While the shift from Proof-of-Work (PoW) to Proof-of-Stake (PoS) has seen a dramatic decrease in cryptomining, that doesn’t mean the act of it has ceased to exist entirely. Case in point, cryptominers have reportedly been hogging all the AMD Ryzen CPUs they can find and more specifically, Ryzen CPUs based on the Zen 4 architecture.
The main reason cryptominers are targetting Zen 4-based Ryzen CPUs is because these CPUs support the AVX2 and AVX512 instruction sets. The Ryzen 9 7950X, in particular, is highly favoured by the miners, due to its performance in executing said instruction sets, plus its overall efficiency. As for what it is being used to mine, the coin in question is Qubic.
Now I understand, 7950X is the king in Qubic mining. https://t.co/r8Uo79B6C6
— MEGAsizeGPU (@Zed__Wang) March 12, 2024
As it stands, Qubic is one of the more lucrative coins to mine at present, with a 7950X reportedly generating as much as US$3 a day in profits, which is more than double the earnings gained from mining with a GPU. For context, a 7950X costs RM2,699 a piece, while an RTX 4090 currently retails over RM10,000 a pop. So, if and when a CPU burns out from prolong cryptomining – and they inevitably will – replacing the component won’t hurt a cryptominer’s pocket as much. Likewise, that amount is also double what the 5950X can output, and that CPU does not support the AVX512 instruction set.
But that also raises concern for the future of AMD’s upcoming Zen 5-based CPUs. It is already being reported that the next-generation CPU architecture and corresponding Ryzen CPUs and its AVX512 instruction set would offer twice the performance of the current Zen 4 architecture. In other words, the desktop PC gaming world could see a product shortage when Zen 5 CPUs enter mass production later this year.
(Source: Techspot, Videocardz)
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