Effect of cryptocurrency – Let’s check it now
Introduction
Now, unless you haven’t any alternative, you cannot build a gaming computer. Cryptocurrency, a term which we softly learned when world begun waking up to Bitcoins, has had on-again/off-again toss with consumer PC hardware for several years. Now, not only is it on-again, it is intensified things up from regular pitch to the front page boiling topic.
What is happening? When this madness will end?
Let us rewind clock a bit to the autumn romance of year 2013. Bitcoins was showing itself as more than passing fad or things are beginning to feel as real. Year 2013 was the time when you could purchase things with cryptocurrency by retailers such as Newegg moving in to give strange idea of legitimacy.
In 2013 AMD created a desperate bid for the market share at high end of gaming GPU market with R9-290X, targeting squarely at Nvidia’s GTX 780 and enormously undercutting the prices.
GTX 7xx series of Nvidia’s Keple GPU managed to become last era, when computing performance for GPUs were likely virtually handicapped in order to protect their product lines of Tesla and Quadro lines.
Results were a rush on GPUs by AMD as individuals desperate for getting cryptocurrencies movement scrambled for finding their share.
AMD GPUs prices soared when retailers marked them up significantly over MSRP, retailing product as soon as targeted at Computer Gaming enthusiasts to new segment of consumers who were willing to get into deeper pockets as this was an investment, rather than entertainment.
It was not only the Bitcoin that was already stepping towards ASIC mining. In January 2014 Litecoin was started to be trade until, last year. In first and last quarter of 2014, graphics cards were found to be overpriced and sold in 3 to 4 packs with power supply. The cheapest CPUs found at retailers were to cater the necessities of crypto-miner.
No doubt, it did not last. PC gamers screamed and then AMD watched for their market share dwindle when gamers bought only things they could, i.e. Nvidia products. With time AMD moved in with retailers in order to get these prices under control, bubble had highly passed, by flooding market with second hand GPUs as early rush miners transformed GPUs mining investment to ASIC based mining solutions. Or grew bored with calculation involved in figuring out if it actually be wasting more on energy cost as compared to making with coin mining.
Now things are really different
The bubble of 2013/14 was forgotten when new GPUs launched and crypto-mining was confined to ASICs. Intel launched X99 in 2014, and most expensive DDR4 with it, Nvidia gave GTX 9xx and AMD draw back to lick their cuts of being much successful in bad way.
So what is making year 2k17 rekindling of forgotten romance turn to 2k18’s blazing passion?
Now bubble did not pop. There are much more gamers on board and few of them have introduced types cryptocurrencies which are tough enough to mine on ASICs based mining solutions.
You need to recall the part of appeal of cryptocurrency mining. It was everyman’s opportunity to make money. Little consumer hardware, home PC crunching away while you work or sleep. People need that dream of striking it, well perhaps rich, however if not rich, making some money by doing nothing effectively except watching mining rig doing its work and not allowing it catch fire. With this dream, market has delivered and GPUs are again king or new generation’s cryptocurrency mining.
Now, OEM Love to Play their Part
At the time of 2k13/14 bubble, biggest winners in Computer hardware were retailers. However, it demonstrated, that individuals who saw cryptocurrency like gold rush will spend more than conventional consumer of hardware for customized PCs. That time showed us that deep pockets are available there, and now in year 2k17/18 rise of cryptocurrencies gifted an opportunity to OEM to develop hardware, only for cryptocurrency miners.
No doubt, not anybody needs to have 3 power supplies plugged in their mining rack, therefore, EVGA has provided us more dose of insanity in the shape of 80+ Platinum 2200 W power supply. Without any doubt you will need 220 Volt outlet in order to plug this monster into.
GPU-ACCELERATED COMPUTING?
GPU accelerated application is the use of graphic processing units along with CPU in order to accelerate deep analytics, engineering and learning applications. GPU accelerators were first introduced by NVIDIA in year 2007, now they power the energy efficient data centers that can be used in universities, government laboratories, SMEs, enterprises across the globe. They play huge role in accelerating the applications platforms ranging from Artificial Intelligence (AI) in robots, drones and even cars.
GPU Compared to CPU Performance
Simplest way to understand the difference between CPU and GPU is to study the comparison between the ways they process tasks. CPU includes few cores optimized for sequential serial processing. In contrast GPU has massively parallel architectures consisting of 1000s of smaller and more efficient cores meant for handling the multiple tasks at the same time.
Is cryptocurrency really useful?
What you can do with Bitcoin, OneCoin and other forms of cryptocurrency? Do they really have any usefulness to the global economy? Many people will say no, however scarcity, pseudo-anonymous nature and lack of government/bank control, has given them ample of value among people. An individual who can create a wallet, a 26 to 35 characters address or more depending on type of digital coin that is community part of public private key pairing, and private key is kept with the owner. Crypto coins can also be transmitted between the wallets, secured by power of already known cryptography, a technique that allow digital funds to travel across the globe in just few minutes or less.
In present world of information age, 1 Bitcoin is worth more than $2,500 although pricing is certainly be highly volatile, and above 100,000 merchant accept Bitcoin, including the Newegg. One can also purchase a gift card with the help of Bitcoin which can work at all various stores online, like Amazon, however it is not all lollipops and sunshine.
Another serious hashing setup, the cost of mining may seems to be much more than the actual worth of Bitcoin!
You may find plenty of scams, theft, and many other shady happening in the world of cryptocurrency. Eventually, cryptocurrency wind up being lots of digital cash, which means it is extremely difficult to intercept or trace. Drugs, money laundering, and many other illicit activities have made use of bitcoin. Ransomware bugs and viruses also exist that the encrypt hard disks and the demand bitcoin to get unlock software and code. That is both the curse and blessing of pseudo-anonymous coins.
However regardless of years of individuals declaring death of the cryptocurrency and many other welcoming it as a promised Liberator, for most if not all the people cryptocurrency remains a marginal curiosity. At present it is likely to make lots of money through mining, however the energy cost of mining and transacting is actually much more than the actual worth of Bitcoin mined. Rather than becoming currency which is free of controls of banks and governments, Bitcoin is mainly controlled by small collections of parties who are interested and have invested in protecting these networks. As well, ironically, more acceptance of the Bitcoin can probably come with some extra regulations.
That leads back to the prices of Graphic Processing Units again, where it is much more gainful to mine anything other than the Bitcoin using GPU, as compared to transect it for the Bitcoin. As well, few applications even supports the auto-switching among many mining algorithms for selecting the existing highest paying choice. Unsurprisingly, companies as well as individuals have jumped to build GPUs farms in order to take benefits of this.
If you are interested in building your personal mining farm in order to get rich, there’re various others who are also interested in doing same thing at this time, this is the reason why most if not all have accused cryptocurrency like Bitcoin of being the Ponzi schemes. Almost all people like you are here for their interest in PC gaming, and you are likely wondering when this madness will going to end so the gamers like you can can easily buy GTX 1070 or RX580 at a price near to MSRP.
Author Bio: Bery Farnandas is a passionate technical writer. He writes about latest technologies, news, updates etc.
