Sapphire RX 470 Mining Edition Card for Sale in UK

FrgMstr

Just Plain Mean
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We have been talking about mining-specific cards for a few weeks now, and most of us are aware of the video card shortages caused by the recent Etherum mining craze. Sapphire has the first "mining only" card that we know of for sale.
Product information: RADEON RX 470 MINING EDITION 4096MB GDDR5 PCI-EXPRESS GRAPHICS CARD

SAPPHIRE's acclaimed Dual-X Cooling is powered by two massive yet silent fans and state-of-the-art radiator design. The new form of our 95mm blades mean greater airflow and superior heatsink coverage at lower noise compared to standard cooling designs. These feature dual ball bearing fans, which have an 85% longer lifespan than sleeve bearings in our tests. The improvements to the fan blades means the solution is up to 10% quieter than the previous generation.

These cards of course do not have the hardware needed for video output as all HDMI, DisplayPort, and DVI outputs have been removed in what is very much likely an effort to save cost. It looks as if these cards have shorter warranties as well. While miners are going to be saving a bit of upfront cost (maybe), selling these into the used secondary market will of course be hampered greatly since gamers cannot use these cards.
 
I would have thought AMD would have needed a more powerful version to entice miners away from standard gfx cards... Also, aren't they saying that 4GB cards have no future, as the problem size will go beyond what can fit in 4GB very soon?

How good is an R470 at mining anyway?

EDIT - I see that they have an 8GB version for £299...

And you can get a standard 570 for less money... Stupid...
 
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Would be interesting as a cheaper card to Xfire with a normal one, though with the state of games / drivers nowadays, multi-card setups are becoming an increasing PITA.

I agree, I'd like to know if they could Xfire these as well.
 
I would have thought AMD would have needed a more powerful version to entice miners away from standard gfx cards... Also, aren't they saying that 4GB cards have no future, as the problem size will go beyond what can fit in 4GB very soon?

How good is an R470 at mining anyway?

EDIT - I see that they have an 8GB version for £299...

And you can get a standard 570 for less money... Stupid...

Where can you get a 570 for 299?
 
WTF, that site won't take paypal or any of my credit cards. Gives generic errors when trying to process. Does anyone from the US have experience with them?

Update: Turns out some of the transactions did go through despite saying otherwise. I might have more than 1 card shipping out. Oops.
 
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I wouldnt mind getting my hands on those double life BB fans :)

Then again, thanks to msi, my fans dont spin when im not gaming or playing madvr videos. Now i just need to get one of the newer mobos that dont spin the cpu fan unless its over 60c.
 
Wow so they saved $10 by not putting ports on the card. That took "courage".

I so look forward to my next video card not being able to display video. That's some next level thinking right there.
 
this kills resale when the mining market drops off again...at least the full feature cards can be used for other things
 
With crypto prices the way they are today, only a moron or somebody that pays basically nothing for electricity would start buying cards today.
 
I have heard from all the cool mining kids that these cards are the bee's knees and the cat's pajamas. I've heard ROI is about 3 days, and the fans at full load are so quiet, they put out - 20 db. I sure hope everyone doesn't snatch these little wonders all up before I can get a couple dozen. Boy, it'd be a shame if those whiny gamers had the option to purchase pre-owned midrange cards for less than their original MSRP.
 
Pffft.... just enjoy it if you make the right moves at the right time, like upgrading from a pair of R9 390 -> a pair of 1080 for free :D
Of course, that was before miners decided to go apesh*t over the 1060, 1070 and 1080!
 
So, these are based on current chips, so lets say AMD makes 10000 chips a month (random number)... seems to be like they aren't making more chips, which still means a shortage, unless I'm missing something here... miners who cant get a dedicated mining card will still pay over RRP for a gaming card...
 
Well here's a thought though, if these cards were made with binned chips that DIDN'T make the gaming cut and sold for a reasonable price, this could make sense. Maybe. I get this one isn't oriented that way.

Here's the thing when you're mining ETH , core clocks really aren't that big of a deal. What matters is tight RAM timing (first) and bandwidth (second). I mean there's a reason I'm flashing my cards with home made BIOS - I don't care if it breaks the video outputs and I don't care about Windows drivers. The most common flash is to a 4 Gig card with 1750 Mhz RAM because the timings are tight. At that point with tighter timing you just start cranking up the Megahurtz on the RAM until you hit it's limit - Samsung RAM shines here.

So a generic headless card at .9 or less Volts 1000Mhz core with tightly wound RAM running at 2200Mhz or better would be a great starting place for chips that can't run at the rated 480/580 speeds. If the cards sold for reasonable prices and gave better performance than hacked together gaming cards, I believe people would go for that (price dependent).

Of course people mine other shit besides ETH and it all reacts differently to core/RAM clocks.
 
I'm confused those fans look terrible for stacking 3+ cards in a box? It looks like you'd need an empty slot in between each card for airflow. Most server/workstation GPUs meant for multiGPU use have fans that pull from the back like all of the old reference AMD 290x and the Titan cards do? The lower power may help a bit... I'd need to see some benchmarks.
 
I'm confused those fans look terrible for stacking 3+ cards in a box? It looks like you'd need an empty slot in between each card for airflow. Most server/workstation GPUs meant for multiGPU use have fans that pull from the back like all of the old reference AMD 290x and the Titan cards do? The lower power may help a bit... I'd need to see some benchmarks.

No mining rig uses a closed case. Hell mine are just 2"x2" frames and cardboard with no shrouds OR fans on the cards at all.
 
... Ok, so you build one open air, but you still don't get to set the card spacing on the motherboard unless you run a bunch of extenders... Anyway I wouldn't be using one for mining anyway just other GPU loads. Our fancy 4U GPU boxes have 8 GPUs stacked on top of each other and have heavy front to back airflow and they stay reasonably cool.
 
... Ok, so you build one open air, but you still don't get to set the card spacing on the motherboard unless you run a bunch of extenders... Anyway I wouldn't be using one for mining anyway just other GPU loads. Our fancy 4U GPU boxes have 8 GPUs stacked on top of each other and have heavy front to back airflow and they stay reasonably cool.

All cards use extenders, even the ones connected to x16 slots. I don't use PC fans at all. I use furnace blowers, for small rigs I recommend a box fan. I was cooling 750 cards at one point in a cardboard tunnel with one furnace blower pushing and one sucking.
 
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