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NVIDIA announces Crypto Mining Processor series, GeForce RTX 3060 driver will limit mining performance
- Thread starter alphacat
- Start date
I can answer that, as the resident gaming laptop expert.
The RTX 3060 Mobile is a completely different GPU. They are both GA106 but the laptop variant is on a slightly different package, and even has 256 more shaders than the desktop variant.
If you flashed the mobile VBIOS you'd either get a black screen and have to blind flash back, or brick the card.
They would've done it for Pascal if it were possible.
They are only changing memory and gpu core voltages and frequencies to improve efficiency. The same stuff you can change in something like msi afterburner. This is stuff the third party companies can set in their bios changes which nvidia allows. It will be much harder to work out what part of the firmware to change when this information wont be at board partners and that part of the firmware will be the same across all firmware dumps. Will be interesting to see if they manage it circumvent it.
Massive GPU price increases? Like official price for 3080 was 729€ but now costs in range of 1000-1500€ (but is basically unavailable)
3090 was officially 1500€, but now costs around 2600-2800€ (readily available, but isn't affordable)
Bookmarked for the inevitable news story that this has been cracked.
Maybe, but it's naive to think that the Chinese government isn't themselves mining and I don't think you'd really want just the governments of the world to have the sole ability to mine for cryptocurrencies.
That's what I've also heard, is that some of the Mining ops got Nationalized - And that some people are concerned that the concentration/volume of Mining in China could have the potential to be used maliciously if that is indeed the case. Though that line of thinking gets into the borderline conspiratorial.
Since its a BIOS lock a custom vBIOS should be able to circumvent the limiter.
Would it be easy to write? Probably not.
Is it borderline inevitable especially with 3080Tis round the corner with Hashrates much closer to the 3090 at a much lower price.
Fuck yeah. The 3070Ti and 3080Ti are too attractive mining cards to not have people working their balls off to get them and mine.
Why? Because of mining? Mining is not a necessity for crypto.
I wonder if it's really BIOS based since NVIDIA mentions "RTX 3060 software drivers". But we will see about that.
BDR is their global PR guy (same guy who started the Hardware Unboxed mess)
That makes more sense, the algorithm detection is not in BIOS but they have gone extra mile to ensure driver isn't modified. Wouldn't be surprised if that gets cracked too but at least it's a lot harder.
Which means it will take a lot more time and therefore a lot more money to do. Time is extremely valuable to cryptominers, putting that kind of effort in is very inefficient and therefore unlikely to happen. They could still do it, but I just don't see them doing it.
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 anti-mining algoritm is not just a driver thing, technology could expand to more SKUs - VideoCardz.com
NVIDIA sheds more light on its new technology meant to prevent mining on GPUs Yesterday NVIDIA announced it will have a new product series called Crypto Mining Processor (CMP) HX series. The company did not disclose the specifications of the new cards, but it would appear that they are not...
videocardz.com
Oh nice, good that there's more to it.NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 anti-mining algoritm is not just a driver thing, technology could expand to more SKUs - VideoCardz.com
NVIDIA sheds more light on its new technology meant to prevent mining on GPUs Yesterday NVIDIA announced it will have a new product series called Crypto Mining Processor (CMP) HX series. The company did not disclose the specifications of the new cards, but it would appear that they are not...
Yeah, from the looks of it you'd have to reverse engineer the production of the whole card it seems to have a chance at cracking this.
And even then that doesn't consider how hard it would be to modify it to make it work as it's a handshake that is involved at the hardware level it seems.
Wonder if this will be part of NVIDIA's push to go to an RTX 3000 Super Line early, dropping the old models and releasing the Super cards with anti-mining handshakes baked in.
NVIDIA will need to do a yearly major release to keep up with AMD, and if they stick with their bi-annual architecture updates they'd have to do a Super Card version of their architecture after the architecture comes out.
Not really. Both are 100% limited by production lines for many years now. Unless AMD will be able to improve perf/watt by some 50% again on the same 7nm process there's nothing they can do this year to be a threat to Nv. And 5nm is firmly 2022 for GPUs - and even Zen cores it seems.
