Look, we all like a good Christmas miracle, but rumors of a cryptomining farm running next-generation Nvidia RTX 4090 Ti and AMD Radeon RX 7000 series graphics cards is just too far-fetched.
Why are we so keen to shout “humbug!” at this rumor, reported by Wccftech? It’s simply too good to be true. According to a listing at Flexpool, which is an online cryptocurrency mining pool, there is a cryptomining farm made up of Nvidia RTX 4090 Ti and AMD Radeon RX 7000 series GPUs.
The thing is… those GPUs haven’t been announced, and likely don’t even exist. There’s not even an RTX 3090 Ti from Nvidia, though there are rumors it could be announced soon, maybe even at CES 2022.
But, a follow-up to a GPU that’s not even been announced being used in a cryptomining farm? Nah, not going to happen.
Similarly, the AMD Radeon RX 7000 series of GPUs has yet to be announced. Unlike the Nvidia RTX 4090 Ti, however, it’s likely that AMD is working on these graphics cards. However, it’s also highly unlikely that these upcoming and unannounced GPUs would first appear in a cryptomining farm before AMD officially unveiled them.
Ridiculous numbers
While the above already puts these rumors on very shaky ground, the supposed mining capabilities of these GPUs also makes this very unlikely.
According to screenshots from Flexpool, the GeForce RTX 4090 Ti machine is apparently capable of a hash rate of 1.2-1.3 TH/s. The hash rate is basically how capable a GPU or mining farm is at mining for cryptocurrency, and these numbers are unbelievable – in all senses of the word.
As Wccftech points out, the high-end GeForce RTX 3090, currently the jewel in Nvidia’s gaming GPU crown, is capable of between 110-120 MH/s. That would mean if these numbers were true (and that’s a huuuuge ‘if’), the GeForce RTX 4090 Ti machine is capable of hash rates that would take around 10,000 RTX 3090s to match.
Combined with the AMD Radeon RX 7000 control test apparently hitting 657.3 GH/s, and an overclock test of 580 GH/s, this farm would be capable of up to 3.91 TH/s mining hash rate in Ethereum, with an average of 2.47 TH/s. This would, according to Wccftech, mean it was capable of mining over $4million in Ethereum, with $20,000 made every three hours.
If anyone did actually own a cryptomining farm capable of this, Christmas certainly would have come early. But, once again, these numbers are far too good to be true.
Analysis: We’d love – and hate – for this to be true
But would it be such a bad thing if is was real? Yes and no. The numbers on show here would suggest that the RTX 4090 Ti would be an incredibly powerful GPU, and even if you don’t care about cryptomining, it could mean Nvidia is cooking up a killer gaming graphics card. The AMD Radeon RX 7000 numbers are also impressive.
So on the plus side, if these numbers are remotely accurate, we’d be seeing some very powerful gaming GPUs.
But, that’s also a problem. Gamers are already struggling to buy GPUs, and a part of that is miners buying up the graphics cards in bulk. If Nvidia and AMD were to release GPUs capable of the kind of cryptomining numbers this rumor suggests, there would be carnage as miners scramble to buy up those GPUs. It would mean gamers would find it almost impossible to get hold of one.
So, although these rumors are very, very unlikely to be true, we still hope they’re not. We’d rather have powerful gaming GPUs that we can actually buy (or put on next year’s list for Santa).
- These are the best GPUs that actually, you know, exist
