Intel's Arc GPU Drivers Do Not Support Mining, Confirmed
At least for now.
Intel has publicly admitted that current drivers for its discrete Arc 'Alchemist' graphics cards are optimized for new and popular games, which certainly will upset some loyal fans of older titles. But apparently, one more category of users will be upset with Intel's standalone GPUs — miners.
As it turns out, Intel's Arc A380 discrete graphics cards for desktop PCs currently do not support popular Ethereum mining software.
"Well, we got the Intel GPU driver working great, but unfortunately looks like no mining programs support Intel GPUs yet," wrote DJ Mines, a well-known YouTuber who also happens to be a cryptocurrency miner and a DJ. "Tried NiceHashMining, trex miner, lolminer, teamreeminer (all on Windows). Guess we have to wait for [Hive OS mining platform]."
Intel's Arc A380 graphics card is not exactly meant for core gamers or miners since it is based on the company's entry-level ACM-G11 GPU with 8 Xe cores (equals to 1024 stream processors) capable of around 3 FP32 TFLOPS and featuring a 96-bit GDDR6 memory interface. This board will likely not make it to the list of the best gaming graphics cards around, and it is not particularly surprising that, for now, it does not support mining at all.
Meanwhile, since Intel's Arc A380 boards cannot be used for mining, they will not be purchased by miners for their Ethereum rigs, which is why their price will not be inflated due to high demand, at least for now. Still keeping in mind that Ethereum mining on GPUs is not particularly profitable, mining support on Intel's Arc A380 looks to pose theoretical rather than practical interest.
Intel's discrete Arc 'Alchemist' graphics cards are beginning to show up on the market (albeit initially only in China), which is why we see many people sharing their impressions about the boards on Twitter and YouTube. So far, many observers have noted the build quality of Gunnir's Arc A380 graphics card, which has two fans and an eight-pin PCIe auxiliary power connector.
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Anton Shilov is a contributing writer at Tom’s Hardware. Over the past couple of decades, he has covered everything from CPUs and GPUs to supercomputers and from modern process technologies and latest fab tools to high-tech industry trends.
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InvalidError 3TFLOPs on FP32? That would be the A370M. TPU's database has the A380 marked down as 4TFLOPs on FP32.Reply
Intel's drivers "not supporting mining" is just a matter of time until mining software writers update and optimize their stuff for Intel. -
Makaveli ReplyInvalidError said:Intel's drivers "not supporting mining" is just a matter of time until mining software writers update and optimize their stuff for Intel.
Will that actually happen tho?
Miners are currently selling all their hardware on Ebay for discounted prices. -
renz496 ReplyMakaveli said:Will that actually happen tho?
Miners are currently selling all their hardware on Ebay for discounted prices.
anytime. the consortium level of miner never stops mining. they might adjust their current activity but they never really stop mining completely. -
InvalidError Reply
Doesn't cost much to be ready for the next bounce. If another bounce does happen, you need to know which GPUs are worth bothering with and you are better off doing that experimenting while GPU prices are deflated.Makaveli said:Will that actually happen tho?
Miners are currently selling all their hardware on Ebay for discounted prices. -
husker I'm pretty sure that someone started mining without waiting for Nvidia or AMD to spontaneously create drivers to support mining. If the card is worthy, the mining will come to it, not the other way around.Reply -
edzieba Is this "Intel's drivers/GPUs do not support mining", or "mining software does not yet support a just-released and barely available low-end GPU"?Reply