Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 will have crypto mining perf nerf

[Euphonium]

But will this interfere with things like folding@home?

[kompukare]

https://twitter.com/bdelrizzo/status...423747590?s=20

I found this response AT got from Nvidia far more interesting:

Update: NVIDIA has also confirmed that performance restrictions will be going in for their Linux drivers as well as their Windows drivers. The inclusion of Linux drivers is incredibly important, as most dedicated miners are thought to be using Linux rather than Windows.

https://www.anandtech.com/show/16493...ining-hardware

Well, looks like all those who never liked using Nvidia and their binary blobs on Linux were right to be worried then.

Not that it should affect the ARM deal too much as locked bootloaders are now the norm with most of the ARM market.

[DanceswithUnix]

If Nvidia does nothing gamers moan. Then Nvidia does something,gamers moan. Would it be better if Nvidia decided to sell all its RTX3060 stocks to miners directly?? Because I am certain it would probably make them more money!

We will need to see how well they have locked this down. The card needs a signed binary uploaded to work (the thing Nvidia don't release for Linux open source driver use) as well as the OS driver, so if that signed blob is the thing that is doing the limiting then this could work.

OFC miners are paying above the odds anyway, forcing us all up that route. It is annoying to see silicon that could be a GPU becoming a mining card, but perhaps at least this way a percentage of the cards will end up with gamers.

OFC, if Nvidia are just lasering some fuses in the standard GPU to make them mining cards, then the mining companies will need to grind the top of a gpu to repair the fuses, having electron microscoped some cards to work out just where the fuses are. My worry is, having worked on pinpads in the past where compromise was worth far less than this, that such a feat is quite possible.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

We will need to see how well they have locked this down. The card needs a signed binary uploaded to work (the thing Nvidia don't release for Linux open source driver use) as well as the OS driver, so if that signed blob is the thing that is doing the limiting then this could work.

OFC miners are paying above the odds anyway, forcing us all up that route. It is annoying to see silicon that could be a GPU becoming a mining card, but perhaps at least this way a percentage of the cards will end up with gamers.

OFC, if Nvidia are just lasering some fuses in the standard GPU to make them mining cards, then the mining companies will need to grind the top of a gpu to repair the fuses, having electron microscoped some cards to work out just where the fuses are. My worry is, having worked on pinpads in the past where compromise was worth far less than this, that such a feat is quite possible.

They need to do something and the collateral is going to probably be people who buy cards for non-gaming purposes,but not mining. In the end people need to point the finger at miners for allowing Nvidia to have more segmentation and shutting off features. But in the end the miners are to blame. They are even buying entry level GPUs such as RX570,GTX1650,etc. Laptops with dGPUs are being scalped.

Then you have enthusiasts on other tech forums pushing mining too - this is happening during the middle of a pandemic when people are staying more at home. People need laptops and desktops.

[trillo_del_diavolo]

As much as I hate companies telling you what you can run on the hardware you rightfully bought, this mining craze has been over the top for a few years now. If this lockdown can be circumvented is something we'll see over time. It's always better to have an architectural limitation, like AMD's 6x00 GPU cache being optimized for gaming workloads first and foremost.

EDIT: This sounds a lot like politicians demanding "strong crypto" with a backdoor, which is mathematically impossible.

[DanceswithUnix]

People need laptops and desktops.

I certainly agree with that. My machine at work had most of the components compromised on because of availability, but the only GPU we could get in a hurry was really low end trash (RX550 I think) which cost nearly as much as the last RX570 that I bought (which used to be my go-to card thanks to semi passive fans & dual display port for about £140) and to get it in a hurry we had to import the damn thing from Italy. That was around Christmas, things seem a lot worse now.

But the devil is really in the implementation details here. Their usual tuning system won't work, if renaming your nicehash executable to crisis.exe worked I wouldn't be shocked

[AzzaBiceps]

Uncertain how i feel on this, mainly due to the card being gimped by Nvidia

[ik9000]

They need to do something and the collateral is going to probably be people who buy cards for non-gaming purposes,but not mining. In the end people need to point the finger at miners for allowing Nvidia to have more segmentation and shutting off features. But in the end the miners are to blame. They are even buying entry level GPUs such as RX570,GTX1650,etc. Laptops with dGPUs are being scalped.

Then you have enthusiasts on other tech forums pushing mining too - this is happening during the middle of a pandemic when people are staying more at home. People need laptops and desktops.

like my use case then: work FEA and 3D cad, rendering, and then gaming on the side. I simply cannot afford (similarly spec'd) decent quadro cards. It's been ok for me, but if they gimp cuda and non-gaming routines I'll not be very happy. Is this going to affect their studio drivers?

[Ironbuket]

Not sure how effective the headless cards would be for small scale miners as I read they buy the retail cards on purpose, so they have better resale value when they upgrade. Out of date headless cards are almost worthless in comparison.

[DanceswithUnix]

Not sure how effective the headless cards would be for small scale miners as I read they buy the retail cards on purpose, so they have better resale value when they upgrade. Out of date headless cards are almost worthless in comparison.

Headless is one of my niggles with this. It strikes me as pushing them faster into landfill.

There may be a market for small scale server type use for researchers wanting to run a CUDA rig who can't afford the stupidly expensive Quadro cards, but I can't imagine that many people wanting one.

But will this interfere with things like folding@home?

