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

Post by jsheard » Fri, Feb 19, 2021, 5:26 PM UTC

jsheard wrote: post #279

arsome wrote: post #243

Sounds like it's time to crack some NVIDIA drivers. I already do it for the video encoding limitations, why not this too? Miners are willing to go to some really hacky extremes, reflashing firmwares, custom fan mods, extreme overclock configurations, etc to maximize hashrates and certainly won't care if they have to jump through some hoops to patch a specific version of the Linux driver or enable unsigned drivers on…

Someone with early access to 3060 hardware, but not access to the launch drivers managed to wrangle it into working on pre-3060 drivers and still found that mining performance was artificially reduced. It starts high then falls off after a minute or so when some heuristic decides that mining is happening. https://videocardz.com/newz/zotac-geforce-rtx-3060-early-gpu... There's speculation that the limiter might actual…

Post by mullingitover » Fri, Feb 19, 2021, 6:45 PM UTC

qqii wrote: post #423

mullingitover wrote: post #329

It would be fantastic if mining activity could be detected at the hardware level in order to engage throttling. Honestly if cryptocurrencies are going to be a thing, it wouldn't make any sense for hardware makers to ever sell anything that could be used for mining. They could just build their own mining equipment, own the market, and not sell (or sell at a prohibitive markup) any hardware that makes serious mining pr…

I find it somewhat amusing that you use playing games as an example of something useful compared to performing ethereum transactions. What you suggest already happens, companies like Bitmain who can invest millions to develop custom asic designs and buy directly from the silicon manufactures, contributing to the silicon shortage. Miners are buying commercial hardware becuase the allocation at the factories doesn't me…

Post by herendin2 » Fri, Feb 19, 2021, 7:23 PM UTC

Tepix wrote: post #677

herendin2 wrote: post #573

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nvidia is effectively incentivizing the cracking of their driver and firmware security signing with millions of dollars. Because a person who cracks it can build a more profitable mining farm It's a sort of accidental bug bounty and I wonder if Nvidia have really thought this through?

If you crack it, you haven't found a bug though. You managed to do a bit of circumvention.

Post by Shorel » Fri, Feb 19, 2021, 8:51 PM UTC

dumbfounder wrote: post #689

qqii wrote: post #538

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By the same logic those interested in ML shouldn't be buying up Geforce cards and should buy their Tesla line.

They should be free to create products that foster the community they believe will give them the best returns in the long run. Clearly they don't think that is crypto, they probably think it is either a fad, or that it will move to proof of stake, and that the demand will subside. So if they leave their core community high and dry during that time they could lose favor. I don't know if that's right or wrong, they cle…

Post by GauntletWizard » Fri, Feb 19, 2021, 9:30 PM UTC

ljm wrote: post #269

ralmidani wrote: post #50

I would normally be appalled by such an action, but the supply issues for RTX 30x0 cards are beyond ridiculous. Mining trashes the environment and, for the majority of crypto assets/volumes, does not provide genuinely valuable economic activity besides speculation (I say that as someone who has put thousands of dollars into crypto in the past). Why should people who want to try some ML/DL at home (maybe they even nee…

The environmental issues are concerning to me. The amount of electricity being burned through for what is essentially a skeuomorphism of gold mining, pretty much primarily for speculation now, is beyond belief. It's a completely artificial, and artificially scarce, product. Whatever original hopeful goals the creator(s) of Bitcoin had with this idea, and decentralised currency...if there was any victory at all it is…