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

[hotaru.hino]

Part of me was thinking maybe they're scrapping GPUs that haven't made the cut for gaming performance (e.g., doesn't meet the "minimum" turbo boost speed), but they're fine for mining since most miners underrun the cards anyway for reliability/longevity.

But then that just makes me think how many parts come back bad?

 

[teodoreh]

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.

Ether mining will slow down and completely stop way before NVidia presents RTX 4xxx series

 

[teodoreh]

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.

NVidia's VGA BIOS is encrypted so you can't just "flash it" as you mention.
ASICs for Ether are like Unicorn.s Some people claim that they exist, most people never saw them - and there are plenty of reasons for this.

 

[Gurg]

nVidia's obvious intent is only to use silicon that they otherwise don't need or can't use.

If Nvidia can make a product for miners out of silicon they don't need or can't' use then more power and profit to them. If they keep higher binned chips for consumer gamers at a higher price and sell lower binned chips to miners at a lower price making them more attractive with faster payback for miners more power to them.

. It's probably also to save some face prior to new AMD's chiplet GPUs generation.

The old: "Someday, Somewhere, Somehow" AMD will rise to top of CPU/GPU world!
Let me make this real simple for AMD fans. You can't sell what you can't produce and deliver.

Anyone not expecting AMD to take another hit in the first Q 2021 Steam hardware survey?

 

[teodoreh]

Firstly, NVidia loves miners. Thanks to them, they sell millions of cards. NVidia also misleaded their investors when they presented profits from mining cards as profits from gaming cards.

Secondly, RTX3080 goes up to 90MH/s while RX6800 performs the same as a "cheap" RX5700 or GTX3070 - so, AMD seems to be more decent and honest compared to NVidia.

Thirdly, Ether difficulty increases exponentially and soon enough mining profit will be minimum even for $2000 ether price. In addition to this, Ether2.0 will phase out all miners - and the next mined coin is half as profitable as ether! So we'll see a repeat of the RX580 incident, back when Ether had fallen to $100 and you could buy a 8GB RX580 for $100 or so.

There are so many GPUs stocked by miners, that will flood the market when mining is over. And Ether2.0 will not come in 5 years, it will come this year or the next, so, there's no reason making special plans or special cards. Just increase your production! If you cripple RTX3060, you will make it be like 1650! And miners buy everything these days, even RX5500 or even RX570s! So NVidia, stop being hypocrites with your announcements!

 

[spongiemaster]

Every GPU post the last 3 months. "Nvidia and AMD don't care about gamers. They could stop this if they wanted."

Nvidia tries to do something. Every single post in this thread. "Why is Nvidia wasting their time with this? It will never work."

Damned if you don't. Damned if you do. It really does make you wonder why Nvidia and AMD even bother with gamers any more. There's far more revenue in enterprise markets without the constant bitching. Miners would still buy pro cards if that was the only option.

 

[spongiemaster]

There are so many GPUs stocked by miners, that will flood the market when mining is over.

This didn't happen last time the cryptocurrency market crashed. There was no flood of GPU's on the used market, and prices never crashed, otherwise no gamer would be using a GPU worse than a 1080Ti now. As Jarred mentioned in another post, the major mining operations which is where the vast majority of GPU's are going, likely held onto their cards and continued mining, assuming the value would eventually shoot up again, which it has.

 

[rubix_1011]

There are reasons I refuse to buy a used GPU...mostly due to not knowing the truth on whether it was an abused miner card.

 

[rubix_1011]

NVidia's VGA BIOS is encrypted so you can't just "flash it" as you mention.
ASICs for Ether are like Unicorn.s Some people claim that they exist, most people never saw them - and there are plenty of reasons for this.

I'm pretty certain you can flash Nvidia cards - this is one the largest discussions when sub-versions of cards come out because people end up trying to flash them to other versions of similar cards.

https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/forums/gaming-pcs/8/80411/using-nvflash-a-defacto-guide-for-the-brave/

How-To Flash RTX Video Card BIOS To A Different Series

https://www.techpowerup.com/forums/...should always have,and bricks your video card.

 

[teodoreh]

I'm pretty certain you can flash Nvidia cards - this is one the largest discussions when sub-versions of cards come out because people end up trying to flash them to other versions of similar cards.

https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/forums/gaming-pcs/8/80411/using-nvflash-a-defacto-guide-for-the-brave/

How-To Flash RTX Video Card BIOS To A Different Series

https://www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/guide-for-flashing-bios-of-nvidia-gpu.119955/#:~:text=The tool to flash nvidia,floppy, CD or USB stick.&text=NOTE - you should always have,and bricks your video card.

Ok, I will explain better.
If you check on those links you will see that indeed they can flash by taking X OEM's BIOS and putting it in Y OEM's card. But they just can't change values and flash a custom BIOS (as they can do on AMD cards) because BIOS is encrypted thus unable to be modified.

