News Nvidia Limits RTX 3060 Hash Rate, Unveils New 'Cryptocurrency Mining Processor' Line of GPUs

[Admin]

Nvidia announced its upcoming RTX 3060 cards will be restricted in mining performance, at the same time it's bringing out a new Cryptocurrency Mining Processor (CMP) line of GPUs.

Nvidia Limits RTX 3060 Hash Rate, Unveils New 'Cryptocurrency Mining Processor' Line of GPUs : Read more

 

[rubix_1011]

This is how this should be supported - AMD and Nvidia limit performance on their 'gaming and workstation' GPUs while enabling better hash performance on specific mining solutions. This would help funnel business into 2 separate engineering queues which could be built specifically with the same silicon and then hardware disabled on the PCB (BIOS would be too easy to just flash).

This also could open up new computing capabilities by going down the road of dedicated mining cards as even into ASICs, which is where you start to make real performance jumps since those processors are far more effective at mining, but still depends on which cryptocurrency is being mined - ASICs take time to develop for the specific algorithms needed to process (and likely only for specific crypto) but can be far more effective over a PC, while PCs and GPUs have the ability to be more flexible for different currencies but relying on software to help manage the hashing with hardware which makes them slower/less effective than hardware-specific ASIC.

Overall, there are a lot of ASIC manufacturers out there and kind of surprised that Nvidia or AMD have not dipped their toes into this as of yet.

 

[hotaru.hino]

Considering it's still a software solution, I can't imagine this will last long and NVIDIA will just have a game of cat and mouse if they bother to continue with their promise on making sure gamers get their cards.

Though it would've been nice to have this from the start.

 

[Heat_Fan89]

I don't see this having an impact on the current 3xxx series but it could if Nvidia gimps the RTX 4xxx hardware wise but that would mean two different silicon's which I doubt they will do. Now if they can entice miners by using software on the RTX 4xxx series that would detect those mining cards and increase performance then that might work but the RTX 3xxx series is already approaching the release of the 4xxx series.

 

[InvalidError]

This is how this should be supported - AMD and Nvidia limit performance on their 'gaming and workstation' GPUs while enabling better hash performance on specific mining solutions.

Unless Nvidia and AMD make GPU variants designed with an emphasis on instructions that are more intensively used for mining that would give those chips an insurmountable advantage in tasks that rely heavily on the same instruction subset as mining does, I doubt drivers will be particularly effective at limiting hash rate. Miners will find ways to circumvent software locks and for current-gen hardware, the solution can be as simple as running older drivers. For the 4000-series, miners could simply run unsigned hacked drivers to remove the locks too.

 

[waltc3]

Unless nVidia and AMD laser out or otherwise permanently disable the display circuitry in these offerings it's difficult to see how this will help. But if they do, then problem solved provided they can meet production.

 

[spentshells]

I read this simply as nvidia is creating more mining gpu's.

 

[Gurg]

What is the big deal? Hasn't Nvidia been producing the Quadro RTX GPU line with generally higher memory than consumer cards targeted at professional usage?

 

[jpe1701]

I don't know much about mining but I think that Nvidia is going about this the wrong way. They should be playing up to their strengths, which for Nvidia I think is the software side of things. Instead of limiting the gaming gpus, they should make the mining skus more attractive by making software that only works for them that automatically adjusts for efficiency and the things that miners care about. Give miners their own control panel and such. This would leave the gaming gpus intact for mining by gamers that do it part time while giving full time miners a reason to buy the dedicated mining skus provided the price is right.

 

[hotaru.hino]

I don't know much about mining but I think that Nvidia is going about this the wrong way. They should be playing up to their strengths, which for Nvidia I think is the software side of things. Instead of limiting the gaming gpus, they should make the mining skus more attractive by making software that only works for them that automatically adjusts for efficiency and the things that miners care about. Give miners their own control panel and such. This would leave the gaming gpus intact for mining by gamers that do it part time while giving full time miners a reason to buy the dedicated mining skus provided the price is right.

This would give miners two SKUs to work with and gamers only one SKU. So miners still win in the end.

 

[LolaGT]

Unless it is something in the silicon it won't matter. Miners are and have been writing their own drivers and bios for a while now. They will still prefer a card that has resale value.

 

[jpe1701]

This would give miners two SKUs to work with and gamers only one SKU. So miners still win in the end.

Well I know but what I'm saying is that Nvidia would need to make the mining models attractive enough to push the miners to buy them. You can't tell me that with the minds that Nvidia has working for them that they can't make a software package that would make their mining skus really attractive. Like for instance something akin to sli that lets you control all of the gpus in the system at the same time and adjust them. IDK I'm just theorizing. The miners would already have 2 skus now with the way they are doing it.

 

[herrwizo]

Completely useless, driver hacks will very soon (probably 1 or 2 days after release) unlock all driver limitations and here we go again...

 

[jpe1701]

Unless it is something in the silicon it won't matter. Miners are and have been writing their own drivers and bios for a while now. They will still prefer a card that has resale value.

Yeah you have a point. It's easy to talk but I really don't know enough.

 

[Phaaze88]

The resale value of gaming cards is just too good to pass up, plus with the writing of drivers and vbios - these mining specialized cards will just create more e-waste in the end.

I could see those who didn't do their homework on mining buy them up, only to get bitten later, as they'll have hell trying to sell them off.

