Nvidia intends to artificially throttle mining capabilities of RTX 3060

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Original article from Digital Foundry: https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/...ine-crypto-at-half-speed-nvidia-cmp-announced

In a bid to keep their consumer GPUs out of the hands of crypto miners, Nvidia is planning to deliberately halve the hash rate of their 3060 cards when performing mining. At the same time, they will be selling factory seconds with no graphics output as mining cards under a new line called CMP. Hopefully this will help sort out some of the scarcity graphics cards have been having of late, although it would have been nicer for them to do it with the 3070 and 3080 as well, since they're only sold at outrageous markups where they're available at all.
 

Chimpzy

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Original article from Digital Foundry: https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/...ine-crypto-at-half-speed-nvidia-cmp-announced

In a bid to keep their consumer GPUs out of the hands of crypto miners, Nvidia is planning to deliberately halve the hash rate of their 3060 cards when performing mining. At the same time, they will be selling factory seconds with no graphics output as mining cards under a new line called CMP. Hopefully this will help sort out some of the scarcity graphics cards have been having of late,
Commendable indeed, but I do have some reservations. Lacking video outputs means the mining-focused cards also have less resale value. So if you ask me, one condition for this to work the mining cards would need to be cheaper too, cuz if they cost roughly the same, miners might keep buying gaming cards anyway since they can recoup some of their costs anyway.

although it would have been nicer for them to do it with the 3070 and 3080 as well, since they're only sold at outrageous markups where they're available at all.
Sounds good, yes, but in practice there would be no point in doing so. The mining nerf is done at the driver level. Presuming all future driver updates for the rest of the 30 series cards also get it, then all miners need to do to circumvent is install older drivers that don't have the nerf. It ostensibly works for the 3060 because there are no older drivers for it. Tho there is rumor of upcoming 3070Ti and 3080Ti cards. If true, with any luck they'll also get the nerf too. Another possibility, albeit very likely a remote one, is an early Super style refresh of the rest of the 30 cards which'll then effectively replace the regular ones.
 

laggyteabag

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I mean, why does NVidia really care who buys their cards?

So long as people aren't doing anything illegal with them (not quite sure what that would be), a sale is a sale.

As far as I see it, it means that people who buy 3060s to game on them, can't then mine on them, should they want to.

Just seems weird to artificially gimp their own product, and limit their appeal to a market that would have otherwise been interested.
 

Dirty Hipsters

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I mean, why does NVidia really care who buys their cards?

So long as people aren't doing anything illegal with them (not quite sure what that would be), a sale is a sale.

As far as I see it, it means that people who buy 3060s to game on them, can't then mine on them, should they want to.

Just seems weird to artificially gimp their own product, and limit their appeal to a market that would have otherwise been interested.
Because crypto mining is a fad that comes and goes every few years, but gamers and content creators are Nvidia's core audience. You shouldn't piss off your core audience chasing a fad for a quick buck when you aren't going to be getting the same returns from that crowd next time the price of bitcoin plummets.
 
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Chimpzy

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Because crypto mining is a fad that comes and goes every few years, but gamers and content creators are Nvidia's core audience. You shouldn't piss off your core audience chasing a fad for a quick buck when you aren't going to be getting the same returns from that crowd next time the price of bitcoin plummets.
And also probably what Linus' says in his video, that when crypto goes bust again, gamers won't be able to snag up the dirt cheap secondhand cards flooding the market.
 

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And also probably what Linus' says in his video, that when crypto goes bust again, gamers won't be able to snag up the dirt cheap secondhand cards flooding the market.
I wouldn't trust a second hand video card from some random fuck on eBay anyway.
 

Chimpzy

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I wouldn't trust a second hand video card from some random fuck on eBay anyway.
Neither would I really, but that's mostly because I could afford a new card, even at the inflated price. I don't out of principle (and because there are none to buy).
 

EvilRoy

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Neither would I really, but that's mostly because I could afford a new card, even at the inflated price. I don't out of principle (and because there are none to buy).
Yeah I wanted to upgrade so I could use a VR passthrough thing and I've been sorely disappointing recently. I hope the coming shakeup is enough to put bitcoin in the dumpster again soon.

That said as a guy who absolutely has bought secondhand dirt cheap cards - don't. I've seen heat damage, I've seen cig ash in the heatsink, drink stains, enough dust to make a small rat comfortable... Its not good. They have a million cards so they don't care for them, and since they don't care for them if you buy them it really is a crapshoot. I was trying to help a volunteer group out by building them bargain bin PCs for people to learn how to use computers with so I bought a batch of these things and I ended up rejecting about a quarter of them right at the meetup because I could see fucking dried cola on some.
 

Dirty Hipsters

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And...it looks like Nvidia's plan was stupid and doesn't work. Shocking.

 

Chimpzy

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And...it looks like Nvidia's plan was stupid and doesn't work. Shocking.
Yeah, that figures.

And if and when Nivdia actually start producing those CMP cards things might actually get worse, cuz I doubt they're setting up extra lines for it. Shit's gonna eat into the GPU production capacity. I mean, assuming they won't quietly drop the whole idea.
 

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ETH mining isn't worth it unless you have very cheap electricity prices.
 

Chimpzy

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ETH mining isn't worth it unless you have very cheap electricity prices.
That might be. Just kind of feel like its becoming rather evident that the primary audience for new gaming graphics cards is not actually gamers anymore.
For now at least. They'll come crawling back to us when the mining bubble bursts again, offering platitudes about how they were really there for us this whole time (if that), and we'll buy it hook line and sinker, because what alternatives are there?