[greyhair]

But pure ASICs get rid of even more of the GPU than just the output stage. A pure ASIC to cover the fundamental calculations in hardware with just a CPU to feed them data and pull results is the most efficient.

Think of something as direct as a cell phone modem. The batteries last as long as they do because a ton of the low level modem behavior is done in accelerator blocks direct in hardware, and the DSPs just route data between the blocks and manage the higher level protocols.

[jagger27]

I don't disagree, I'm just saying that Nvidia literally shipped normal Ampere cards directly to miners. Ethereum is tricky to build purpose built ASICs for.