Posts Tagged ‘Nvidia mining GPU’

Nvidia P102-100 Crypto Mining Cards Are Coming to the Market

9, Mar 2018

We got a tip that that Nvidia P102-100 GPUs are starting to hit the market and they are going to be interesting for miners similar to the P104-100 as they are offering a custom configuration for the memory and faster performance, unlike their desktop GeForce counterparts. We got information about an Inno3D P102-100 GPU and the specifications of the mining card as well as some preliminary performance results coming from the manufacturer, so if you are interested you can check out the specs and hashrates below. Unfortunately the initial photos of the Inno3D mining GPU show that there are no video output connectors (kind of expected for a mining GPU), but there is also no backplane for attaching the video card to a mining frame or a case easily and that is more of a problem (though they mention Standard PC Bracket as an accessory?). Gigabyte did that thing back when they released the first revision of their Nvidia P106-100 Mining GPU, but later on they have added a backplane in the next revisions.

Inno3D P102-100 Specifications:
– GPU: P102-100
– CUDA Cores: 3200
– Base Clock: 1582 MHz
– Memory Clock: 11 Gbps
– Physical Memory Size: 5 GB
– Memory Type: GDDR5X
– Memory Interface Width: 320-bit
– Memory Bandwidth: 400 GB/s
– Bus Support: PCIe Gen1 x4
– Card Size: 21.5 cm length, 12.5 cm height, dual slot
– Max TDP: 250 Watt
– Power Connectors: 2x 8-pin PCI-E

Inno3D P102-100 Hashrate:
– ETH: ~47 MHS
– ZEC: ~660 Sol/s
– XMR: ~879 H/s

The hashrates cited are from Inno3D directly and are for reference only, there is no mention if these are at stock frequency or after overclock or any user optimizations (could they be stock?). Judging from the number it seems that the new P102-100 GPUs are optimized and will be great for mining Ethash coins, but not that good for others compared to what you can get from a GTX 1080 Ti as a comparison. We do hope that soon we will be able to do a detailed review and have some firsthand performance numbers for the P102-100 mining GPUs, but for now it is only what we are getting from manufacturer specifications. Another very important thing is the pricing of these new GPUs, but unfortunately at the current market conditions we do not expect to find them that much cheaper than what a GTX 1080 Ti goes for.

ASUS Mining P106 is a GPU for Crypto Currency Mining

27, Jun 2017

VGA card manufacturers seem to have finally started taking care for the crypto mining market that has been growing significantly lately due to the high profitability for crypto mining. ASUS, one of the top brands not only for VGA, but for other PC components as well has announced their Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060-based mining video card and the product is called ASUS Mining P106. We have already talked about Nvidia’s plans to release a crypto mining oriented GPU for miners based on their GTX 1060 GPU. Originally the plan was to have this product on limited markets and not available in the retail chain, but it seems that this plan can change with ASUS and other VGA brands joining with products that can become available through the usual distribution channels as well.

The ASUS Mining P106 is based on the NVIDIA P106-100 GPU and comes with 6GB GDDR5 that has probably been modified with custom timings in order to increase the hashrate for more memory intensive mining algorithm such as Dagger-Hashimoto (Ethash) used by Ethereum. The GPU Base Clock is 1506 MHz and the Boost Clock is 1708 MHz, the video memory is 8008 MHz GDDR5. The initial information was that the NVIDIA P106-100 GPU should be based on the 9 Gbps version of the GTX 1060, though this might still be true with the memory is apparently at 8 Gbps with more aggressive timings. As expected the ASUS Mining P106 GPU does not feature any kind of video outputs so it is essentially limited to only computing tasks such as mining and will not be an interesting product for gamers that might also want to mine, but still be able to play games.

