Cryptocurrency mining is an arms race. The hardware used five years ago for that task is now little more than a paperweight, and with current difficulty levels, the only path for miners is to double down. This has caused some scarcity of graphics cards, but everything seems to indicate that Asus plans to respond with two new models, specially optimized to increase the hash-rate. One is based on the Radeon RX 470 chip, while the other adopts an Nvidia GPU from the Pascal architecture.
Ethereum is the new star player among cryptocurrencies. The latest update in the price of Ether (its token, ETH) places it at $320. It's still far from the almost $2,600 that each Bitcoin is worth, although in mid-June it touched $400, and its trend is on the rise. Bitcoin mining is very centralized, dominated by mines full of ASICs and FPGAs, but in the specific case of Ethers, its design is "more friendly" for graphics cards. This translates into a legion of miners sweeping the high-end market. Anyone wanting a latest-generation card for gaming will not only have to pay a fortune: they will have to find one first.
Asus's Dedicated Mining Cards
A new wave of rumors suggests that both AMD and Nvidia are working on products optimized for cryptocurrency mining. Both companies remain silent, but Asus just shook the hornet's nest with two new models, MINING-RX470-4G and MINING-P106-6G. The first is based on an AMD Radeon RX 470 chip at 926 MHz frequency (1,206 MHz boost), with 4 GB of GDDR5 memory (1,750 MHz), 256-bit bus, and a single digital DVI output. The second uses an Nvidia P106-100 GPU derived from the Pascal series (1,506-1,708 MHz), 6 GB of GDDR5 RAM, 192-bit bus, and according to the official page, a PCI Express 1.0 bus. Another relevant detail is that the MINING-P106-6G has no video outputs. In both cases, Asus offers compatibility with its GPU Tweak II overclocking suite, and the Nvidia model anticipates a 36 percent extra hash-rate compared to other cards in the same segment.
Unfortunately, the available information ends here. Asus did not provide launch dates or estimated prices for these cards. Personally, I don't think the Taiwanese manufacturer's new offering will change miners' priorities. Their investment will remain concentrated in higher-end models, for the simple reason that they can squeeze more out of them for longer.
