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Nvidia adds a cryptocurrency mining limiter that 'cannot be hacked' to the RTX 3060 - Announce new cryptocurrency mining graphics card

Ascend

Member
Miners can DIAF with scalpers. I say that with all due disrespect.
Unfortunately, that's the free market. There are two things you can do... Complain about it, or, take advantage of it.
Just know that nVidia's actions are hampering you from taking advantage of it.
 

dave_d

Member
Why do I get the feeling there will be a custom bios that will allow miners to mine on these cards? Also why do I get the feeling that the mechanism that triggers to prevent mining will be found to accidently trigger on a bunch of games? (Wrecking performance on those games.)
 

zcaa0g

Banned
Unfortunately, that's the free market. There are two things you can do... Complain about it, or, take advantage of it.
Just know that nVidia's actions are hampering you from taking advantage of it.

It's just annoying because these types of cards were never meant for 2D rendering or mining. They were meant for gaming and both AMD and Nvidia wouldn't be where they are without the gaming market.

If that wasn't the case the Tridents and Matroxs' of the world would still be around making video cards. Yeah, it's sour grapes but it makes me feel better bitching about it. :)

I'm fine spending 2000k on a 3090 if I can get it delivered from Amazon or Best Buy, etc. I'm not fine getting it second hand from a P.O.S. off of eBay. Fuckers.
 

JimboJones

Member
Why do I get the feeling there will be a custom bios that will allow miners to mine on these cards? Also why do I get the feeling that the mechanism that triggers to prevent mining will be found to accidently trigger on a bunch of games? (Wrecking performance on those games.)
Hopefully the path of least resistance is simply buying the mining cards for people into this, even if they do get hacked it might be that it's more trouble/expensive that it's worth. But I guess we'll see.
 

Cyberpunkd

Gold Member
is it a good news ? i'm not sure what to think here.
Why it might be good news on the surface I would love for someone to bring NVIDIA to court advocating a company cannot decide what a legally-bought product can be used for. Remember we are speaking about hardware, not software.
 

Ascend

Member
It's just annoying because these types of cards were never meant for 2D rendering or mining. They were meant for gaming and both AMD and Nvidia wouldn't be where they are without the gaming market.

If that wasn't the case the Tridents and Matroxs' of the world would still be around making video cards. Yeah, it's sour grapes but it makes me feel better bitching about it. :)

I'm fine spending 2000k on a 3090 if I can get it delivered from Amazon or Best Buy, etc. I'm not fine getting it second hand from a P.O.S. off of eBay. Fuckers.
In a way, it's the other way around. Mining algorithms have specifically been designed to take advantage of retail graphics cards, exactly so that gamers can take advantage of the crypto market and gain some money back through cryptocurrencies. It comes with the idea of decentralization, where everyone has a somewhat equal chance to participate if they so wish.

This is not going to change either. Graphics cards for gamers will be more attractive than the mining ones, simply because those can be more easily resold.
Secondly, wafer availability is a limit right now. Making mining graphics cards means not making gaming graphics cards. This will only feed into the shortage.
Lastly, I doubt nVidia is stupid enough to make a bunch of mining graphics cards in the first place. Last time this boom happened, AMD produced a bunch of extra Polaris cards. When the market tanked, the whole market was flooded with graphics cards, and AMD couldn't sell their new graphics cards because the second hand ones were too cheap in comparison. This was true of both the normal and the mining graphics cards that were made back in the day.

It's unfortunate for those wanting to buy graphics cards for gaming during the booms, but, that is reality right now. Count on it happening every four years or so.

And I don't want to scare anyone, but it must be said. Right now you're worrying about graphics cards being too expensive. Soon it will be your food. Prepare accordingly.
 

Bojanglez

The Amiga Brotherhood
This is why competition is good, maybe it will improve the GPU market with competitors that will allow retail users to use their GPUs to game and mine once they have purchased it.
 

Hendrick's

If only my penis was as big as my GamerScore!
Shouldn't they try to make hardware based limits? I kind of feel this is just a half measure to appease some folks, but will probably get hacked in a week.
 

llien

Member
On one hand great they’ve stopped the pain that potential 3060 owners might have.
At this point, they've stopped nothing, merely promised to magically stop software solution from being hacked.
Promise that is at best dubious.
 

llien

Member
PRQpS5I.jpg


The only solution is to go back in time and assassinate the guy who came up with the idea of introducing Bitcoin.

Because that "cryptomining" thing will be there forever, eh?
X-Doubt

 

Ascend

Member
I have a hard time believing this can't be done at the hardware level. The hardware should be capable of culling mining specific work.
Mining uses the compute power of GPUs. So hampering compute is basically the main way to hamper mining performance. Mining software is created specifically to make use of the compute power of GPUs.

Another option is to limit bandwidth, like we see with RDNA2, where the 6800XT doesn't really perform better compared to the 5700XT, since they have the same memory bus width. But that has consequences for gaming also, like how RDNA2 scales less well to 4k compared to Ampere cards.
 
Is it really that hard to implement more strict measures during account creation and checkout to filter out individuals and bots buy large chunks of a highly in demand product? I mean, I don't give a shit. I'm happy with the card I have and am already beyond what the ps5 and series x are capable of. Just seems unnecessary and a waste.

At least gaming mining cards can find a second life as on the second hand market, who the fuck is going to buy old mining cards? Now miners are not only burning large amounts of energy on mining; but they are also contributing to electronic waste when they throw this garbage out.
 

oagboghi2

Member
If I sell you a card with no strings attached and after the fact I limit its performance when the card detects you are running a particular piece of software... well, they do have fancy lawyers, but you can see it having merit, right?

:LOL: at me getting labelled a PCMR, oh dear me.
How are there no strings attached? Nvidia isn't hiding this feature. They are advertising it.
 

raduque

Member
3070 currently nets almost $250/month after electricity costs. Takes about an hour to dial in an underclock and ensure it stays at safe operating temperatures. It's stupid to own expensive hardware and not have it paying for itself and heating your room during your downtime.
Greed is a powerful ugly thing.
 

DeaDPo0L84

Member
I purchased a 3090fe for me and a 3080fe for my wife on launch day directly from Nvidia, got extremely lucky during the chaos.

Only learned about mining a few months back but since my wife is in school and doesn't game too much we decided to run it on hers for a month. Came close to clearing an extra $500 the first month.

Now I run mine as well most of the time save the 2-3 hours I may game any given day and we cleared just over $1,000 last month and this month's looking even better.

So yea, we're not these people with an entire garage dedicated to mining but we purchased our gpus straight up with good intentions and are now making extra cash with them, haters gonna hate.
 
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Xyphie

Member
It's some shitcoin called Conflux. It was already known that the reduced hashing rate only applies for Ethereum (and maybe some similar forks).
 

Vae_Victis

Banned
You can run Doom on a pregnancy test. Of course people would find a way to bypass a last-minute, band-aid block on a hardware that is otherwise for all intents and purposes absolutely perfect for the job - the job being making you a shit-ton of money.
 

Arkam

Member
Good. Fuck cryptocurrencies and their shithead miners. In addition to eating up all the gaming GPUs (for years now), they are super wasteful. Look up how much energy is wasted on mining. Its astounding (was like 120 Terawatt-hours in 2020 and going up FAST. For reference global PC gaming is estimated to only use ~75 Terawatt-hours annually). Hell even a basic transaction uses ~450k times the energy of a normal Credit/Debit transaction (and that number will only get bigger).
 
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