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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

#171

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

988747 wrote: post #158
valuearb wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because BTC is down 30% in the last month?

No one mines BTC on GPU, and Etherum is up 100% from two weeks ago. Ok, I understand that NVidia does not want to mine themselves, but why on Earth won't they just raise the prices to the level miners are willing to pay? "We want to sell to gamers, not miners" is the stupidest excuse ever. Isn't capitalism all about selling to the highest bidder? Why do they even care about who buys their product? EDIT: Also, think a…

Gamers are the reason why Nvidia exists, it's a hard thing to let go of.

It would be like FB shutting down the blue app and pivoting to Tinder.

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

#172

Post by ahD5zae7 »

Actually, is there a need to block anything? They're coming up with a mining-focused product line now. Just make them slightly cheaper per hash and voila - all miners will be buying the mining-focused products. They lack the video outputs so it makes sense, you can skip some of the BOM on the card, save a few bucks. As it has already been mentioned in the thread miners are super sensitive to squeezing every cent out of their setup. If they can save some bucks on cards, they will surely go for it.

So either the mining cards will be cheaper than regular, which makes this block a moot point in near future, or they will be more expensive per hash than normal graphic cards. In which case the block makes sense but in my opinion is a bad move by Nvidia. Making the mining cards more expensive than regular cards is throwing a gauntlet to the whole world to break the drivers or workaround the hardware. It will be fascinating to watch the cat-and-mouse game of hackers and Nvidia developers, but it will not fix the horrible GPU market situation we're in now and that is a shame.

Disclaimer: I want to buy a new GPU soon but for the MSRP and not the price equivalent of a small car. So I may be biased...

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

#173

Post by LASR »

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?

Same reason why they are not an investment bank investing in stocks, or building skyscrapers in Dubai.

It's not their business. They've built over the many years, a very defensible business out of expertise (and IP). That expertise is unique and resilient to the whims of a speculative investor hive-mind.

More practically, they just wouldn't be able to compete. Against companies that build ASICs specifically for mining, the tech they have, while is viable for the small-time gamer-miner demographic, does not have good returns on a larger economies of scale.

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

#174

Post by _vertigo »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #157
_vertigo wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's honestly pretty surprising to me to see how many people on here are supporting this move. That's not what I would expect, I would expect people on HN to object to this move on principle. Maybe my prediction in where most HN commenters stand in principle on this issue is wrong, or just maybe, this is a rare example of a time when the principle (hardware should be free to run at their max capability, not deliberat…

I think it's hard to take the principled approach when you see that the result of sticking to principles results in large organizations enriching themselves while ignoring the myriad externalities. At least, it makes you re-evaluate your principles.

What, externalities like energy waste? If that's the case, why target ETH, isn't ETH going to Proof of Stake soon?[1] I admit I don't really know if what Nvidia is targeting applies to both pre-merge and post-merge ETH

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27194586

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

#175

Post by amelius »

warent wrote: post #129
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

Then why is Elon Musk trading Bitcoins? Tesla makes more money trading Bitcoin than selling cars.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/tesla-makes-more-money-trading-...

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

#176

Post by neither_color »

tshaddox wrote: post #47
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…

Don’t these hardware manufacturers already deliberately reduce the performance of some chips just so they can sell them for cheaper without actually developing and manufacturing an additional line of chips (i.e. price discrimination)? This doesn’t seem much different.

That's called binning but it's not as bad as it seems and it reduces waste. The way chips are manufactured all the high end and lower end variants come from the same process, but the company can only guarantee the performance of the higher binned ones.

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

#177

Post by Androider »

988747 wrote: post #158
valuearb wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because BTC is down 30% in the last month?

No one mines BTC on GPU, and Etherum is up 100% from two weeks ago. Ok, I understand that NVidia does not want to mine themselves, but why on Earth won't they just raise the prices to the level miners are willing to pay? "We want to sell to gamers, not miners" is the stupidest excuse ever. Isn't capitalism all about selling to the highest bidder? Why do they even care about who buys their product? EDIT: Also, think a…

They do, the mining specific cards are more expensive / hash rate. It's just market segmentation.

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

#178

Post by FinanceAnon »

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?

"In a gold rush - sell shovels."

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

#179

Post by standardUser »

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 find the energy used in crypto mining to be a crime against humanity and support reasonable efforts to curtail it. Until we price in the externalities of using fossil fuel energy, no one should be wasting energy on this scale for such a spectacularly nonessential purpose.

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

#180

Post by amelius »

fay59 wrote: post #167
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?

I absolutely despise cryptocurrency, so this may not be accurate, but my understanding is that they’re only reliable if many independent people mine. If NVIDIA kept all its GPUs and mined Bitcoin instead of selling them, it could control more than 50% of the hashing capacity. This could allow NVIDIA to double-spend bitcoins, the possibility of which would probably crash confidence in the asset.

They could start a bunch of subsidiary companies.
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