industry for a year and it goes bonkers. I'm sure happy that I bought all the parts for my current PC beginning of last year. I bought my ASUS Strix 1080 GPU from Aria in Feb 2017 for 587.94. Now they have the same card listed as £692.39... and it is out of stock too. It looks like it was a last minute purchase before the madness started.

ASUS MAXIMUS IX HERO bought same month for 189.09. Now the same board is £219.16 from the same supplier... reduced from £240 and it's out of stock :confused:

My i7 7700k is the same price as last year in Feb when I bought it o_O

Bonkers.

So how do I get some of that "free money" people talk about here? :)
 
Last edited:
That increase in power consumption for every bitcoin though means that there is a ceiling. There will come a point when mining the coins costs you the same or more than the electricity to get it, so ultimately it either peters out

No the production of each bitcoin itself does not directly increase the power consumption.

If there wasn't a big "gold" rush on bitcoin at the moment then the energy consumption would be a lot lower.

There is a limited supply of bitcoin and a number are given out when a block is solved. Those blocks are supposed to be solved around every ten minutes. The more people you have solving then the higher chance so the time to solve starts to become shorter. To counter this the difficulty part of the solution is adjusted. It's this difficulty that is driving up the requirement for faster computing/hashing and with it more power consumption.

Ant miner that makes the asic miners produce machine that are substantially faster each time and generally have a lot better power to hash ratio. Whilst that keeps happening big players will still be able to increase the rush...
 
I will be laughing so hard within 10 or 12 years when quantum computer which is 100 million times faster is all the rage, GPUs will be a thing of the past,and most any encryption that is done today will be easily broken without extreme upgrades. Bitcoin has already been hacked once. Unless there's a physical Item to back up money, It's all prone to being hacked.

Bitcoin itself has not been hacked, though quantum computing itself does present it as interesting challenge.

It's the bitcoin exchanges that have been hacked. This is the equivalent of your local bank been robbed because of poor security.
 
Besides all this crypto it's a bubble. It was up to $20,000, now down to $11,000. That's bitcoin. There's new crypto currencies being developed all the time. Even Ecuador has her own crypto currency what you're trying to get rid of physical money, but people I resistant to it heavily because it's so easily manipulated. Money used to be based upon the gold standard, and now it's based upon goods traded and the value of work. What is crypto currency based on? the ability to spend lots of money on CPU time, electricity, and hardware, in a get rich scheme, with almost no countries endorsing any single standard. it's truly a pyramid scheme. The first people in a new crypto currency become the richest and the last spending megadollars on getting coins are the ones that are the fools.

you seriously need to look into currencies that have a real world use.

like Enjin. that will only increase with time and will likely be used forever.
 
It's a shame that all this processing power is wasted on coins and not to further some type of science, things like folding@home for example.
 
It's pushed gpu prices through the roof. My 1080 ti cost me £750 last year and the price is now £1990. That is insane
 
I will be laughing so hard within 10 or 12 years when quantum computer which is 100 million times faster is all the rage, GPUs will be a thing of the past,and most any encryption that is done today will be easily broken without extreme upgrades. .

Some coins and technologies are being developed to address this specific point. For example, QRL;

QRL - The Quantum Resistant Ledger
 
 
Just before all the prices started exploding, I had saved almost £500 for a new card. Now an Xbox X looks more attractive.
 
Just before all the prices started exploding, I had saved almost £500 for a new card. Now an Xbox X looks more attractive.
Does the Xbox X pay for itself when you're not using it :smashin:o_O:laugh:, the GPU will over time when put to minnig.... just saying!
 
Does the Xbox X pay for itself when you're not using it :smashin:o_O:laugh:, the GPU will over time when put to minnig.... just saying!
You can only invest if you can afford to invest though. I'm not in a financial situation where I can throw down £700+ on a card that could make me money but might not.
 
You can only invest if you can afford to invest though. I'm not in a financial situation where I can throw down £700+ on a card that could make me money but might not.

you can pick up old gen cards for peanuts. 980ti's for instance for like £250. i don't know why people insist on buying brand new especially with these prices.
 
you can pick up old gen cards for peanuts. 980ti's for instance for like £250. i don't know why people insist on buying brand new especially with these prices.
It's more that I'm looking to upgrade my card (currently a 1060 6gb) for gaming though, not for mining.
 

The latest video from AVForums

Is 4K Blu-ray Worth It?
Subscribe to our YouTube channel
Back
Top Bottom