discussion About The Nvidia Mining Cards And Locking Mining Capability

[doxiMAN_MAN]

Nvidia announced that the 3060 and future gaming GPUs will be artificially worsened to mining (meaning mining will be very inefficient on gaming GPUs) through the drivers and firmware.

By locking future gaming GPUs, that means miners won't buy them anymore and that miners will buy the mining cards instead. So overall demand for the gaming GPUs will decrease, isnt that a good thing for gamers?

Now I've watched linus' latest video but mainly he said that silicon is limited and that they will produce less gaming cards, but that wont be a problem because demand will go WAY down because of what i said earlier.

This is ofc ignoring that gamers wont be able to buy cards which were used for mining, and ignoring the effect it has on the environment. I'm looking at this from a first-hand consumerist POV.

[tikker]

Eh, I agree with the statement that it's mostly a PR thing. Perhaps a business channel to get rid of not fully functional chips. AnandTech speculates a possibility of them only being available to "professional mining outlets", whatever those are, which would help even less.

 

Half the hashrate is still a more than profitable rate at the moment, so I expect more than a few miners will just buy more GPUs to offset the reduction in hashrate. I'm happy to be wrong once they land, but I don't see this solving anything really, unless the CMPs are dirt cheap for what they offer.

[Loki0111]

5 hours ago, doxiMAN_MAN said:

Nvidia announced that the 3060 and future gaming GPUs will be artificially worsened to mining (meaning mining will be very inefficient on gaming GPUs) through the drivers and firmware.

By locking future gaming GPUs, that means miners won't buy them anymore and that miners will buy the mining cards instead. So overall demand for the gaming GPUs will decrease, isnt that a good thing for gamers?

Now I've watched linus' latest video but mainly he said that silicon is limited and that they will produce less gaming cards, but that wont be a problem because demand will go WAY down because of what i said earlier.

This is ofc ignoring that gamers wont be able to buy cards which were used for mining, and ignoring the effect it has on the environment. I'm looking at this from a first-hand consumerist POV.

 

I think Nvidia is doing this as a prelude to segmenting the mining and gaming GPU market across their entire product stack. Miners will pay more for good mining cards and Nvidia knows it. They can adjust the inventories of those two segments as required and it gives them a better ability to control price and availability in both the gaming and mining markets.

 

But specific to the 3060 I do think it will dampen mining demand on the impacting sales of new gaming GPU's, so yes in the immediate future that is good for gamers. That said, there is so much demand for good gaming GPU's right now these things are going to sell out regardless. The difference will probably be more of them end up in the hands of actual gamers.

[Mick Naughty]

Doubt the driver will lock anything out. Plenty of ways around that. And no miners will be buying those crappy cards. Unless they are very, very cheap and they somehow cut the tdp in thirds. 
So I just imagine all the current cards being bought up even with bad pricing to leave nothing left for all the supposed gamers. 

[Loki0111]

6 minutes ago, Mick Naughty said:

Doubt the driver will lock anything out. Plenty of ways around that. And no miners will be buying those crappy cards. Unless they are very, very cheap and they somehow cut the tdp in thirds. 
So I just imagine all the current cards being bought up even with bad pricing to leave nothing left for all the supposed gamers. 

Its not just a driver patch, its been tested at this point. Someone put one in a Linux rig without using any drivers from Nvidia and the card detected it was mining after about 2 minutes and dropped its hash rate.

 

There appears to be additional lock outs in the encrypted BIOS on the actual card. This isn't to say it would be impossible to circumvent but if they are crippling it at the BIOS or hardware level its going to make it a hell of a lot harder. My take on this is its likely not going to affect the current gen cards too much and they are largely testing methods of crippling them. For miners this will be a bigger issue on the next gen cards when they have a full CMP stack out.

[Mick Naughty]

2 minutes ago, Loki0111 said:

Its not just a driver patch, its been tested at this point. Someone put one in a Linux rig without using any drivers from Nvidia and the card detected it was mining after about 2 minutes and dropped its hash rate.

 

There appears to be additional lock outs in the encrypted BIOS on the actual card. This isn't to say it would be impossible to circumvent but if they are crippling it at the BIOS or hardware level its going to make it a hell of a lot harder. My take on this is its likely not going to affect the current cards to much and they are testing methods of crippling them. For miners this will be a bigger issue on the next gen cards.

Bios can be modded. Kinda to late if it’s only gonna work on all the low end stuff. 
I guess it would be nice and all but like I said, that’s just gonna make it muc worse for all current and un effected cards. As mining cards aren’t a real option. Not going off the specs released. Especially compared to the p104’s 108’s etc. 

[Loki0111]

5 minutes ago, Mick Naughty said:

Bios can be modded. Kinda to late if it’s only gonna work on all the low end stuff. 
I guess it would be nice and all but like I said, that’s just gonna make it muc worse for all current and un effected cards. As mining cards aren’t a real option. Not going off the specs released. Especially compared to the p104’s 108’s etc. 

You can reflash BIOS chips but there is always a level of risk with that and if Nvidia want to be dicks they can do what other peripheral manufacturers have done in the past and put in safeguards which will just cause the cards to brick themselves if they detect they are being modded. At that point you'd have to RMA the card to get Nvidia to return it factory spec. Its always a cat and mouse game though, the idea is to much it so much of a headache miners just buy the CMP cards instead.

 

Its already essentially impossible to buy the non-effected cards. If you try to buy a 6800xt off AMD's own site they sell out in under 30 seconds whenever there is a drop. The current situation is completely broken for gamers, at this point basically anything is going to be better.

[Blademaster91]

I think its just a PR stunt to get gamers to think Nvidia actually cares who they're selling GPUs, although its a really clever marketing move because most people will probably assume its a good thing, while Nvidia and the AIBs still sell directly to miners.

Apparently the RTX 3060 can still make up to $7 a day even being nerfed.

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/rtx-3060-still-profitable-mining

[Mick Naughty]

3 minutes ago, Loki0111 said:

You can reflash BIOS chips but there is always a level of risk with that and if Nvidia want to be dicks they can do what other peripheral manufacturers have done in the past and put in safeguards which will just cause the cards to brick themselves if they detect they are being modded. At that point you'd have to RMA the card to get Nvidia to return it factory spec. Its always a cat and mouse game though, the idea is to much it so much of a headache miners just buy the CMP cards instead.

 

Its already essentially impossible to buy the non-effected cards. If you try to buy a 6800xt off AMD's own site they sell out in under 30 seconds whenever there is a drop. The current situation is completely broken for gamers, at this point basically anything is going to be better.

Guess it just depends on the Avenue of approach. I make an hour drive and can get 3060ti’s at $500 usd each with a max of 50. So I’d rather do that and not worry about miner cards or 3060’s. As the best card would be the ti. 

[Loki0111]

3 minutes ago, Mick Naughty said:

Guess it just depends on the Avenue of approach. I make an hour drive and can get 3060ti’s at $500 usd each with a max of 50. So I’d rather do that and not worry about miner cards or 3060’s. As the best card would be the ti. 

That's what I am saying. I don't think this an across the board solution, this is entirely about the future RTX 4000 series and CMP cards.

 

I think they are testing methods of crippling the RTX cards and seeing how miners try and circumvent them. They'll mitigate the work arounds they find and when they are confident with an end solution they'll roll those changes into the RTX 4000 series before it releases.

 

The idea for Nvidia is to force miners on the CMP cards down the road.