Computer hardware company, Sapphire Technology, have announced that they will be releasing a line of headless graphics cards marketed towards cryptocurrency miners, as opposed to their traditional gamer customer-base.
Sapphire Technology Is Hoping to Capitalize on the Recent Global Surge in Demand for GPUs
Sapphire Technology has become the first company to produce a line of graphics cards that are purpose-built for cryptocurrency mining. Sapphire is a Hong Kong-based technology company that was founded in 2001. The company produces GPUs for a range of applications, and are advertised as being based on AMD’s graphics processing units. Sapphire Technology also claims to have been the first company to release a video card with a clock speed of 1000 MHz.
Sapphire Technology is hoping to capitalize on the recent global surge in demand for GPUs, becoming the first major graphics processor manufacturer to directly market to cryptocurrency miners. The graphics cards do not feature display ports, meaning that the GPUs are not able to be used for any purpose other than cryptocurrency mining. Although producing purpose-built graphics processing units for cryptocurrency mining allow Sapphire Technology to reduce the price of manufacturing GPUs, such renders miners unable to resell their graphics cards to the second-hand gaming market when upgrading their hardware in the future. Sapphire Technology will be releasing 5 different graphics processing units, two of which integrate Samsung-branded memory chips. Sapphire’s purpose-built GPUs are currently only available for pre-order.
Some Within the Cryptocurrency Community Are Skeptical of Sapphire’s Purpose-Built GPUs
The recent plethora of mainstream news stories covering the meteoric price rise of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies have led to a spike in demand for GPUs, resulting in widespread graphics processing units in many countries. The GPU shortage has also seen many retailers charging dramatic premiums on popular graphics processing units – with Russian reports claiming that GPUs have gone up in price by 80%.
Some within the cryptocurrency community are skeptical of Sapphire’s purpose-built GPUs, arguing that given the single-purpose nature of Sapphire’s graphics processing units, investing in Application Specific Integration Chip (ASIC) mining hardware may offer a greater ROI on hardware expenses.
With bitcoin moving closer to early-majority mainstream adoption, it’s likely that we will see many GPU manufacturers starting to advertise graphics processing units to cryptocurrency miners as an increasing array of industries bid to cash in on the rapidly expanding cryptocurrency economy.
Do you think that more companies will release purpose-built GPUs for cryptocurrency mining? Share your thoughts in the comments section below!
Images courtesy of Shutterstock and Sapphire Technology
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