Cryptocurrency is back in a big way, that much has become abundantly clear to me while pottering around the show floor at this year’s Computex show.And it’s making AMD’s 500-series cards pretty thin on the ground.Yeah, yeah, crypto-mining... whatever.These are our pick of the best graphics cards for gamers.There are a bunch of different motherboard vendors at the show, such as ASRock and Biostar, displaying boards specifically designed for mining these crypto-currencies.These are motherboards with more PCIe slots than you’ve seen Half Life 3 rumours.Cryptocurrencies, like Bitcoin, Litecoin, and any other word+coin you can think of, are basically digital currencies, but the only way new units of currency are generated is by unlocking them from the hidden depths of complicated mathematical equations.The equations are solved, and the currency therefore unlocked - or mined - using the parallel processing power of your PC.You can use a CPU to mine cryptocurrencies, but the GPU inside your graphics card is much better at chewing through the weird mess of maths needed to uncover whatever ‘coin' you’re mining for.

And AMD GPUs are much better at it than Nvidia's.That’s why every single monster mining rig on display on the Computex show floor was rocking anything up to 13 graphics cards, and why most of them were using AMD’s Radeon RX 470.You might think, ’meh, let ’em get on with it,’ but the recent introduction of a different kind of cryptocurrency more easily mined with current graphics cards, called Ethereum, has had an impact on the number of AMD GPUs actually available for us normies to buy.I spoke to a representative from Sapphire, AMD's largest board partner, at the show and he said that, while it’s great for their bottom line, they're not loving it because it’s not really doing anything for the brand.Miners don’t really care who makes the graphics cards, they aren’t that interested in any features board partners have added in to differentiate themselves from the competition, they just want to run the GPU ragged until it dies.We’re so far down the road with mining now that you’re not going to get very far with your own bedroom setup; those days have long gone.

Now mining’s about big commercial system farms with row-upon-row of dedicated mining rigs.And so graphics card companies are seeing these commercial crypto-mining operations buying up thousands of AMD GPUs each month, paying up front, leaving us gamers wondering where all the Radeons have gone.That’s no real issue for the Gigabytes and MSIs of the world - those companies who produce both AMD and Nvidia graphics cards - but if you’re Sapphire, and no gamers can find your cards on the shelves, you might quickly get forgotten.bitcoin 43 faucetEdited to reflect the introduction of Ethereum, rather than Bitcoin,  is responsible for the recent dearth of AMD GPUs.bitcoin mining server hostingThere may be another way for investors to play the Bitcoin and the surging cryptocurrency trend.litecoin market value

The dramatic jump in digital currency prices this year is driving demand for AMD graphics cards, according to the company."The gaming market remains our priority.We are seeing solid demand for our Polaris-based offerings in the gaming and newly resurgent cryptocurrency mining markets based on the strong performance we are delivering," an AMD spokesperson wrote in an email to CNBC.litecoin get startedEthereum cryptocurrency is up over 2,800 percent year-to-date through Sunday, while Bitcoin is up about 160 percent this year, according to data from industry website CoinDesk.bitcoin etf announcementCryptocurrency miners use graphics cards from AMD and Nvidia to "mine" new coins, which can then be sold or held for future appreciation.bitcoin idr chartAMD traditionally has a better reputation for mining cryptocurrencies.bitcoin difficulty rate

Computer hardware retailers including Newegg, Best Buy and Amazon are sold out of most AMD RX 570 and RX 580 graphics card models as of midday Monday.AMD launched the RX 500 series of graphics cards on Apr.Nowinstock's AMD RX 570 tracker Source: Nowinstock.net The strong demand is spreading to older graphics cards as well.Used AMD RX 470 graphics cards are selling for well over $100 list price on eBay.bitcoin symbol iosNot surprisingly, auction sellers are taking advantage of the trend by adding cryptocurrency names to their product listings.ethereum price history wikipediaEBay RX 470 card listing Source: eBay This isn't the first time the cryptocurrency craze has led to graphic card shortages."Toward the end of 2013, Bitcoin and Litecoin miners caused a similar shortage by snagging every [AMD] Radeon graphics card they could collectively get their hands on," PC Gamer wrote Monday.

AMD is one of the market's best performing stocks in the past year with its shares up nearly 170 percent in the past 12 months through midday Monday compared with the S&P 500's 16 percent return.However, the shares are down over 25 percent during the last few months.The company's 52-week high roughly coincided with the March 2 launch of its new Ryzen line of desktop processors, which disappointed some gamers.Guiminer is a for Windows based on Download Latest Version WHAT IS GUIMINER?GUIMiner is a graphical frontend for mining Bitcoin, providing a convenient way to operate Bitcoin miners from a graphical interface.It supports both AMD and NVIDIA GPUs, as well as CPU mining.You can choose between pooled mining and solo mining – the software embeds a list of mining pools to choose from.FEATURES COMES ALREADY CONFIGURED FOR MANY POPULAR MINING POOLS There's no need to enter connection details manually, unless you want to.REAL-TIME STATISTICS ON ALL YOUR RUNNING MINERS IN ONE LOCATION Displays hash rate, total shares accepted/invalid, and total shares in the past hour.

AUTOMATICALLY START ONE OR MORE MINERS ON PROGRAM STARTUP.VIEW YOUR ACCOUNT BALANCE WITH A POOL AND/OR WITHDRAW FUNDS Do it from within the GUI, at participating pools.MINIMIZES TO TRAY The tray icon can be hovered to show statistics, and miners can be paused from the tray context menu.FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS WHERE CAN I DOWNLOAD GUIMINER?You can download GUIMiner from the official GitHub repo.WHERE CAN I GET NEWS AND UPDATES ABOUT GUIMINER?Have a look at the official forum thread on BitcoinTalk.CAN I USE GUIMINER TO MINE LITECOIN?In order to mine Litecoin, you have to use GUIMiner-scrypt.GUIMiner-scrypt is a GUIMiner fork for mining scrypt chains, such as Litecoin.GUIMiner is the premier Bitcoin Mining tool for Windows and is one of the easiest ways to start mining Bitcoins.By offering a simple and easy to use graphical interface, GUIMiner will let you take full control of your Bitcoin mining process without requiring complicated commands or constantly editing configuration files.

GUIMiner is the perfect Windows mining software for beginners and experts alike, offering a ton of useful features that will help anyone get the greatest amount of Bitcoins with the lowest amount of fuss.GUIMiner supports the most popular Bitcoin Mining software, including OpenCL Miner for AMD graphics cards, CUDA Miner for Nvidia cards, CGminer for any ASIC Miner, and even Ufasoft Miner so you can mine Bitcoins with your CPU!Not only does GUIminer support all of these different Bitcoin miners, it also supports using multiple miners at the same time!With GUIMiner, you can maximize your Bitcoin Mining profits all in one simple place!After your miners are configured, you can even setup "Autostart mining" that will let you start mining for Bitcoins as soon as the program opens!To use GUIMiner, download the latest version from the link above, open it and extract the archive to anywhere on your PC (we recommend your Desktop so you can easily access it), then double click the GUIMiner executable to open the interface.