Archive for the ‘Crypto News’ Category

Alpha Technology To Increase the Hashrate of Their Scrypt ASICs After All

28, May 2014

alpha-technology-logo

Just a few days ago Alpha Technology started sending invoices to their customers that have pre-ordered their Viper Scrypt ASICs in order for the full amount of the miners to be paid, so that the company would start shipping the products to customers sometime in July according to their plans. The previous stand on the matter of hashrate was that Alpha Technology would not increase their hashrate further to match the competition in the face of KnCminer, but instead would focus on power efficiency and faster shipping…

The latest news coming from the company show that they have apparently changed their mind as they have announced new “minimum” hashrates for the Viper Scrypt ASICs, the smaller unit will go form 18 MHS to at least 50 MHS and the bigger unit from 90 MHS to at least 250 MHS. The prices of the miner will not change, so they will become a more interesting alternative to other solutions that are either already on the market or will start shipping in the next months. However there will apparently be some sacrifices such as the removal of some features such as the external LCD display, Wi-Fi functionality as well as a WebGUI. According to Alpha Technology the final miners will “run through a wired USB and Ethernet connection fully supporting standard mining software”. We’ll see how this will go and if Alpha Technology will indeed be able to ship something in July and what the final products will be capable of as apparently the company still hasn’t received their chips from the manufacturer to start building and testing what the final product will be and it is already able to claim a significant increase in hashrate.

Zeus Has Apparently Started Shipping their ZeusMiner Scrypt ASICs

22, May 2014

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Zeus Integrated Systems has released their weekly update and confirmed that they have shipped the first 500 ordered units to customers, though apparently many of these were picked by customers from China. The company should continue shipping the rest of the orders from the first batch and is already taking preorders for the next batch. Currently only Cyclone, Thunder and Lightning miners are apparently being shipped and the smallest Blizzard miners should also start shipping very soon. Our order for a single Blizzard miner still says Processing as a Status and we are going to be keeping you updated once it actually ships and when we receive it and do some testing on our own. So stay tuned for more information soon.

Meanwhile, Alpha Technology, another Scrypt ASIC manufacturer has sent requests to the customers that have preordered their Viper Scrypt Miners to send the rest of the payment as the company has requested only 30% initial deposit for preorders. This however does not include shipment as it should be paid additionally when the time for shipping the actual product is close. Previously Alpha Technology said the full payment needs to be paid 8-10 weeks before shipment and they now say they will be ready for July shipment, so that should mean end of July most likely. And while 90 MHS Scrypt ASIC seemed quite a lot just a few weeks ago, now Innosilicon A2-based Scrypt ASICs are already shipping and are prety much capable of providing this hashrate. And Even though A2 is still a bit more expensive than the Viper you will still be able to get it now and not wait two more months (if Alpha Technology keep their promise for shipping in July). We personally have not preordered anything from Alpha Technology and do not have plans for doing so for the moment.

– To read the latest update from ZeusMiner regarding the current status of shipping units…

AMD Announcing There Are No More Radeon R9 GPU Shortages

15, May 2014

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In a message from AMD sent to press they have announced that the company has good availability of their AMD Radeon R9 product lineup and there are no more shortages. And not only that you can easily get a Radeon R9 280x now for example, but you can also get it at a lower prices as there is no price speculation caused by shortages. Of course AMD is focusing on gamers, though we all know that the shortages were all caused by people buying the cards for crypto currency mining and not for gaming. Below you can see a quote of the message sent to press:

Dear Editor,

You’ve seen many articles, discussions online about the AMD Radeon R9 lineup – especially chatter about pricing and availability. As we’ve talked about it before, the demand for the R9 lineup has been nothing but astonishing, and went well beyond our most optimistic expectations. That created a situation where gamers weren’t able to purchase their desired R9 graphics card.

We have good news! All R9 Series products are now available and in stock at worldwide retailers, and street prices have returned to the SEP (or below)! The chart below should help you get a good overview of the current stack and pricing.

Now that product is available and at suggested pricing, these prices will remain stable. No more madness like you saw in Q1.

I’d like to direct your attention to the AMD Radeon R9 280 – which is now available starting at SEP price of 180€ + VAT ($249 in the US). You will see this price in effect right now on a few items with more on the way. You have most likely not had many of these boards in your lab, and we have a batch of samples available from multiple board partners waiting to be benchmarked. Please let us know if you’d like to review one of the AIB SKUs based on the R9 280.

In tandem with the stable pricing and wide availability, we’ve re-launched our Never Settle Forever bundle program to include over 20 titles from which gamers can pick and choose. In addition, we’ve lined up a few brand new games to add to this promotion, and we’ll be sharing more info with you in the next few weeks!

In summary – for all those gamers who were unsure whether to purchase an R9 graphics card, this is exactly the right time to do so. AMD’s performance and enthusiast line-up has never been more competitive. Armed with technologies like Mantle, TrueAudio, the AMD Radeon R9 series of products offer the best performance and value in every segment from 145€ to 1300€!

Should you have any questions, please let me know.

Kind regards,
AMD PR team

The reason for enough R9 availability is the fact that due to Scrypt mining moving to ASIC mining hardware people are no longer building GPU-based mining rigs like crazy and thus the demand for the video cards is not so high anymore. Also at the moment on the second hand market you can find some great deals on cards used for mining that still have warranty remaining at some really good prices. So why buy new cards when you can get perfectly working ones at even lower price as so many people are selling their GPUs in order to get Scrypt ASIC miners.

Fear not however, GPU mining is not dead, it is just most likely going to take some more time to be revived yet again with the move to another strong alternative crypto currency that is going to replace Litecoin. In the last few days we’ve seen DarkCoin going pretty well, especially after the release of X11 mining support for Nvidia GPUs. There are however multiple other contenders such as VertCoin for example, so do not be in a hurry to sell your GPU hardware yer, or you might regret it later on.


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