That is a risk isn't it. There are so many cuda workloads out there, something has to be accidentally hit. I'm sure we will get some growing pains for this feature.

If Nvidia make the feature too specific to how hashing is done, then the mining software people could just tweak their code a bit so it isn't quite as efficient but no longer looks like an ETH hash, and bingo they get 80% of the expected hash rate on consumer cards again. This isn't a simple feature, this is more like an anti-virus system where it is a constant arms race between Nvidia and the hashing software writers.

[Corky34]

Linus doesn't hold back on what he thinks of the CMP GPUs optimised for crypto mining.



He raised a few interesting points i hadn't thought about.

[ik9000]

A very good video and kind of aligned to my thinking. It achieves nothing and does not protect the average gamer. I hadn't thought about the waste, reuse aspect. I wonder what their company sustainability and environmental targets claim to be and how it compares to this.

[kompukare]

I wonder what their company sustainability and environmental targets claim to be and how it compares to this.

Well, aren't those always bogus PR nonsense no matter the company?

Apple the obvious example with their determination to make nothing repairable or upgradable but lots of empty platitudes about caring about the enviroment. About the only positive thing they have actually done is remove some toxic heavy metals from the products, the rest is all PR talk.

As for these mining cards, I guesss they serve three purposed:

1. give Nvidia more of the mining overspend
2. once crypto crashes again (and it will) stop used mining cards from flooding the market
3. play into the gamers mindshare because gamers are repeat customers unlike miners.

Publicly, Nvidia is only really concentrating on the last reason although using differnet words.

However, having said all that crypto is very much a bubble which will eventually burst and in the meantime it wastes a huge amount of energy (unless the waste heat is used to heat during the winter only).

While not technically a ponzi scheme in that there is no central figure directing new monies to old 'investors', it is very much an irrational asset bubble. So like all such bubbles, the secret is when to get out so there will/are huge winners and will be huge losers. All very high risk.

Miners, try to hedge the risk and of the ways being that they can sell the GPUs at the end, so this will or tries to prevent this.

But the shortages started before the latest ETH/BTC rises so it is not just mining which is to blame: 7nm wafer shortages, Samsung's 8nm yields, GDDR6 shortages and Micron's GDDR6X yields all play a part. Over 7 million consoles using 7nm and GDDR6 has a lot to do with this.

In the meantime, I have no intention to buy anything until/unless prices go down and I'm no hurry. Pity I didn't hold of selling my GTX1060 a few months though.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Well, aren't those always bogus PR nonsense no matter the company?

Apple the obvious example with their determination to make nothing repairable or upgradable but lots of empty platitudes about caring about the enviroment. About the only positive thing they have actually done is remove some toxic heavy metals from the products, the rest is all PR talk.

As for these mining cards, I guesss they serve three purposed:

1. give Nvidia more of the mining overspend
2. once crypto crashes again (and it will) stop used mining cards from flooding the market
3. play into the gamers mindshare because gamers are repeat customers unlike miners.

Publicly, Nvidia is only really concentrating on the last reason although using differnet words.

However, having said all that crypto is very much a bubble which will eventually burst and in the meantime it wastes a huge amount of energy (unless the waste heat is used to heat during the winter only).

While not technically a ponzi scheme in that there is no central figure directing new monies to old 'investors', it is very much an irrational asset bubble. So like all such bubbles, the secret is when to get out so there will/are huge winners and will be huge losers. All very high risk.

Miners, try to hedge the risk and of the ways being that they can sell the GPUs at the end, so this will or tries to prevent this.

But the shortages started before the latest ETH/BTC rises so it is not just mining which is to blame: 7nm wafer shortages, Samsung's 8nm yields, GDDR6 shortages and Micron's GDDR6X yields all play a part. Over 7 million consoles using 7nm and GDDR6 has a lot to do with this.

In the meantime, I have no intention to buy anything until/unless prices go down and I'm no hurry. Pity I didn't hold of selling my GTX1060 a few months though.

12NM/14NM/16NM parts using GDDR5 are also hard to find,as are mainstream GPUs. The issue is its most likely miners also buying that stock up too. An example is the GTX1660 which uses GDDR5 or the RX570 which also uses GDDR5.

[kompukare]

12NM/14NM/16NM parts using GDDR5 are also hard to find,as are mainstream GPUs. The issue is its most likely miners also buying that stock up too. An example is the GTX1660 which uses GDDR5 or the RX570 which also uses GDDR5.

Or desperate gamers buying whatever is left?

Gamers are quite capable of driving price increases as Nvidia know only too well.

Unsure if there is any evidence either way. While AMD might have stopped producing Polaris, I don't think Nvidia stopped GTX1660.

Now I always get these ROI calculations wrong as I never though it could possibly be worthwhile for any one to buy 3080 or 3090. Now at today's prices, whattomine says they get $12 pd but back when the current craze started it was way less (ETH has double during the last month+). Far to risky I though, but I was obviously wrong. Same with RX570 and GTX1660, they are meant to be doing a dizzying $2.4 to $3 pd but since they are selling at £200+ I still think that's way to risky. Guess the risk-averse are never going to partake in asset bubbles...

[DanceswithUnix]

(ETH has double during the last month+).

A fact that makes me think that merely halving the mining rate of a card is pointless anyway.

Edit: Elon Musk has declared that Bitcoin and Eth are a bit high in price, so fingers crossed his followers will start the price crash in time for the 6700 release if not this RTX 3060