 

[teodoreh]

This didn't happen last time the cryptocurrency market crashed. There was no flood of GPU's on the used market, and prices never crashed, otherwise no gamer would be using a GPU worse than a 1080Ti now. As Jarred mentioned in another post, the major mining operations which is where the vast majority of GPU's are going, likely held onto their cards and continued mining, assuming the value would eventually shoot up again, which it has.

Actually it DID happened. RX580 was the main tool for miners and costed around 350-400$ at good times.
When Ether hit rock bottom (~$100), you could buy one of those cards for $80-120!

 

[JTWrenn]

They need to have good stock, and much better price to performance, and performance to watt efficiency. Otherwise nobody will care.

 

[spongiemaster]

Actually it DID happened. RX580 was the main tool for miners and costed around 350-400$ at good times.
When Ether hit rock bottom (~$100), you could buy one of those cards for $80-120!

The launch MSRP of the 4GB 580 was $199, the 8GB was $229. AMD's cards traditionally sold below MSRP as time went on. Being able to buy those cards at $100 a year later on the used market is not a bottoming out of prices. If not for mining, nobody wanted these cards in the first place over what Nvidia was offering which was better across the board for gaming.

 

[[BoxMonkey]]

Will limiting the hash rate effect the computational accuracy when using CAD software? Or slow down computations?

 

[escksu]

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.

They don't need to... Most mining cards produced previously do not have any video output ports. Some have just 1 HDMI.

 

[escksu]

I have to tell you making mining cards will not improve the situation at all. The main reason for this is the price. Mining cards cost just as much as regular gaming ones. So, there is no real benefit to purchase them. It just allows large scale miners to be able to buy them. More like additional income for the companies.

For the rest who are doing small scale mining, most will just stick with regular cards.

 

[escksu]

Will limiting the hash rate effect the computational accuracy when using CAD software? Or slow down computations?

Yes, entirely possible. However, these are marketed as gaming cards, not intended for workstation use.

For most casual CAD software users, they don't need GPU acceleration.

 

[escksu]

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.

I have to say gimping mining performance doesn't exactly help unless they are like performing at 2-3 MH/s.... As long as its profitable, pple will still buy them up.

 

[coxbw]

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

lets start a pool on how long it will take to crack this protection, and how long it will take the scalpers to buy all the stock

 

[InvalidError]

Being able to buy those cards at $100 a year later on the used market is not a bottoming out of prices.

For a fairly long time, you could buy RX580s new-in-box for about $120 and AMD was even throwing in a free game bundle on top.

Yes, entirely possible. However, these are marketed as gaming cards, not intended for workstation use.

With games using GPGPU for more than just graphics, the chances of mining gimping unintentionally screwing something else up will increase - imagine games using shaders to hash-check, decrypt and decompress DirectStorage asset streaming for example.

 

[escksu]

For a fairly long time, you could buy RX580s new-in-box for about $120 and AMD was even throwing in a free game bundle on top.


With games using GPGPU for more than just graphics, the chances of mining gimping unintentionally screwing something else up will increase - imagine games using shaders to hash-check, decrypt and decompress DirectStorage asset streaming for example.

Yes, I agree, this is possible.

 

[[BoxMonkey]]

For a fairly long time, you could buy RX580s new-in-box for about $120 and AMD was even throwing in a free game bundle on top.


With games using GPGPU for more than just graphics, the chances of mining gimping unintentionally screwing something else up will increase - imagine games using shaders to hash-check, decrypt and decompress DirectStorage asset streaming for example.

And that’s my concern too.

 

[[BoxMonkey]]

Yes, entirely possible. However, these are marketed as gaming cards, not intended for workstation use.

For most casual CAD software users, they don't need GPU acceleration.

Who’s to say they don’t include the same gimping to workstation cards just to be sure miners don’t target them. I feel the software route is not the best solution.

 

[jkflipflop98]

There are reasons I refuse to buy a used GPU...mostly due to not knowing the truth on whether it was an abused miner card.

I would equate buying a used GPU to buying a used rental car or marrying a prostitute. They've all been used and abused to the maximum by every guy that walks by for years on end. No, thanks.

 

[VforV]

I have to say gimping mining performance doesn't exactly help unless they are like performing at 2-3 MH/s.... As long as its profitable, pple will still buy them up.

VCZ has a post already showing how the Zotac RTX 3060 is tested in mining and without new drivers (which means its a BIOS limitation) the card starts at over 40MH/s and immediately drops at 20-ish MH/s.

That's a pretty bad hash rate, but the price of crypto is so high now (and who knows how much it will increase) that even that low hash rate is profitable, considering the lower power draw (than a RTX 3060Ti) the card will have too.

That being said I don't see miners buying these in bulk unless they flash the bios to get more than 40MH/s or more, with extra tweaking. So for a gamer/casual miner is a kick in the face, because he can't recoup anything substantial with this GPU, which will cost north of $600...

I don't think nvidia can do a 90% limit for mining without gimping the card altogether for everything. Otherwise they should/would have done it, right?

LINK to article.