Nvidia"s AIB partners have started launching the CMP HX mining cards. Gigabyte, which had registered its CMP 30HX version last month, released the card a few days back, and today a Redditor named "MathematicianBasic73" has posted pictures of the alleged ASUS variant. The poster says that the card is slated for launch next month, however, what really is the eyebrow-raiser is the purported price of the thing which is at a whopping $799. While one of the images shows the alleged specs of the card, the other image has photos of the card itself.
.jpg){kind=link}
.jpg){kind=link}
The Nvidia CMP cards are generally repurposed from last-gen Turing-based GPUs and the entry-level CMP 30HX is based on the GTX 1660 SUPER. This particular model almost exactly resembles the Dual GTX 1660 SUPER EVO which was priced at $239. So it"s really surprising to see that a modified graphics card that is nearly identical in capabilities is reportedly being priced more than thrice as much. While it does seem far-fetched, the rumored $799 price could indeed be true as the Gigabyte model mentioned earlier was also spotted selling at ~$720 in Romania.
It is very likely that Nvidia shares a large chunk of the onus for this exorbitant pricing if the statement (below) taken from the company"s recent Q1 earnings announcement is any indication:
The company also raised its first-quarter revenue estimate for its new CMP product for industrial-scale cryptocurrency mining to $150 million, up from $50 million previously expected.
Curiously, and this might merely be a coincidence, but Nvidia has also raised its revenue expectation from CMP products by three times, which is very close to how much more expensive the ASUS CMP 30HX card allegedly is over its GTX 1660 SUPER Dual EVO counterpart.
Source and images: MathematicianBasic73 (Reddit)