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Nvidia announces mining GPUs, cuts the hash rate of RTX-3060 in half

blogs.nvidia.com

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Re: Nvidia announces mining GPUs, cuts the hash rate of RTX-3060 in half

#471

Post by wruza »

unanswered wrote: post #222

A lot of comments are referring to hardware freedom to run what you want but I don't see anywhere in the article saying that you can't run whatever you want to on this hardware. It's just going to pretend to be slower hardware, not cut off capabilities. It seems entirely within Nvidia's moral rights to release a product that is not the best possible of all conceivable products; that's literally the point of the budge…

It’s baffling. Almost like people do like both to complain and to not have nice things. I bet that a huge part of them don’t do neither of ML, mining, nor free software at all. The naked fact that a mid-tier card already costs half a decent car escapes their reasoning somehow.

Re: Nvidia announces mining GPUs, cuts the hash rate of RTX-3060 in half

#472

Post by autokad »

loktarogar wrote: post #333
throwaway0901 wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does all mining apply here? I saw some videos where people were setting up solar panels and minig using that power. If you have a system of solar panels + mining cards, is there more harm compared to no such system (not taking producing solar panels and cards into account).

ultimately, it's a fraction of miners doing what you say. so as a green miner your personal contribution might be 0, but you're supporting a system that does considerable harm. as long as a majority of bitcoin mining happens from non-renewable resources, the network as a whole is damaging.

the vast majority of mining happens off renewable energy, because it doesn't make economic sense to mine on non-renewables. its why 'mines' cluster near hydro plants and places that have good solar.

Re: Nvidia announces mining GPUs, cuts the hash rate of RTX-3060 in half

#473

Post by qqii »

bronco21016 wrote: post #122

It seems like manufacturers are now resorting to artificial means to curb demand, rather than increasing supply. What are the practical reasons supply hasn’t kept up? Obviously, a fab is expensive but they have to be just printing money with these things in the current market. This really goes across the board with semiconductors as CPU supply issues are outrageous right now as well. Why aren’t more fabs being built?…

If history is accurate the current market will last no more than a year and a half. That's just not enough time.

Re: Nvidia announces mining GPUs, cuts the hash rate of RTX-3060 in half

#474

Post by fomine3 »

disiplus wrote: post #305
golover721 wrote: post #251

I wonder how much of this is Nvidia getting pressure from the Gaming industry to do something about it. As far as Nvidia is concerned they are selling as many units as they can produce, so it is a gold rush for them. The gaming industry I am sure is getting concerned that for their new AAA titles already under development which require these high end GPUs, their customers won’t be able to get ahold of them. Or at lea…

well, people will buy a console (i have a ps5) nvidia does not want that.

I suspect this is good point. Many light-mid gamers want to buy a new console or jump into a gaming PC, and both are in shortage. Selling gaming PC in this timing is important.

Re: Nvidia announces mining GPUs, cuts the hash rate of RTX-3060 in half

#475

Post by wruza »

xur17 wrote: post #435
wruza wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So let’s wait until BTC hits $100k and a generic videocard for any purpose costs $5000. That would be much better than paying extra $200 over MSRP for ML. /s

People are not mining Bitcoin on videocards.

But BTC price influences all crypto. Read it as “ETH hits $5k” if that matters.

Re: Nvidia announces mining GPUs, cuts the hash rate of RTX-3060 in half

#476

Post by fomine3 »

qqii wrote: post #368
raghavtoshniwal wrote: post #343

Neither a gamer nor a miner but would love some perspective here because something about this doesn't make sense to me. If Nvidia has the capability to make a differentiated mining product, shouldn't that be enough to get miners to go for it? Why halve the hashing rate on the "gaming" GPU artificially? If it is a supply issue, shouldn't Nvidia, as a company, try and solve for it directly (maybe it is really hard?), i…

From a miner's perspective there's little incentive (in cost difference) to get a mining specific card that doesn't hold its value when the mining craze is over compared to a general card which can be sold on the seccond hand market if necessary. The same criticisms were given last time nividia tried to make a mining card and obviously it didn't work as last time they didn't need to use artificial limits.

