The Radeon R290X is still sold out, and it isn’t because of gamers. A surge in Litecoin mining has led to the Radeon R9 290X being sold out in the U.S.
AMD’s Radeon R9 290X is in short supply, and it appears that’s not because of gamers. Reports from across the web point towards an increased interest from people mining cryptocurrencies as the reason for the short supply of the flagship card.
AMD’s Radeon R9 290X is a great card that takes the fight to Nvidia’s GTX 780 and 780 Ti, so much so that Nvidia had to decrease the prices of these cards. AMD initially launched the R9 290X for $549, but it was later increased to $699. A few water-cooled versions of the card were retailing for as high as $799.
In spite of the hike in prices, the Radeon R9 290X is now sold out in the U.S — and it isn’t due to hordes of gamers buying the card; the card is mainly being sought out by Litecoin miners. After it was revealed that AMD cards were significantly better at mining Litecoin mining to their Nvidia rivals, a remarkable increase in sales of the R9 290X was seen. Litecoin is widely seen as an alternative to Bitcoin, and is steadily seeing more user interest.
The reason AMD cards do better at cryptocurrency*mining is due to the fact that they can handle more parallel computation tasks, a fact highlighted by their DirectCompute scores. DirectCompute is a DirectX 11 based test that checks the parallel computation ability of a GPU, and the R9 290X, along with other high-end AMD cards consistently beat out Nvidia cards in this area. So, even though the GTX Titan costs twice as much as the R9 290X, it wouldn’t be ideal for mining Litecoin.
Is cryptomining profitable with a Radeon R9 290X?
Another factor when mining a crypto currency like Litecoin is profitability. This is another area where AMD cards have an edge, as they’re more affordable to similar offerings from Nvidia. Cards like the R9 290X have been known to generate 879 Kh/s (Kilo hashes/sec) and a thread concurrency of 32765 when running full-tilt. Going by those numbers, it would take around 100 days of mining Litecoin to break even after investing $600 on a R9 290X. The return of investment varies based on the card configuration and running clocks as well as voltages, but it is considerably easier to break even using an AMD card thanks to the higher DirectCompute scores.
Furthermore, a reason for the high demand of the R9 290X is the fact that it comes with Mantle, which offers significant performance gains in games like Battlefield 4.*With the R9 290X sold out, miners are looking for other AMD alternatives; which has led to cards like the R9 290 selling for as high as $599, a $100 above its suggested retail. It isn’t known when the R9 290X will be back in stock, but you can still get a few versions of the card from Amazon for over $800. That comes out to a markup of over 64 percent from the original.
Read More: http://ift.tt/1eLqSr1
AMD’s Radeon R9 290X is in short supply, and it appears that’s not because of gamers. Reports from across the web point towards an increased interest from people mining cryptocurrencies as the reason for the short supply of the flagship card.
AMD’s Radeon R9 290X is a great card that takes the fight to Nvidia’s GTX 780 and 780 Ti, so much so that Nvidia had to decrease the prices of these cards. AMD initially launched the R9 290X for $549, but it was later increased to $699. A few water-cooled versions of the card were retailing for as high as $799.
In spite of the hike in prices, the Radeon R9 290X is now sold out in the U.S — and it isn’t due to hordes of gamers buying the card; the card is mainly being sought out by Litecoin miners. After it was revealed that AMD cards were significantly better at mining Litecoin mining to their Nvidia rivals, a remarkable increase in sales of the R9 290X was seen. Litecoin is widely seen as an alternative to Bitcoin, and is steadily seeing more user interest.
The reason AMD cards do better at cryptocurrency*mining is due to the fact that they can handle more parallel computation tasks, a fact highlighted by their DirectCompute scores. DirectCompute is a DirectX 11 based test that checks the parallel computation ability of a GPU, and the R9 290X, along with other high-end AMD cards consistently beat out Nvidia cards in this area. So, even though the GTX Titan costs twice as much as the R9 290X, it wouldn’t be ideal for mining Litecoin.
Is cryptomining profitable with a Radeon R9 290X?
Another factor when mining a crypto currency like Litecoin is profitability. This is another area where AMD cards have an edge, as they’re more affordable to similar offerings from Nvidia. Cards like the R9 290X have been known to generate 879 Kh/s (Kilo hashes/sec) and a thread concurrency of 32765 when running full-tilt. Going by those numbers, it would take around 100 days of mining Litecoin to break even after investing $600 on a R9 290X. The return of investment varies based on the card configuration and running clocks as well as voltages, but it is considerably easier to break even using an AMD card thanks to the higher DirectCompute scores.
Furthermore, a reason for the high demand of the R9 290X is the fact that it comes with Mantle, which offers significant performance gains in games like Battlefield 4.*With the R9 290X sold out, miners are looking for other AMD alternatives; which has led to cards like the R9 290 selling for as high as $599, a $100 above its suggested retail. It isn’t known when the R9 290X will be back in stock, but you can still get a few versions of the card from Amazon for over $800. That comes out to a markup of over 64 percent from the original.
Read More: http://ift.tt/1eLqSr1
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