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Nvidia Limits RTX 3060 Hash Rate

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Re: Nvidia Limits RTX 3060 Hash Rate

#291

Post by mlyle »

Retric wrote: post #289
mlyle wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Higher temps are bad, but thermal cycles are equally bad or worse. Different things on the card have different thermal coefficients of expansion. Getting warm and cooling makes everything flex and stresses solder joints, wire bonds, and thermal interfaces. Miner cards have longer, sustained high temps. This is bad for life. Gamer cards have lots of thermal cycles. This is very bad for life. Miner cards are more likel…

That’s testing for thermal cycling over wide temperature ranges or longer lifespans. GPU’s are used indoors and don’t have a very long lifespan. The major risk factor for GPU’s is electromigration which is a major factor in GPU lifespan and directly relates to usage. A 40 hour a week gamer is extremely rare, but a mining GPU is pulling 168 hours a week.

Electromigration is a small risk factor in any kind of reasonable life. Especially if not overvolted (which is something that mostly gamers do-- miners are more likely to undervolt).

Solder fatigue breaking of solder balls is common. I have fixed lots of GPUs by reflowing them. GPUs do cycle over a large temperature range-- delta-T can be 50C+. While maps are loading, etc, you can have delta-T's of 25C+ every few minutes.

Indeed, you have lots of people doing this:

https://turbofuture.com/computers/How-to-Fix-a-Dead-Graphics... https://www.instructables.com/How-to-repair-your-Graphics-Ca... https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Temporarily+Repair+a+Lost+Cause...

This is a thermal cycling induced failure mode. (Of course, a home oven doesn't accomplish proper reflow, so this is more of a "fix things for a couple months" trick as described in the posts).

Re: Nvidia Limits RTX 3060 Hash Rate

#292

Post by deepakhj »

robkop wrote: post #32
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…

We can do some quick estimates to compare (using a 3090 because I helped a friend do a bit of mining on theirs and I know what figures are plausible): First some variables: RTX3090 idle power usage = 21 Watts RTX3090 mining power usage = 270 Watts RTX3090 gaming power usage = 350 Watts Mining energy usage: 270W \* 24H = 6.48 kWH per day Gaming energy usage: (low, 1 hour per day) 350W \* 1H + 21W \* 23H = 0.37 kWH per…

Why not both? I’m paying for my card by mining when I’m not gaming. I checked with a watt meter and I’m using 270-300 watts mining total (cpu, gpu, etc). It also heats my room so it’s more efficient than running a heater or using a space heater (1500 watts).

Re: Nvidia Limits RTX 3060 Hash Rate

#294

Post by nitrogen »

pantalaimon wrote: post #176
mckirk wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is the effect of 'electromigration' at least, which causes atoms of conducting materials to be transported over time because of the current (if I understand it correctly). That might be an issue over the long term, especially at the ridiculously small scale of chip manufacturing we've reached now.

But how big of an issue is that really in practice? You still see 20+ years old machines chugging along just fine.

That's a bit of survivor bias. I used to buy truckloads of old PCs and recycle them when I was a teenager. I initially thought that this old tech was just really built to last, but in reality I was selecting the 1% or less that could survive being shoved around a rat-feces-infested warehouse at freezing temperatures before ending up in my parents' garage, to their dismay. Those survivors seemed to last freaking forever afterward, but again, that's because they were the random fraction that just happened to have that perfect balance of durability.

When I started buying new parts as an adult, the failure rates of e.g. GPUs were pretty disappointing in comparison to the biased expectations I had from those survivor PCs.

Re: Nvidia Limits RTX 3060 Hash Rate

#295

Post by dahart »

PartiallyTyped wrote: post #273
dahart wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re making a huge assumption that they could be resold, even if they’re the same chips. This could be an entirely new market for chips that have yield defects in the graphics units, that will not ever work for games, and were previously already put in the trash. And your theory doesn’t explain two things: - how this hurts gamers now, and - why if Nvidia just wanted profit and the chips are useful for games, why wo…

> And your theory doesn’t explain two things: - how this hurts gamers now, and - why if Nvidia just wanted profit and the chips are useful for games, why wouldn’t Nvidia simply do nothing and let the miners buy all the 3060s. Wouldn’t that be the most profitable thing here? No it is not. If they mis-predict when the mining craze ends, they will be stuck with a huge inventory and no way to deal with it. The reason the…

Strange theories on top of strange theories. The GTX 1080 is good enough forever? People are using 1080p forever? Games are staying put with the fidelity and textures and poly counts they had 5 years ago, and not improving any more? Last time I checked, there weren’t all that many games that run at 60Hz 1080p and never dip.

Re: Nvidia Limits RTX 3060 Hash Rate

#297

Post by qqii »

josalhor wrote: post #84
qqii wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Although you may disagree with the current value of most cryptocurrencies would you at least agree that their inhenrant value isn't 0? Newer projects like Uniswap, AAVE and MakerDAO (for DAI) are uniquely new and novel concepts that can't be accomplished trustlessly without blockchain technology. Bitcoin has a lot of intangibles (name recognition, trust, hashpower) and for many is a more intersting asset (in what it…

> Although you may disagree with the current value of most cryptocurrencies I would like to clarify something. I didn't say I disagreed with the value of cryptocurrencies (that is, its value in dollars). I said I find their societal cost way too high. In other terms, (Inherent Value of crypto > would you at least agree that their inhenrant value isn't 0? I agree with that. Although my previous answer stated "I don't…

Can you elaborate on what you mean by Societal Costs of crypto?

