AMD, Nvidia Coin-Mining Cards Appear As Gaming GPU Shortage Intensfies

AMD, Nvidia Coin-Mining Cards Appear As Gaming GPU Shortage Intensfies

- Brad Chacos

IT’S DAMNED NEAR impossible to buy a reasonably priced graphics card right now. First AMD’s Radeon cards disappeared (go.pcworld. com/rcd), then GeForce cards began to dry up too (go.pcworld.com/ gfc). The culprit? Cryptocurrency miners chasing price bubbles in Etherium, Zcash, et cetera. But new mining-dedicated graphics cards from AMD and Nvidia’s hardware partners might help ease the dearth of gaming hardware.

Maybe? Hopefully? Okay, probably not. A swarm of coin-mining cards have hit online e-tailers recently, as AnandTech (go.pcworld.com/ant) reports. Most are based on AMD’s more mining-friendly Radeon “Polaris” GPUs, but you’ll also find a couple of cards based on Nvidia designs. Notably, those use “GP106” branding—that’s the name of the GPU itself—rather than being called GTX 1060 cards.