Also no real reason to do a refresh if the only aim is to limit mining performance. A BIOS revision should be enough.
Oh wow, if it goes that far then that makes me think of how miners will try to crack it.
Yeah, watching this now and definitely agree with most of this. Especially the point about ewaste. If you think crypto is bad for the environment, crypto-exclusive hardware is much worse.
Every person around the world mining is going to be using 100 renewable energy?
That
Basically, i know the power consumption is huge. But other than that,
No of course not, but aren't tons of people using electricity for dumb or irrelevant things? Why hate on them specifically.
I don't agree at all with his arguments. He completely neglects to mention that Nvidia needs gamers to have access to cards. Losing them to consoles could have ramifications for their bottom line for many years.
A globally coordinated wasteful consumption of electricity that uses as much electricity as multiple countries.
These people are mining as part of a get rich pyramid scheme with some obnoxious cult like "we're going to revolutionise money and use less power than Visa" crap.
People can hate on multiple things at the same time.
The consoles are also supply constrained and is a different eco system. Existing PC gamers will have their own cards to use right now.
People want Nvidia.
He does mention that when he mentions that silicon is silicon, and every mining processor made will be a GPU that isn't. There will be less RTX cards for gamers to use AND miners will still buy RTX cards anyway once a workaround is found to the driver limitations. The net effect of this is crypto-miners will have an easier time getting what they want upfront and a harder time recouping costs after they finish mining. This is literally just a lose-lose for everybody except NVIDIA.
Why? Because it literally provides nothing of value. I don't want to get into this entertainment argument either. Humans without entertainment mine as well blow their brains out. Cause what's the point of living? Entertainment is as essential as food, water, and love. It makes all the other shit tolerable. This "mining" uses more electricity than many countries as a whole. And that's ignoring the e-waste. Anyone who's not livid about this is in denial about just how fucked we are in terms of global warming.
I'm not unloading on you specifically, but I'm really getting sick and tired of people making threads and comments whining about this. All while reset waves the liberal banner and hates on "boomers". This is as outrageous a problem as there is right now. It's an absolutely disgusting industry given the world conditions.
The amount of 30 series cards sold to consumers/scalpers/miners is a drop in the bucket compared to what consoles sold in a shorter timespan. If consoles were a major concern to NV, they'd have launched their cheapest cards alongside their flasgship and "prosumer" cards, and they also would've launched in greater quantities.
NV isn't losing gamers to consoles, and the existence of consoles won't affect their bottom line.
Linus of all people should know that these two are one and same in this case.
Saw this too, makes some really good points. We may see even less GPUs even down the line with this. Specially if the rest of 3000 series is discontinued and a v2 is released
its kind of a snake eating its own tail thing, but i did kind of like how the gpu scarcity brought awareness on how fucking stupid bitcoin is and its environmental ramifications to a crowd that normally doesn't consider these things
It is the case. The whole idea behind the HX lineup is to maintain steady revenue stream from gaming products over the next couple of years which is only possible if gamers will actually get said products because miners would buy the mining products instead.
even if Bitcoin was totally green, besides still being a waste of resources, it's still a massive issue as financial speculation is the fuel of inequality. it's money going nowhere, not doing anything productive, except widening the gap between who had more to start with.
Might still be worth it to mine with a gamer GPU even with the 50% hit since you are 100% guaranteed to at least recoup your costs by selling it used. There are no such guarantees with a mining card. Those things might be worthless even a few months from now. Altcoin is an extremely volatile market.
Bitcoin is not being mined with the GPUs though. GPUs not used for mining would be used for (4k) gaming, which is totally not a waste?
I think a venn diagram of people who got rich off of bitcoin (and cryptocurrencies in general) and old money (multigenerational wealth) would show very little overlap.
Money not going anywhere, besides fueling pure speculation is debatable, but also currently true for aspects of our regular financial system.