> I have said it a few times on HN: I see more potential into a "Crypto Dollar" than in crypto in general.

This, and the potential of smart contracts that use the "Crypto Dollar" are where I see the most potential.

Re: Nvidia Limits RTX 3060 Hash Rate

#298

Post by WanderPanda »

hobofan wrote: post #256
arcticbull wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Like literally every other piece of Bitcoin or crypto mining technology. It’s straight to the landfill every 6 months. Bitcoin generates 100 GRAMS of ewaste for every transaction. Every 2 transactions consumes as much energy as driving a Tesla from SF to NY [edit for…

> It’s straight to the landfill every 6 months. Isn't that a trend that has mostly ended or is about to end now? It looks like that was mostly caused by nm process improvements for ASIC chips in the past. With 7/5nm ASIC chips it seems like it should now progress as fast/slowly as the nm process capabilities of chip manufacturers in general. Not pro-BTC, but this seem very much like faulty interpolation based on a pa…

I was wondering the exact same thing a couple days ago, would be great if a more knowledgable person could confirm this

Re: Nvidia Limits RTX 3060 Hash Rate

#299

Post by ryebit »

throwaway-8c93 wrote: post #281
ryebit wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think right now biggest earner for GPU mining is Ethereum. And (I think) it's aiming to move to Proof of Stake sometime in next 12-24 months, which kinda time limits the utility of both Eth-specific mining chips, and large investments in GPU mining (unless mining burns GPUs out really fast?). Regardless, most proof of work algorithms are already being optimized with ASICs (ala bitcoin)... Or, like Ethereum's ETHASH…

A question out of genuine curiosity: Doesn't the nonce puzzle difficulty adjust to the amount of compute the network has, making it a zero sum game? If every mining pool buys 20% extra GPUs, isn't everyone soon back where they started, wasting hundreds of millions in the process?

I'm not an expert at the mechanism design, but yeah, that's my understanding. The network's goal is to have a block every X seconds; and the difficulty periodically adjusts if blocks come in too fast / too slow (due to hashpower coming on/off line).

(Ethereum & Bitcoin both add some other year-decade timeframe factors to the difficulty, but don't think it affects this basic principle, which acts on week-to-minute timeframes).

I view it as a race to the margins. Anyone who can do it cheaper, or benefit from economy of scale, will get a larger slice of the pie, but at smaller margins... creating a cycle of consolidation.

I think original assumption was that folks running PoW at home on their GPUs would be able to compete, but due to efficiencies of specialized hardware and regional differences in electricity costs, that's just not the case.

---

Others might disagree, but my personal opinion is that this isn't a sustainable way to maintain decentralization, since it seems to obviously trend towards a few large "just turning a profit" players.

There might be some ways to adjust mining incentives to make it work, but this fundmental issue is why I think Proof of Stake has a much more viable future, as it sidesteps this (and the environmental) issues.

Re: Nvidia Limits RTX 3060 Hash Rate

#300

Post by loceng »

LMYahooTFY wrote: post #224
loceng wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As the counter point, I, as a consumer of a GPU for non-mining purposes, appreciates the effort so demand is reduced for a product by a certain market segment - and thus allows the price to not be influenced by the demand of a decentralized, global MLM scheme. Also, you just don't buy that hardware - so it's not "what you can use your hardware for" - unless they're retroactively updating drivers to prevent the same u…

>global MLM scheme. What I'll say is that the absurdity of this trite dismissal presents a large undertaking for anyone to begin to try and teach you what cryptocurrencies are. Most of the silicon valley billionaires acknowledge it as a promising technology, if that doesn't warrant some serious (read: many hours of difficult reading) consideration than expecting strangers on a message board to help you do it seems a…

"What I'll say is that the absurdity of this trite dismissal ..."

Are you talking about your trite dismissal of my stating it's a global MLM scheme - which it fits the pattern for precisely? And also a Ponzi scheme because the final latest adopters are left holding the bag - meanwhile wealth was unnecessarily transferred weighted towards the earliest adopters.

Blockchain is a promising technology, designing it like Bitcoin to align people through financial gain (of an MLM) has unavoidable-unfixable pitfalls. You're welcome to go through my comment history to read more about the actual solution. You're making assumptions too that my stating it's an MLM scheme isn't backed up.

I find it hilarious, the irony, of you claiming my comment is a trite dismissal - as yours has exactly the same depth as mine, with the only truth you state is that blockchain is a "promising technology."

Your holier-than-thou defensive comments, articulated almost poetically, is getting more common though - as the more intelligent sucked into the MLM scheme get defensive and their guard goes up - feeling the need to defend their position, needing the price of Bitcoin to go up and up and up; while you're financially incentivized to write and spend energy, and others like myself with counter-narratives aren't financially incentivized to do so.

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