 

[rubix_1011]

Unless Nvidia and AMD make GPU variants designed with an emphasis on instructions that are more intensively used for mining that would give those chips an insurmountable advantage in tasks that rely heavily on the same instruction subset as mining does, I doubt drivers will be particularly effective at limiting hash rate. Miners will find ways to circumvent software locks and for current-gen hardware, the solution can be as simple as running older drivers. For the 4000-series, miners could simply run unsigned hacked drivers to remove the locks too.

Right, that's why I thought that maybe limiting this by PCB and hardware would be better than making this BIOS or driver enabled/disabled.

This would help funnel business into 2 separate engineering queues which could be built specifically with the same silicon and then hardware disabled on the PCB (BIOS would be too easy to just flash).

 

[caseym54]

Boy, I hope they don't do this to their entire RTX 3000 -- it could crater the resale price on eBay.

 

[JarredWaltonGPU]

Boy, I hope they don't do this to their entire RTX 3000 -- it could crater the resale price on eBay.

Resell price of these mining cards will be much lower -- niche products that are only good for mining. Of course, large scale miners with enough funding will likely just keep mining as long as possible, in hope of the next big jump in price. Everyone who spent the latter part of 2018 through the end of 2020 mining likely did so at a loss, but today they would be sitting on sizeable piles of digital cash.

I strongly suspect at least the 30HX and 40HX are just Turing GPUs, though, and probably 50HX as well. Only the 90HX is likely to use an Ampere chip.

 

[JamesJones44]

Considering it's still a software solution, I can't imagine this will last long and NVIDIA will just have a game of cat and mouse if they bother to continue with their promise on making sure gamers get their cards.

Though it would've been nice to have this from the start.

Exactly, caping this at the driver level isn't going to stop those serious about mining. They will just make and likely post an unofficial driver that removes the cap (these types of drivers already exist for a host of things, including mining).

 

[InvalidError]

I read this simply as nvidia is creating more mining gpu's.

Right, that's why I thought that maybe limiting this by PCB and hardware would be better than making this BIOS or driver enabled/disabled.[/QUOTE]
To change mining performance using PCB design while still using the same die, you'd have to have logic in the GPU dedicated to interpreting PCB changes, correctly identifying and actively interfering with mining-specific behavior on non-mining SKUs which carries the risk of incorrectly interfering with non-mining shaders too.

If you don't want miners using GPGPU for mining, the only real way is to give them something faster and more power-efficient to use to make GPUs non-competitive just like ASIC miners did for BTC.

 

[tennis2]

I get the mentality behind this, but there are plenty of people out there that would prefer to have their cake and eat it too. With this model, you choose EITHER mining or gaming, but never (really) both.

This is silly.

 

[cryoburner]

Unless it is something in the silicon it won't matter. Miners are and have been writing their own drivers and bios for a while now. They will still prefer a card that has resale value.

Exactly. Mining operations don't want cards that will be useless when the mining market crashes. They want something they can resell to recoup a big chunk of their investment once mining becomes unprofitable. And with money on the line, I find it hard to believe they won't quickly find a way to mod the drivers to circumvent this software restriction.

And as the article points out, even if miners were buying the mining cards, that's still taking away from chips that could have been going into normal cards, so it's unlikely to help availability. When this latest mining rush inevitably ends, those cards won't be capable of acting as normal cards, so that's ultimately less graphics cards on the second-hand market. That makes selling such cards attractive to Nvidia in the long run, as they won't need to compete with them for sales in the future, but not really useful to anyone else.

Nvidia explained in today's announcement: "RTX 3060 software drivers are designed to detect specific attributes of the Ethereum cryptocurrency mining algorithm, and limit the hash rate, or cryptocurrency mining efficiency, by around 50 percent."

Also, that makes it sound like they are specifically targeting Ethereum with the drivers, but not really other cryptocurrencies. So even without driver workarounds, the cards may mine other currencies at full performance, and perhaps even Ethereum if the algorithms are adjusted. If, on the other hand, it is a more general detection routine targeting many mining algorithms, that makes me wonder if there could end up being false-positive detections that could cripple performance in certain games and applications.

If you don't want miners using GPGPU for mining, the only real way is to give them something faster and more power-efficient to use to make GPUs non-competitive just like ASIC miners did for BTC.

Of course, just as a lot of newer cryptocurrencies were designed to be "ASIC resistant" to ensure they don't require specialized hardware to mine, the same might happen there if those other options gained a significant advantage.

 

[sstanic]

I think people are so very naive when they approach this, as if nVidia is trying hard to do something for gamers. They're not. They've now sold tons of 30x0 GPUs to miners, and are still profiting from it, and hope to profit in the future. As far as their managers and accountants are concerned, all that revenue goes into the "Gaming Segment" Excel table, and they couldn't care less.

This is just a bit of PR, and nVidia's obvious intent is only to use silicon that they otherwise don't need or can't use. It's probably also to save some face prior to new AMD's chiplet GPUs generation. In short, it's basically just BS, and I am surprised that people take it seriously.

 

[ezst036]

This is how this should be supported

There's nothing "supportive" about sabotage. Let's be clear here. That's exactly what this proposition in the driver amounts to.

Sabotage is never supportive.

 

[VforV]

Gimping mining performance is just going to hurt the "poor" gamer that can barely afford one RTX 3060 (overpriced) and was counting on mining on the side with it to recoup some of the scalper price he paid for it...

No PRO miner will be affected by this, like others said they just use custom software and BIOS.

This is beyond stupid from nvidia, really really stupid. Another spit in the face of gamers, while miners now have 2 options: gaming GPUs and a dedicated line for mining cards, just for them... makes me sick. Bleah.