This thread is probably better for discussing this:
Crypto hate on Era
Why do so many people on era comment that crypto should burn, die, be illegal whenever crypto comes up? Remember when we made fun of congress for asking google about an iphone, or in general when congress is dealing with technology issues? Ok boomer right? Well thats how many here sound to me...
www.resetera.com
I wouldn't say worthless since you could still use them in compute clusters for scientific purposes, but you're right overall.
Yeah, let's just ignore the fact that high-end pc gaming is also a giant waste of resources, considering our billions of other entertainment options available.
At first glance it might appear Linus is being tough on Nvidia, but... when you think about it, his arguments are kinda weak or just downright wishful thinking:
Nvidia shouldn't do anything special to GeForce cards and just continue with what they've been doing. <-- oh yeah because that worked out so well, hasn't it? situation is getting more desperate every day...
He is certain that crypto will crash and all those gaming cards will trickle down into "diamond hands" of PC gamers. <- Sorry what? Does he know something about crypto market that no one else on the planet does? If ETH goes up to 10k USD, and "crashes" to 5k USD it will still be very profitable to mine it. What memes he will use in his next video? Diamond hands until year 2030-2040?
For some reason he thinks that all these bad chips unfit for GeForce cards should just sit somewhere in a warehouse doing nothing. <-- Eh, what? That's just stupid. If they can be sold to miners just sell them to miners.
Miners create lots of e-waste. These mining-only cards will just end up in landfills. Gaming cards will end up in second market sold to gamers. <-- Oh really? I must have missed flood of Pascal cards hitting second-hand market around 2018. In fact, that never happened, and miners today are still buying Pascal cards like crazy. It will be the same with mining only cards. If they are good for mining, miners will want them even after 3-4 years.
Nvidia shouldn't do anything special to GeForce cards and just continue with what they've been doing. <-- oh yeah because that worked out so well, hasn't it? situation is getting more desperate every day...
He is certain that crypto will crash and all those gaming cards will trickle down into "diamond hands" of PC gamers. <- Sorry what? Does he know something about crypto market that no one else on the planet does? If ETH goes up to 10k USD, and "crashes" to 5k USD it will still be very profitable to mine it. What memes he will use in his next video? Diamond hands until year 2030-2040?
For some reason he thinks that all these bad chips unfit for GeForce cards should just sit somewhere in a warehouse doing nothing. <-- Eh, what? That's just stupid. If they can be sold to miners just sell them to miners.
Miners create lots of e-waste. These mining-only cards will just end up in landfills. Gaming cards will end up in second market sold to gamers. <-- Oh really? I must have missed flood of Pascal cards hitting second-hand market around 2018. In fact, that never happened, and miners today are still buying Pascal cards like crazy. It will be the same with mining only cards. If they are good for mining, miners will want them even after 3-4 years.
There definitely was a flood of used cards at the end of 2018. It was substantial enough to make a sizeable impact on Nvidia sales over the course of 2019.
That being said the idea that gaming cards somehow wouldn't end in waste is just laughable. Of course they will, maybe just a bit later than mining cards but the amount will be the same regardless.
As I said, I think his perspective is warped, possibly because he has no issues getting access to hardware. Lack of availability is an enormous issue and it is unreasonable to essentially tell gamers that they should wait it out and buy second hand. I wouldn't touch a card that was used for 24/7 mining with a 10-foot pole.
Ehh, i think it has more to do with nvidia releasing some trash cards during 2019. An extremely overpriced line which didnt offer enough improvement over the last line for the cost
No, it didn't. Contrary to a popular theory 20 series were not "overpriced", they were more or less the same price/perf as Pascal. The fact that Nv had issues selling them when compared to Pascal was down to used market being flooded with cheap Pascals from mining rigs.
No lol, let's not rewrite history here. Those cards got fucking slammed for being baby steps over the previous cards yet they cost nearly twice as much. If you have issues selling current stock while your past stuff is on the shelves, then you released either a bad and/or an overpriced product. In that case, nvidia did both. There was also barely any games that could actually take advantage of rtx features for like a year. So those features were going to waste and not driving adaption.
It really made no sense buying a 2070 when you could get a 1080Ti cheaper