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Advanced Micro Devices, Inc (NASDAQ: AMD) takes a position diametrically opposed to Nvidia Corporation (NASDAQ: NVDA) on imposing restrictions on the use of its gaming graphics cards for cryptocurrency mining, PC Gamer reported.
What happened: AMD has reportedly confirmed that it will not block any workload on its Radeon RX 6700 XT graphics processing units.
“We won’t be blocking any workloads, not just mining for that matter,” said Nish Neelalojanan, AMD product manager, according to PC Gamer.
“First of all, RDNA was designed from the ground up for gaming and RDNA 2 doubles down on that. And what I mean by that is that Infinity Cache and a smaller bus width have been carefully chosen to achieve a very specific gaming hit rate. “
Neelalojanan, however, added a caveat that mining benefits or scales with higher bandwidth and bus width, meaning there will be limitations caused by an “architectural level.”
Why is this important: While Nvidia’s 24GB GeForce RTX 3090 GPU can leverage Ethereum (CRYPTO: ETHER) up to 120 MH / s, high-end RDNA 2 cards based on AMD’s Navi 21 chip can handle 58-64 MH / s, noted PC Gamer. ETH traded 1.61% lower at $ 1,776.73 at press time.
AMD’s GPU drivers are based on Linux and are all open-source, which begs the question of whether the company could implement block mining in the first place.
Last week, Nvidia said it inadvertently unlocked ETH mining performance after updating its drivers for the RTX 3060.
Nvidia tried to discourage the use of its RTX 3060 GPUs through earlier drivers so that they were 50% less efficient when mining ETH.
The chipmaker estimates that between $ 100 million and $ 300 million of its fourth-quarter revenue came from ETH miners.
Nvidia introduced a cryptocurrency mining processor, which it said would help miners build “the most efficient data centers while preserving GeForce RTX GPUs for gamers,” but received criticism for its pricing.
Price action: AMD shares closed up 1.2% at $ 79.06 on Friday and fell 0.3% in after-hours trading. On the same day, shares of Nvidia closed up 0.97% at $ 513.83 in regular session and fell 0.13% in after-hours trading.
Read more: Ethereum, Dogecoin, and other cryptocurrencies you can ‘create’ using your laptop
Photo by Daniel Foster on Flickr
© 2020 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.
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