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Nvidia Limits RTX 3060 Hash Rate

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Re: Nvidia Limits RTX 3060 Hash Rate

#431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Weirdly I can somewhat answer this as I’ve just got into NiceHash since this Friday night, mainly as a learning experience more than a money making endeavour. I have a load of my own company PCs with GPUs like 1080s and 2070s we used to rent for VR usage at events that have basically been sitting in boxes, idle for the last 12 months due to COVID. No idea how I ended up down the mining rabbit hole on a Friday night,…

Thanks for explaining! I would have assumed that there are some cross-coin mining pools out there that have a similarly good UX, where you would end up with the mined coins directly, but it kind of makes sense that it exists on that abstraction level.

There's other mining software and native OS's out there, like minerstat that you can seperately link to NiceHash or other pools, that abstract it all a level further, swapping between pools based on profitablity and probably over a year offer a better pay out, but I've not started diving into that yet. Minerstat charge 1.65eu per worker/per month after the first rig, but seem to offer a lot more options/flexibility (more stats, more pools, etc.).

Re: Nvidia Limits RTX 3060 Hash Rate

#432

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…

> Like literally every other piece of Bitcoin or crypto mining technology. I don't get this comparison because Nvidia isn't a Bitcoin mining technology company. Or at least they weren't until a week ago. When someone deems it not profitable to mine on a set of 50 GPUs they purchased, they can resell those to gamers. But these mining cards are just e-waste. > Don’t hate the player; hate the game. Games don't exist wit…

> When someone deems it not profitable to mine on a set of 50 GPUs they purchased, they can resell those to gamers.

Except they can't. GPUs used for mining are trash - too much heat and stress continuously.

Think about the average load on a consumer card used normally - maybe a daily 4 hour gaming binge max?

Meanwhile a mining card is running near 100% capacity 24/7, probably without enough cooling.

Re: Nvidia Limits RTX 3060 Hash Rate

#433
post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well even without chip design, for instance if you decrease unit cost, that also has the impact of changing the mining landscape because many more ASIC miners can enter the game. Also remember an ASIC miner will generally use more than it costs in electricity each year, so a relatively small improvement in hashes / watt makes a big difference to overall profitability. CPU design is more complex, but also has more peo…

> for instance if you decrease unit cost That doesn't diminish the hashing power of the equipment you already bought though (and the topic was obsolete equipment). > so a relatively small improvement in hashes / watt makes a big difference to overall profitability Yeah, that's a fair point. > I just get sceptical if someone says this is as good as it is going to get And I'm skeptical if people blindly extrapolate pas…

> That doesn't diminish the hashing power of the equipment you already bought though (and the topic was obsolete equipment).

It means even more equipment to go obsolete when improvements come through - and more equipment deployed does not equal more bitcoins generated, so it is an issue of more hardware that will ultimately end up in landfill / being scrapped.

> And I'm skeptical if people blindly extrapolate past trends

Well I'm also sceptical of people who blindly assume progress won't be made. To quote someone in 2014 predicting what would happen to ASIC design...

> As an emerging field of IC design, bitcoin mining ASICs have experienced rapid evolution over the past two years. However, they cannot keep evolving and developing at the current rate.

https://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-mining-can-longer-ignore-mo...

Well, still, try see how profitable your 3 year old ASIC miner is today...

Re: Nvidia Limits RTX 3060 Hash Rate

#434
post #311

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GPUs are essential for a few jobs that are essential to our society. They're not just for games.

We must have different definitions of "essential". I'm curious which jobs you're referring to, because to my understanding, every aspect of society that I consider essential, has existed since before the advent of GPUs.

I'm guessing CAD and engineering uses?

Re: Nvidia Limits RTX 3060 Hash Rate

#435
post #98
post #92

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Can electronics actually wear out?

Absolutely, it's materials science. Most electronics like this aren't meant to be run full-tilt 24/7, especially not under the conditions that crypto mining typically occurs. Subpar cooling, potentially dirty air - so lots of dust and particulate. Not to mention crypto miners will often have the GPUs overclocked on top of running full tilt to get every last hash out of it. It's about as brutal of a situation as you c…

Everything you just said is total nonsense. This idea that you are going to "wear out" a GPU is something people started saying when they were obviously bitter about not being able to find GPUs and seeing them being resold later for more than retail after they had been used for mining. There is nothing to back this up unless something melts.

Re: Nvidia Limits RTX 3060 Hash Rate

#436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not trying to pick on your comment but I'm always frustrated when someone points out "obligations to shareholders". I wish people would push back on this more. Sony's obligation when building and selling the PlayStation is to the end user customer. Not the shareholder. Because if Sony has only the shareholder in mind then a gaming console is probably the wrong market to be in from a pure profit perspective. Sony's ob…

Thanks. There should be such a comment every time someone mentions “but they have to maximise profit” and “think of the shareholder”. This point of view is not rooted in any law or legal principle and is just the Wall Street version of “might makes right”.

Yeah I think people are growing tired of this attitude. If you want to be a part of society and be a "person" in the eyes of the law you have to be a good citizen as well. Doctors have to follow a credo in addition to making $$ as do lawyers, engineers, etc. Thus it's time that if company's want to be legal "persons" they need to accept some responsibility for long term viability of their place in society beyond "shareholder value". I really hope that is a philosophy that more people take to heart.

Re: Nvidia Limits RTX 3060 Hash Rate

#437
post #291
post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 min…

As all of those links mention it’s useful for a minority of dead cards as most are failing from other causes.

That said, specific manufacturers can always introduce defects so your mileage may vary.

Re: Nvidia Limits RTX 3060 Hash Rate

#438
post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

« Can someone explain how transactions are not insanely cost prohibitive » Because the comments above yours are misleading. Transactions don't consume mining energy. Miners expend the same amount of energy regardless if they are validating 1 or 1000 transactions in a block.

That’s some high class mental gymnastics though. Because if you divide the energy spent across the number of transactions you land back where you started. And if the energy was burned for 0 transaction capacity then the underlying would be worthless. Secure but worthless. So it doesn’t take much inference to realize that the value is in transactbility. You’ll have to explain to me why when mining a block of transacti…

«it doesn’t make sense to break that down on a per transaction basis with division»

Because the division result is meaningless as it just reflects how full a block was, not the cost of a transaction. Again: miners expend the same amount of energy regardless if they are validating 1 or 1000 transactions in a block. Exactly the same amount. And whatever math you might be doing doesn't account for batched transactions (1 tx, N outputs), lighting transactions, or off-chain transaction (think tx within a platform like an exchange).

Re: Nvidia Limits RTX 3060 Hash Rate

#439
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.

> 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…

100 grams per transaction. Wow. That's sounds insane, but here's a reference: https://cen.acs.org/environment/sustainability/Bitcoin-poses...

Re: Nvidia Limits RTX 3060 Hash Rate

#440
post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. It's time to push back on Bitcoin. It is disgraceful to watch people such as Elon Musk and most of the VCs put money ahead of the environment.

Given the energy requirements and how it's kind of morphed into this beast of greed, I'm inclined to agree....but how to pull this off? Fiat bans cannot really work well against just doing math. Taxation schemes/financial regs tamping down on bitcoin speculation, what you can spend it on? By design I don't think you can just pump money into bitcoin in order to "deflate" its value without similarly consuming a lot of…

Perhaps a simple ban on converting fiat -> to bitcoin would go a long way? It wouldn't be absolute, black markets are a thing, but there are costs to participate in a black market, which costs will rise over time as good old physical cash declines.
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