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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

#261

Post by bentcorner »

NazakiAid wrote: post #56

A major bad point with this is when the mining cards become obsolete, they won't be able to be used as a graphics card in a computer due to it not being able to output to a display. So realistically it will decrease avaliable graphic card supply to gamers in the future who are maybe looking for a cheap used graphics card (therefore pushing people to buy a new card instead). Short term fix, long term problem. I was th…

How big is the used market for graphics cards though? Common advice is to avoid buying used unless you also price in the risk that the card was used as a miner and hasn't been taken care of.

Aside from the recent drought of GPUs and pricing madness, you could buy low-end current-gen cards that could outperform higher-end previous-gen parts.

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

#262

Post by mrgordon »

542458 wrote: post #121
akersten wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The number of GPUs being produced may be constant but it’s lower than desired. The issue is Nvidia worked with Samsung to fab their chips this time around and Samsung had poor yields. Nvidia should have used TSMC like AMD and Apple but they tried to use Samsung and got burned on supply. They said they will use TSMC going forward but in the meantime there are shortages.

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

#263

Post by slownews45 »

joe_the_user wrote: post #169
slownews45 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I don't think this is "recognizing customers", I think this is just sectioning markets. I'd dreading Nvidia crippling deep learning for all those not paying X more dollars (as the situation already is for server farms). Long term, the aim has to be selling cards by usage rather than by cost of production (obvious with the aim of prices higher than the cost of production by different amounts). How many people like Ado…

Def doing it for themselves, I see it in this case as customer base preservation. Most of their other approaches have tried to move users off their lower end products. This time they are trying to preserve lower end product availability (smart).

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

#264

Post by saurik »

Scarblac wrote: post #258
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…

In an abstract sense, yes. But crypto with proof of work is such a huge energy wasting uselessness that any action against them is welcome. Besides if they don't, then their old markets will disappear because they can't get cards anymore and start doing other things, and then when crypto is made illegal or crashes for good, they suddenly lose their whole market.

But this isn't an action "against" mining: this is just so they can use DRM techniques to build the computational equivalent of a network neutrality violation to price discriminate a high value use case to their CMP HX line.

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

#265

Post by zaptrem »

lstamour wrote: post #235
akersten wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The e-Waste part is what should collectively anger us, but I'm glad you're able to buy your card.

What about the electricity cost for powering the card. Doesn’t that outweigh the e-waste part by a significant margin? Just because a card can’t be used by gamers doesn’t mean the card must be tossed, there are plenty of non-gaming uses such as AI. You’ll probably see an aftermarket for both types of cards. Also, like regular graphics cards, newer versions are highly prized so one might say that graphics cards as an…

I sold a very used GTX 1070 on eBay for $325 only three months ago.

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

#266

Post by xwdv »

chongli wrote: post #152
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?

Why mine gold when you could make a fortune selling shovels?

Why sell shovels when you can just buy shares in the company selling shovels?

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

#268

Post by slownews45 »

Justsignedup wrote: post #254
slownews45 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

To add on: none of it is malicious. its just the market stabalization problem a) let's keep consumer grade stuff stable in price b) let's charge miners 3x, because they willing to pay 3x, and destroy the scalping market which is VERY anti everything. Scalpers hurt literally everyone. c) let's not de-stabalize nvidia's income again when eth drops in value. They don't want to be beholden to a coin's gamble either. Basi…

nvidia could take advantage of eth craze in short run and auction cards or chips. They would make a ton more in short run. But crypto folks would be only customers (in short run) and rest of market would risk migrating away from them.

Crypto is very very frothy, so preserving some supply to bread and butter / ecosystem supporting sales makes a lot of sense to me.

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

#269

Post by istorical »

_vertigo wrote: post #182
thereare5lights wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I would expect people on HN to object to this move on principle. I cannot think of any principle that would cause me to object to this. Blind fealty to general purpose computing here conflicts with the very real world impact on non-crypto consumers. If we're being utilitarian, it seems to me that it would be obvious that this is a good move.

I mean, why are non-crypto consumers better than crypto ones from a utilitarian POV? (I play video games and dislike crypto - I'm just asking). I suppose that people do things other than gaming with 3080s, because I would be hard pressed to make a convincing argument that gaming is somehow so much more valuable of a hobby than mining crypto that it's worth the hit to general purpose computing to specifically ban cryp…

I think the missing factor here is that mining groups are sort of like neo-feudalists.

If crypto ends up becoming the de facto world currency, then mining groups that are already wealthy purchasing all available stock of GPUs to mine and further enrich themselves is sort of like if 70% of land was owned by wealthy nobles, and they used the profits from their land ownership to purchase all new land-producing/discovering capital and therefore become the owners of all new land coming onto the market. It's like the worst nightmare of those worried about income inequality. And it just so happens to affect retail consumers who just want "land" for other purposes than becoming richer.

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

#270

Post by Axien »

onethought wrote: post #131
shagie wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What if you're only mining with renewables? The issue isn't the "we're using renewable energy - see, this doesn't make things worse." It also doesn't make things better. Whats more, its increasing the consumption of energy which is at the core of the problem. It would have been even better to push that renewable energy out onto the grid (and also not increase the consumption of power for crypto mining). Switching a…

I mine on renewables and with 3000 series gpus. I didn’t want to do any of this, I ended up here because my energy retailer decided to tax me for exporting too much energy to the grid. So short of earthing the electricity, my solution was to burn it up in mining, and improve my solar roi. The 3000 series gpus are the most efficient hashes/watt. So actually by disabling this, you are driving people towards less effici…

Out of curiosity, has the mining yet payed for the rig/card?
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