From PC World: It’s damned near impossible to buy a reasonably priced graphics card right now. First AMD’s Radeon cards disappeared, then GeForce cards began to dry up too. The culprit? Cryptocurrency miners chasing price bubbles in Etherium, Zcash, et cetera. But new mining-dedicated graphics cards from AMD and Nvidia’s hardware partners might help ease the dearth of gaming hardware.
Maybe? Hopefully? Okay, probably not.
A swarm of coin mining cards have hit online e-tailers over the past few days, as AnandTech reports. Most are based on AMD’s more mining-friendly Radeon “Polaris” GPUs, but you'll also find a couple of cards based on Nvidia designs. Notably, those use “GP106” branding—that’s the name of the GPU itself—rather than being called GTX 1060 cards.
PC Perspective reports that Inno 3D, EVGA, Zotac, and Colorful are also working on dedicated mining cards, and that mining cards based on the GTX 1070’s “GP104” GPU are on the way as well.
This mining hardware differs from consumer graphics cards in key ways, with warranty length being one of the most important. Sapphire’s mining cards on Overclockers UK list a one-year warranty, while the versions sold on Newegg offer a scant 180 days of protection. The company’s consumer graphics cards are guaranteed for two years, by comparison. Miners keep GPUs churning 24/7 so the limited warranty makes sense.
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