You may recall the cryptocurrency mining rush a few years ago when Ethereum and Bitcoin were at all-time highs and GPU inventory was at an all-time low. The displayless GPUs that emerged from the frenzy were intended to balance the market by leaving gaming-specific GPUs for gamers and allowing prospectors access to technology optimized for mining valuable digital property.

Thankfully, we were not hit by another crypto gold rush. However, with PayPal's recent announcement that it will accept cryptocurrency payments, bitcoin has seen another upturn. And with AMD's new Big Navi hitting the market next week, AMD may have plans for its old RDNA cards to play a part in the current cryptocurrency market.

Phoronix members today discovered what they call a "navi10 blockchain SKU" in a Linux driver (device ID 0x731E).

The card is based on the RDNA 1.0 architecture on a 7nm FinFET process node and contains exactly the same 40 compute units (CUs) and 2,560 stream processors (SPs) as the RX 5700 XT. The only difference between the patch posted and the current AMDGPU Linux kernel driver is that the Display Core Next (DCN) and Video Core Next (VCN) engines are disabled.

But before you get your hopes up, remember that these are just rumors. Perhaps something solid will be revealed in the near future during AMD's graphics stream next week on the 28th. Perhaps you may even benefit.