Taiwan-based manufacturer Asus revealed the Mining RX 470 and Mining P106, which were designed to handle the energy and heat intensive process of mining. Though not expressly pitched as such, the release is undoubtedly aimed at capturing some of the interest in mining Ethereum. Bitcoin mining, by comparison, has evolved to a stage in which application-specific integrated circuits, or ASICs, are required to compete.
Cryptocurrency mining is a process by which new transaction blocks are added to the distributed network. When this happens, new blockchain tokens are introduced to the system and awarded to the miner as compensation – in this case, a profit is achieved when the cost of electricity and the operation itself is lower than the revenue generated by selling those tokens.