Unlike Nvidia, AMD will not restrict the cryptocurrency-mining capabilities on its PC graphics cards. “We don’t have any plans to introduce a mining limiter on Radeon graphics cards at this time,” AMD tells us.
The statement confirms what AMD Product Manager Nish Neelalojanan told PC Gamer during a briefing for the upcoming Radeon RX 6700XT, which goes on sale March 18. “We will not be blocking any workload, not just mining for that matter,” Neelalojanan reportedly said.
Rival Nvidia introduced an Ethereum mining limiter on the recently launched RTX 3060 card in the hopes it’ll dissuade the professional cryptocurrency community from buying up the product. (Ironically, Nvidia accidentally created a way to remove the limiter on the card, thanks to the company’s own software driver.)
Whether Nvidia will expand the Ethereum mining limiter to future RTX graphics cards has been a topic of much speculation. On the one hand, it may help alleviate demand for the products; on the other hand, it denies PC builders the freedom to casually mine on their own rigs and earn some extra cash.
However, AMD is indicating there’s no need to add any restrictions on its own PC graphics cards, citing how the computing architecture was never optimized for cryptocurrency mining.
“All our optimization, as always, is going to be gaming first, and we've optimized everything for gaming. Clearly gamers are going to reap a ton of benefit from this, and it's not going to be ideal for mining workload,” Neelalojanan said in the briefing with PC Gamer.
Nevertheless, AMD’s recently released Radeon RX 6800XT and 6900XT cards still rank among the top-performing mining cards behind Nvidia’s RTX 3080 and 3090, according to Kryptex, a mining provider.
Of course, the main problem facing AMD and Nvidia has been low product inventory. The RTX 3060 itself remains out of stock at all the major retailers amid a global chip shortage. So we’re doubtful that adding a mining limiter will make much difference on freeing up supplies. Many scalpers on eBay are now selling the RTX 3060 for $700 to $1,000, or double the normal price.