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Nvidia cripples cryptocurrency mining on RTX 3080 and 3070 cards

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Re: Nvidia cripples cryptocurrency mining on RTX 3080 and 3070 cards

#121

Post by 542458 »

akersten wrote: post #116
wbraun wrote: post #2

Does this behavior anger anyone else on a deep level? I get that its hard to buy GPUs right now, but this seems like such an attack on general purpose computing. Hardware manufactures already segment features between consumer and busness grade parts that the silicon itself is capable of, such as virtualization, but restricting what algorithms one can run is a whole new level. I am pretty sure my next GPU is going to…

Yep, this enrages me. Deliberately introducing faults into a product to make it less appealing to one market segment in a desperate attempt to cover for their supply chain failure. Stinks to high heaven. In addition the detection is not magic (it can't be) so there are going to be false positives. Can't wait until my games start dropping frames 30 minutes in because the driver decided my competitive FPS was actually…

GPUs have been doing this forever. This is exactly the same as some features being enabled on quadros that don’t exist on RTX/GTX/GT cards. That’s (mostly) not silicon, that’s just firmware.

This isn’t covering any supply chain failures (despite what nvidia says, the number of available GPUs remains approximately fixed), it’s just more market segmentation to minimize the secondhand mining GPU market and capture more dollars.

I was also concerned about detection false positives, but as far as I can tell they’re detecting a very specific algorithm that only gets used for ETH mining - there have been no false positives that I can see. Some miners are even working around the limiter by introducing obfuscation operations, but that comes with a hashrate cost of course.

Re: Nvidia cripples cryptocurrency mining on RTX 3080 and 3070 cards

#122

Post by behringer »

cma wrote: post #104
void_mint wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At some point, someone has to take action against harmful behavior, right? In the last few years, we've seen tons extremely problematic behavior arise out of well-principled technology (all of social media, cryptocurrency, etc). Groups of people say "When will we do something?!?!?!", and then, when something is done, other people say "But the principle of ___!". Sometime, someone has to do something about problematic…

Do you really believe Nvidia is being an enforcer here to "take action against harmful behavior"? It's just price discrimination. They saw they were leaving money on the table. Unless they thought it a huge PR win to do it, it's probably not much different in motivation than the previous thing with them segmenting out datacenter use.

As a gamer, I'd much rather they take miner's money for miner's uses and leave me able to play games in my spare time.

Re: Nvidia cripples cryptocurrency mining on RTX 3080 and 3070 cards

#123

Post by akersten »

slownews45 wrote: post #103
wbraun wrote: post #2

Does this behavior anger anyone else on a deep level? I get that its hard to buy GPUs right now, but this seems like such an attack on general purpose computing. Hardware manufactures already segment features between consumer and busness grade parts that the silicon itself is capable of, such as virtualization, but restricting what algorithms one can run is a whole new level. I am pretty sure my next GPU is going to…

I'm thrilled by this. This has been a common approach in I think almost every industry. What nvidia is doing is recognizing that the needs of existing long time consumers / clients / partners are not being met by the current situation. Yes, it inflates short term profits and increases their pricing power, but long run if you can't buy nvidia for your dev box, your game box etc, this reduces the long run nvidia ecosys…

If this works (spoiler: it won't, it will be cracked within a month), it will create more e-Waste as miners will toss their no-video-output-mining-only cards after they're no longer the latest tech, instead of being able to resell them to gamers, thinning the used graphics card market, forcing more gamers to buy new from nVidia instead of rebuying old cards online.

That makes me angry, it should make you angry too.

Re: Nvidia cripples cryptocurrency mining on RTX 3080 and 3070 cards

#124

Post by ChoGGi »

slownews45 wrote: post #103
wbraun wrote: post #2

Does this behavior anger anyone else on a deep level? I get that its hard to buy GPUs right now, but this seems like such an attack on general purpose computing. Hardware manufactures already segment features between consumer and busness grade parts that the silicon itself is capable of, such as virtualization, but restricting what algorithms one can run is a whole new level. I am pretty sure my next GPU is going to…

I'm thrilled by this. This has been a common approach in I think almost every industry. What nvidia is doing is recognizing that the needs of existing long time consumers / clients / partners are not being met by the current situation. Yes, it inflates short term profits and increases their pricing power, but long run if you can't buy nvidia for your dev box, your game box etc, this reduces the long run nvidia ecosys…

Nvidia isn't doing it for their customers, it's to reduce the aftermarket price drop next time crypto drops.

Re: Nvidia cripples cryptocurrency mining on RTX 3080 and 3070 cards

#126

Post by endgame »

outworlder wrote: post #102
wbraun wrote: post #2

Does this behavior anger anyone else on a deep level? I get that its hard to buy GPUs right now, but this seems like such an attack on general purpose computing. Hardware manufactures already segment features between consumer and busness grade parts that the silicon itself is capable of, such as virtualization, but restricting what algorithms one can run is a whole new level. I am pretty sure my next GPU is going to…

> I am pretty sure my next GPU is going to be AMD due to this behavior by Nvidia. I was thinking about buying NVIDIA for the next GPU based on performance numbers alone. However, against it there's: 1) Terrible Linux support(and history). This is specially important now that most of Steam's library runs on Linux without issues. It was eye-opening to see Cyberpunk running almost perfectly on DAY ONE with the same perf…

4) Crippling the ability to GPU passthrough (subpoint of (2), I suppose)

Re: Nvidia cripples cryptocurrency mining on RTX 3080 and 3070 cards

#128

Post by kemonocode »

wbraun wrote: post #2

Does this behavior anger anyone else on a deep level? I get that its hard to buy GPUs right now, but this seems like such an attack on general purpose computing. Hardware manufactures already segment features between consumer and busness grade parts that the silicon itself is capable of, such as virtualization, but restricting what algorithms one can run is a whole new level. I am pretty sure my next GPU is going to…

It angers me too, and most people are definitely getting upset with the wrong party- it is not to say crypto miners are magically devoid of guilt or that there aren't issues with scalpers, but these are all, deep down, supply issues that have sprung due to an over-reliance on Just-In-Time manufacturing. Pandemic-induced shortages merely compound what was already a problem.

Re: Nvidia cripples cryptocurrency mining on RTX 3080 and 3070 cards

#129

Post by warent »

nyjah wrote: post #125

I have a dumb theoretical question, but I genuinely don't understand the answer. Why wouldn't nvidia and amd or any other card maker just keep the cards and mine all the cryptocurrency for themselves?

Probably because it's just not their business. They don't need to confuse their objectives with bitcoin to get rich, they're doing exceptionally well without it
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