During the tail of the previous cryptocurrency bubble, I would read that ASIC's were better for this purpose than GPU's. What's changed?

During the tail of the previous cryptocurrency bubble, I would read that ASIC's were better for this purpose than GPU's. What's changed?

ASIC resistant algorithms most of the time its done by using a lot of memory and adding memory to an ASIC makes it a lot more expensive to build one. and videocards swim in memory. so the coins are mostly tailored to fulfill this role like ETC ETH

I wonder what effect this has on cheap GPU CF? Maybe hack in 4x ~ 6x cheap ass GPU? ...Like HD 7850.

I wonder what effect this has on cheap GPU CF? Maybe hack in 4x ~ 6x cheap ass GPU? ...Like HD 7850.

The effect should be negligible. Most GPGPU tasks don't utilize much bandwidth at all. They also have no need for CF (or SLI). I have a BOINC rig using mixed GPUs (Nvidia and AMD) and it works just fine. But, I don't know if Etherium works best in CF or SLI. I figure it'd be worse, since that would require the GPUs to synchronize their data, which is just wasting time.

The effect should be negligible. Most GPGPU tasks don't utilize much bandwidth at all. They also have no need for CF (or SLI). I have a BOINC rig using mixed GPUs (Nvidia and AMD) and it works just fine. But, I don't know if Etherium works best in CF or SLI. I figure it'd be worse, since that would require the GPUs to synchronize their data, which is just wasting time.

Not talking mining, but gaming. Since this should better manage bandwidth. To OpenCL CF/SLI still presents itself as set of separate devices.

Not talking mining, but gaming. Since this should better manage bandwidth.

Ah ok. I'm not sure that's possible though. To my knowledge, you can't just use any PCIe slots you want for CF or SLI. Many chipsets can offer multiple PCIe x16 slots but not all of those slots can be used for CF or SLI. I don't think I've ever seen a motherboard where x1 slots are compatible. But hypothetically if you could do CF with 4-6 GPUs on these boards, you'd probably get worse gaming performance overall than if you just had 2, for a few reasons: 1. Though something like an RX 460 would probably work fine on x4 PCIe lanes, you would very likely lose performance over x1 slots for gaming purposes. 2. Each processor needs to synchronize and communicate with the parent process at some point (regardless of what method of CF you use). Even if bandwidth isn't an issue, you will be significantly lowering your maximum framerate just to get all the hardware on the same page. Of course, this will help improve minimum frame rates. 3. Newer CF-compatible GPUs no longer use a bridge. They instead communicate to each other over the PCIe bus. With the GPUs on the x1 slots, that would make their performance even worse (than if they were to run by themselves). The x1 cards would in turn bottleneck the synchronization step of the x4+ cards. With SLI, you'd get slightly better performance because of the use of a bridge. Also from what I recall, Nvidia GPUs tend to use less PCIe bandwidth. The downside is Nvidia is pretty much limiting themselves to strictly 2 GPUs.

During the tail of the previous cryptocurrency bubble, I would read that ASIC's were better for this purpose than GPU's. What's changed?

Different cryptocurrency. The last wave was about Bitcoin, and ASICs still rule there. What changed was the rise of Ethereum, which is designed to be ASIC-resistant, requiring large amounts of extremely fast memory. GPUs are basically the perfect hardware for Ethereum mining.

I wonder what effect this has on cheap GPU CF? Maybe hack in 4x ~ 6x cheap ass GPU? ...Like HD 7850.

Mining does'nt need CF/SLI compatibility, Mining APIs supports multiGPU, Ethereum is bases pn GPU Mining but need more and more VRAM each 4~5 days, rightnow needs +3GB@Good Bandwidth, then 7850 does'nt supports Ethereum, minimum 4GB R7 370 or RX460 4GB Grettings

Different cryptocurrency. The last wave was about Bitcoin, and ASICs still rule there. What changed was the rise of Ethereum, which is designed to be ASIC-resistant, requiring large amounts of extremely fast memory. GPUs are basically the perfect hardware for Ethereum mining.

havent we already hear the same story in regards to Scrypt alghoritm. scrypt was also asic resistant, wasnt it