Other interesting features on the ASUS Mining P106 include the dual ball-bearing fans that are IP5X-certified to be dust resistant and thus offer a longer fan lifespan and this is really important as far as crypto mining goes. ASUS also claims that they have used components that enhance efficiency, reduce power loss, decrease component buzzing under load, and lower thermal temperatures for unsurpassed quality and reliability. There is no mention about warranty period as initially Nvidia had plans to offer their mining GPUs with just 3 months of warranty, though we are hearing that other brands such as ASUS might actually be with 1 year warranty. No word about pricing either, though the mining GPUs should be cheaper than the consumer version of GTX 1060 in order to be more attractive to miners and we are probably going to be seeing them starting to appear on the some markets sometime next month.

ASUS has also announced a second GPU targeted at miners, but that one is really not that interesting like the NVIDIA P106-100 GPU is. The ASUS Mining RX 470 is essentially a standard AMD Radeon RX 470-based video card with 4GB video memory at 7000 MHz, there is no word about improved timings for mining that will result in better performance. The design of the AMD mining GPU is very similar to the Nvidia mining model, though here you have video output connectors and cans till use the card for gaming if you want to. The fans are the same and ASUS claims that the same improved components are being used to offer better reliability for longer term mining usage.

– To get more details about the ASUS Mining P106 GPU on the official website…

Seems Like Nvidia is Making a Video Card Especially for Mining

8, Jun 2017

There is some information circulating around in the last couple of days that Nvidia is making a video card specifically designed for mining as well as some speculations that AMD is doing the same as well. While are know for a fact that this is true for Nvidia, we are having some doubts about AMD doing it with all the AMD GPU shortages we are seeing lately and the news they can continue for the next few months. With the lack of AMD GPUs on the market the miners started buying Nvidia GPUs, so very soon we are most likely going to see cards such as the GTX 1060 and GTX 1070 getting harder to find on the market. Higher-end GPUs are probably going to have better availability for now, but who knows if miners will move on to these as well if there are not other options available.

We know that Nvidia is focused on gamers and not as much interested in mining and miners like AMD for example, so they do not want to have availability issues of their GPUs just like it has happened with AMD now just because of the miners. So they have apparently figured a solution to the problem – just make a GPU intended for mining and miners and sell that to miners instead of their gaming-centered products. The card that they are building is an NVIDIA Pascal GP106-100 GPU that comes with no video output connectors, passive cooler (still needs airflow for proper cooling) and much shorter warranty – just 3 months. The idea is to have a more affordable price wise option for miners that can be used only for mining (hence no video outputs) and that could make it even more interesting alternative. The crypto mining GPU from Nvidia is apparently based around the consumer GeForce GTX 1060 9Gbps model and the price should be cheaper than that of the consumer model.

The information that we are seeing about the GP106-100 mining GPUs mentions some numbers regarding mining performance, the following numbers are for 8x of these GPUs: 200 MHS for ETH, 2500 Sol/s for ZEC, 4400 H/s for XMR. These numbers translate to about 25 MHs for Ethereum, 312.5 Sol/s for ZCash and 550 H/s for Monero and only the ETH number seems surprisingly high considering what we’ve seen in our recent test of the GTX 1060 9Gbps. So while the GPU might be essentially the same as on the consumer GTX 1060, there could be some differences in the video memory… maybe 256-bit memory bus or optimized memory timings intended for better performance. With a sub $200 USD prices these mining oriented GPUs could be interesting, but the 90-day warranty period could be a bit of a setback.

We’ve left the not so great news for last. The Nvidia GP106-100 mining GPUs will not be available on the regular market to the regular users apparently, they are going to be sold only in large volume to big customers such as cloud mining companies like Genesis Mining and/or other big private mining operations. So the whole thing should not make any difference to smaller home miners as they are most likely not going to be able to get their hands on the hardware anyway. That is of course prone to changing at some point if the crypto mining business continues to grow and forms a larger part of the revenue for companies like Nvidia, so that they could actually form a separate business unit to handle it. For now however the company does not seem to think that they should change their focus from gamers and gaming and mining is more like creating issues for them than helping… something that cannot be said is the same from AMD’s point of view where the market for their Polaris-based GPUs goes mostly in the hands of miners.


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