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Nvidia Limits RTX 3060 Hash Rate

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Re: Nvidia Limits RTX 3060 Hash Rate

#21

Post by josalhor »

terhechte wrote: post #3

I'm probably going to be downvoted into oblivion but I'm genuinely curious: Does anybody else think that the "mining is bad for the environment and gamers can't buy the cards" argument is a bit weird? After all, if all these cards weren't used for mining but for gaming, wouldn't the environmental outcome be the same? I mean, is there any inherent upside to burning tons of energy for games vs burning it for a cryptocu…

> Does anybody else think that the "mining is bad for the environment and gamers can't buy the cards" argument is a bit weird? After all, if all these cards weren't used for mining but for gaming, wouldn't the environmental outcome be the same?

I never had that specific opinion, but I have another point of view.

Games bring inherent value to the table. That is, if you didn't play games you would be reading a book, going outside to play, browsing the web... Games fill a purpose and bring value. Whether or not I believe our current consumption of videogames is acceptable is irrelevant.

I don't see tangible value in crypto. Crypto is worth what other people are willing to pay for it. If you wanted to invest in an asset that does not depend on the currency you could buy gold.

(I had a paragraph here making a point about international transaction costs. I removed it because I started to find it offtopic. Long story short: I find the societal cost of crypto way too high).

Re: Nvidia Limits RTX 3060 Hash Rate

#22

Post by gsich »

martinald wrote: post #13
pornel wrote: post #4

I have no sympathy for miners, but purely from software freedom perspective this is maximally evil: closed-source software that decides what you can use your hardware for. The CMP version is a straight-to-landfill product. As soon as it stops being profitable for mining it will have zero resale value, and become e-waste.

Surely it would be worth the same as the normal RTX 3060? It will have the same use for gaming?

Not usable without display ports.

Re: Nvidia Limits RTX 3060 Hash Rate

#23

Post by kevingadd »

sparkling wrote: post #2

This is why we need open source drivers. Now they are crippling cards for crypto mining, in the future there might be a whole list of other software features that require a paid unlock or even monthly subscription to use the full potential of your own hardware.

There are already a bunch of other cases like this. For example, the Windows GeForce drivers have been for years (if not decades) loaded with a bunch of shady OpenGL heuristics to punish you if you do stuff that looks like enterprise/industrial rendering (AutoCAD, etc).

For an ordinary game developer this means cheap operations like texture readback will go from taking 1ms to 16ms (bumping your framerate down). The same stuff is consistently fast in Direct3D because enterprise/industrial workloads don't use it.

NVENC for hardware video encoding is also artificially limited on consumer cards, which forces you to buy quadros for scenarios where you want to do multi streaming.

Re: Nvidia Limits RTX 3060 Hash Rate

#24

Post by PartiallyTyped »

robkop wrote: post #16
martinald wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely it would be worth the same as the normal RTX 3060? It will have the same use for gaming?

They are removing all the display ports from the card so I can't imagine it can be used for gaming.

It can be. NVDA's stance is utter bull. It is entirely possible to render video games and stream them to another display [1,2]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TY4s35uULg4

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1nok2VlF1M

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfIibTBaoMM

Re: Nvidia Limits RTX 3060 Hash Rate

#25

Post by daniel-thompson »

pornel wrote: post #4

I have no sympathy for miners, but purely from software freedom perspective this is maximally evil: closed-source software that decides what you can use your hardware for. The CMP version is a straight-to-landfill product. As soon as it stops being profitable for mining it will have zero resale value, and become e-waste.

I assume it can still be used for other CUDA applications, although I doubt that miners will care much about that.

Re: Nvidia Limits RTX 3060 Hash Rate

#26

Post by badlucklottery »

almog wrote: post #12
terhechte wrote: post #3

I'm probably going to be downvoted into oblivion but I'm genuinely curious: Does anybody else think that the "mining is bad for the environment and gamers can't buy the cards" argument is a bit weird? After all, if all these cards weren't used for mining but for gaming, wouldn't the environmental outcome be the same? I mean, is there any inherent upside to burning tons of energy for games vs burning it for a cryptocu…

> I mean, is there any inherent upside to burning tons of energy for games vs burning it for a cryptocurrency? You presume the total energy consumption would be the same whereas it'd be more likely that GPUs that are used for mining will be used 24/7 whereas gaming is likely to be performed by a human being who cannot or would not utilize the GPU nearly as many hours of the day.

> GPUs that are used for mining will be used 24/7 whereas gaming is likely to be performed by a human being who cannot or would not utilize the GPU nearly as many hours of the day.

Yup. And even if they could utilize them 24/7, gamers generally* won't have 10+ cards going at once.

*:I'm sure someone has some weird 360 degree flight simulator edge case.

Re: Nvidia Limits RTX 3060 Hash Rate

#27

Post by cedricgle »

jleahy wrote: post #15

I’m guessing they are going to try and raise the prices and create a new market segment. Just as they have separated datacenter GPUs, increased the price massively (coming up to a factor of 10x) and then tried to use a stick to prevent the use of desktop GPUs for datacenter work (eg. the licensing change). Unfortunately (for their bottom line) it probably won’t work, if the restriction is in the driver then someone l…

I can imagine that nowadays you can protect your hardware with encryption chip that unlock firmware with public/private keys. To break it you will have to remove the chip.

Re: Nvidia Limits RTX 3060 Hash Rate

#28

Post by chrisseaton »

josalhor wrote: post #21
terhechte wrote: post #3

I'm probably going to be downvoted into oblivion but I'm genuinely curious: Does anybody else think that the "mining is bad for the environment and gamers can't buy the cards" argument is a bit weird? After all, if all these cards weren't used for mining but for gaming, wouldn't the environmental outcome be the same? I mean, is there any inherent upside to burning tons of energy for games vs burning it for a cryptocu…

> Does anybody else think that the "mining is bad for the environment and gamers can't buy the cards" argument is a bit weird? After all, if all these cards weren't used for mining but for gaming, wouldn't the environmental outcome be the same? I never had that specific opinion, but I have another point of view. Games bring inherent value to the table. That is, if you didn't play games you would be reading a book, go…

Presumably people enjoy investing in crypto. It’s a hobby for many, like gaming.

Re: Nvidia Limits RTX 3060 Hash Rate

#29

Post by A12-B »

terhechte wrote: post #3

I'm probably going to be downvoted into oblivion but I'm genuinely curious: Does anybody else think that the "mining is bad for the environment and gamers can't buy the cards" argument is a bit weird? After all, if all these cards weren't used for mining but for gaming, wouldn't the environmental outcome be the same? I mean, is there any inherent upside to burning tons of energy for games vs burning it for a cryptocu…

To play one game for one day with your GPU - and I'm just guessing here - probably uses a small fraction of the power that mining 0.0001% of a bitcoin does, because blockchain is not the same thing as graphics.

Besides, it's also the transacting that uses a lot of energy, not just the mining.

Re: Nvidia Limits RTX 3060 Hash Rate

#30

Post by thejosh »

terhechte wrote: post #3

I'm probably going to be downvoted into oblivion but I'm genuinely curious: Does anybody else think that the "mining is bad for the environment and gamers can't buy the cards" argument is a bit weird? After all, if all these cards weren't used for mining but for gaming, wouldn't the environmental outcome be the same? I mean, is there any inherent upside to burning tons of energy for games vs burning it for a cryptocu…

Because when the crypto card is done it goes on the trash, when a gaming card is done it gets resold. People upgrading sell their old cards on FB market place etc
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