Milzy
Guru
Won’t the electric bill outweigh the crypto gains?
Any PC gamers around?
- Thread starter Grant Fondo
- Start date
Page may contain affiliate links. Please see terms for details.
RoubaixCube
~Tribanese~
- Location
- London, UK
yes and no. Compared to 3-5 years ago, cryptomining with graphics cards is no where near as lucrative as it once was and many people stopped when the payouts were so low that it would only make sense to do it if you had free electricity otherwise the electricity bill would eat up most of it.
for almost a year or a year and a half. people have been stuck at home due to lockdowns and everyone wants a gaming console. But they cant get one because of scalpers and the Cov putting a strain on manufacturing and whatever supply is available. Making electrical devices is a big operation and components to build them just dont appear over night for the little elves to come out and start building them. The shortage of certain components is holding back production so manufacturers can only work with what they have which then get snapped up by scalpers as soon as they hit the shelves.
Its easy for tech sites to throw out cryptomining as an excuse to for shortages. There was a time when cryptomining was genuine problem and people were buying graphic cards by the bulk but those days a long gone.
Did it contribute to prices being pushed up? No, Lack of supply and scalpers did that. Scalpers dont by graphics cards to mine on, they buy them to resell them. Some retailers have also been known to mark up prices on hot products meaning that they sell well beyond the manufacturers MSRP. Thats why competition in the retail market is a good thing. Youre always going to find a retailer that is selling what you want cheaper than the other unless they form a cartel like hard drive manufacturers and work together to keep prices artificially inflated. (which they have done on multiple occasions)
ColinJ
Puzzle game procrastinator!
- Location
- Todmorden - Yorks/Lancs border
Milzy
Guru
How does a gpu get the money though?
It's to do with the algorithms used for cryptocurrency mining, GPUs are reasonably efficient at performing the calculations needed. That being said they are less efficient the than FPGAs which are increasingly being used.
You need a lot of them to make any money and it doesn't make a lot of sense in the UK due to our high electricity prices.
OP
OP
Grant Fondo
Guru
- Location
- Cheshire
I have heard of miners buying TEN RTX 3080s at £8k+ as its got a good payback period. I could do it with my single one but can't be faffed
Seevio
Guru
- Location
- South Glos
WD Blue maybe?
I've been using Stadia for about 8 months now, really love it. Allows me to game on my 2013 laptop, and stream also Cyberpunk/F1 2020 to my 4K OLED TV, phone with no issues
.
fossyant
Ride It Like You Stole It!
- Location
- South Manchester
I've been using Stadia for about 8 months now, really love it. Allows me to game on my 2013 laptop, and stream also Cyberpunk/F1 2020 to my 4K OLED TV, phone with no issues
View attachment 573139
View attachment 573140
View attachment 573141
View attachment 573142
Looks good. Is that a HP Envy Laptop I spy ?
StuAff
Silencing his legs regularly
- Location
- Portsmouth
That's a (rather old) MacBook Pro.
fossyant
Ride It Like You Stole It!
- Location
- South Manchester
Ah, power lead gives it away. Our HP Envy 17 looks like a mac book, and is very similar..
I've been using Stadia for about 8 months now, really love it. Allows me to game on my 2013 laptop, and stream also Cyberpunk/F1 2020 to my 4K OLED TV, phone with no issues
View attachment 573139
View attachment 573140
View attachment 573141
View attachment 573142
Assume you don’t need a super duper PC but a fast internet connection or is that a console type thing ?
Thats the crazy thing about it, it runs on anything that can run Chrome.....Including my work laptop, which is so bolted down interms of 'managed' software I cannot even run Excel Macros without getting permission, yet Stadia works on it!
You do need a good internet connection, Stadia website says something like 10Mbps, but the experience will be awful. On any of the laptops, streaming at 1080P, I'm seeing download rates of 25-30Mbps, and that's sustained - constant download rate unlike normal streaming video where you see a high initial peak and than it settles.
If you are using a ChromeCast and link it to a 4K capable TV, even at 1080P the download rate is 50Mbps+, peaking to over 60Mbps. If you stream at native 4K (for which you have to pay an subscription to Stadia Pro for), I suspect you will need download rates close to 100Mbps peak and easily 70-80Mbps sustained.
So the trade off for not needing expensive hardware to run games is the need for fast internet. If you do have fast internet, its very very good. I cannot tell the difference between playing games on Stadia, versus using my Xbox or any other local device.
