Crypto crash means graphics upgrades!

So I get home and this is waiting on my porch. Yes, no outer box, just like that! Glad my neighbours are honest folk.

What’s happening? Well, you see… the crypto miners are crashing out of using video cards, driven by the pressure of custom-asics (more efficient) and lower $/coin. This means that people like you and I can start to enjoy nice things again. The rx285 is being retired in favour of this vega-64. The 1080ti will stay in the basement in the machine learning rig (I can hear you all gnashing your teeth, that’s fine, if you want to come play tetris or lemmings or something like that on it or something I’m willing to share).

This was driven by a complex “chicken/fox/corn/canoe” problem. You see, I updated the big monitor. But then it was more bandwidth than my HDMI cable could drive (so it went into limp mode, 3840×1600 @ 30Hz). So I upgraded my cables to DisplayPort 1.4. But then the old video card only had 1 display port, 2 hdmi, and 2 dvi. And the other monitor only had DVI and DisplayPort. So I temporarily used a HDMI to DVI-D, but it was single-channel, so that monitor responded by going into limp mode @ 1920×1080 @ 30Hz. So… New cables necessitated a new card. The logic is irrefutable!

So, if you’ve been holding off the big video upgrade cuz that 1080ti or vega-64 were more than your first 3 cars, well, maybe you can check again, they are dropping fast.

Also, since i’m spending your money, the threadripper 2990WX is available starting next week. But, if that’s a bit steep for your pocketbook, the 2700X is just amazingly fast and only about $300-$400 (for 8C16T!).