Finally used mining cards are sold as video cards by weird modification.

Re: Nvidia announces mining GPUs, cuts the hash rate of RTX-3060 in half

#477

Post by mullingitover »

qqii wrote: post #429
mullingitover wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Saying they can make more money selling the cards doesn't make sense if the cards are actually profitable to use as mining equipment. Plus, investors don't care if nvidia is a video card company or they sell toilet paper, they care about their performance as an investment. If nvidia could pivot and double your investment, would you really care what they were pivoting to?

Nividia can't just suddenly decide to keep cards for themselves for mining, they have pre arranged agreements to fulfil with their partners. Pivoting and creating a mining division also doesn't make sense - mining companies take on a lot more risk from volatile market prices and need to have a lot more cash on hand to sustain the long periods of unprofitability.

Sure, I'm not saying nvidia would just decide to stop shipping tomorrow. However, if crypto is really viable and long-term profitable, it wouldn't make a ton of sense for them to give their potential competitors (e.g. anyone else who wants to mine) capital equipment at what would amount to a loss.

They could subcontract the operation of the mining equipment to third parties so they make a profit immediately selling the mining hardware, and skim as much mining profit as possible while their subcontractors assume all the risk.

(Just using nvidia as an example, but this model would work well for anyone making hardware that's capable of mining at scale).

Re: Nvidia announces mining GPUs, cuts the hash rate of RTX-3060 in half

#478

Post by qqii »

beervirus wrote: post #390

I didn’t realize people still mined on gpu anymore, thought everything was asic.

ASICs requite a lot of up front capital to design and manufacture. ASICs also only really matter when prices are low and performance/watt matters. There's also limited supply too.

The popular gpu algorithm is ethereum, who's heading algorithm (ethash) is memory hard, so muhh of the performance relies on the speed of commercial DRAM chips so the difference between ASICs and GPUs are not as great. Along with the lower incentive as ethereum plans to move to proof of stake ASICs for ethereum are not as popular or common.

Re: Nvidia announces mining GPUs, cuts the hash rate of RTX-3060 in half

#479

Post by lordlimecat »

px43 wrote: post #463
bob1029 wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The practical utility of crypto is such a joke when compared to the intended use cases that all of the speculators fawn over. The idea that crypto is a "store of value" seems like meager coping with the fact that transaction rates in a distributed system necessarily must suck compared to what Visa, et. al. are doing with IBM mainframes and racks of x86 hardware contained in the same datacenter (i.e. 1~2ms latency dom…

If you can't see the practical utility of cryptocurrency in 2021, you're being willfully ignorant. If you actually believe what you're saying, then short it[1]. If you really think that the practical value is non-existent, then put your money where your mouth is, and take out a short. This isn't some academic theory where the best you can do is throw tomatoes at it, and ridicule it from a distance. This is an economi…

Nothing you said addresses the core and critical issue that Bitcoin and most blockchain currencies have terrible limitations on transaction-per-second, and are wildly inefficient with power and computing resources for what they provide.

And thinking that bitcoin is a terrible idea is not the same as thinking you can predict its market value. When something is as volatile as bitcoin, shorting it is almost as bad as going long; eventually its value will likely drop but being early is the same as being wrong.

Re: Nvidia announces mining GPUs, cuts the hash rate of RTX-3060 in half

#480

Post by PragmaticPulp »

mtreis86 wrote: post #366
MereInterest wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's putting it in the best possible light. Mining gold leaves the world with physical blocks of gold, which has no continuous upkeep cost. "Mining" cryptocurrency leaves the world with an asset that requires continual upkeep (further "mining") in order to maintain that asset. Any significant drop in the network's hashrate opens it up to attacks. The upkeep cost for Bitcoin is, and by necessity must be, proportiona…

Gold has an upkeep, Fort Knox doesn't operate for free, neither does a bank.

No one is denying that gold is 100% free.

But let's be honest, Fort Knox doesn't require 0.5% of the world's energy consumption (and increasing) just to continue existing.

False equivalencies don't help this argument. Yes, we know everything requires energy. No, that doesn't make it all the same.

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