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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

#291

Post by creato »

amelius wrote: post #279
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…

Meanwhile, Nvidia doesn't allow you to use your graphics card in a datacenter/machine learning setup. You need a special license for that. https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/nvidia-updates-ge... So let's not pretend that Nvidia is acting in the interest of their clients at all times.

One could argue this is the exact same thing: protecting their long-time customers from a small number of big customers (datacenters) that can afford to dramatically out-price their gamer customers temporarily, but might disappear (if they develop their own hardware?) not too long from now.

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

#292

Post by arthurcolle »

knorker wrote: post #155
arthurcolle wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So earning income is less important than letting people play video games? Let's just say I'm unconvinced by this argument.

Would you say the same if you could mine bitcoin by buying up as much medicine as you could, and burning it? Because if you think the above behavior isn't "earning income" clearly better than "play video games", then your argument falls completely flat.

this is a total false equivalence. you’re really comparing computing hashes to buying medicine and destroying it?

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

#293

Post by nitrogen »

joshuahaglund wrote: post #224
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.

I'm personally angry that this whole crypto ponzi scheme has gotten so big. That miners are producing e-Waste is the least of its environmental impact.

Has anybody written about the opportunity cost to society of technological resources going to crypto mining instead of to consumers, creators, and scientists? I'd be interested in reading such an analysis of cost/benefit of crypto vs. creation with the limited supply of hardware and electricity.

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

#294

Post by ollien »

bentcorner wrote: post #261
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.

I don't have a citation for how massive the used market is, but I can tell you without a doubt that people in my circles buy used cards, and that I commonly heard it as advice to save a buck.

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

#295

Post by SXX »

pdimitar wrote: post #153
oh_sigh wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would them diminishing a certain aspect that you admittedly never planned on using in the first place affect your decision? Does your work involve computing millions of hashes, but isn't cryptocurrency?

No, my work doesn't involve that at all. It just sends the signal to me as a customer that they can limit what I do with something that I bought and is supposedly now mine. It's a slippery slope kind of situation where you don't know what else they might figure they'll want to limit in the future. I am not okay with that so I'll vote with my wallet.

Nvidia never applied those mining limitations rectoactivelyl they only announced for newer cards. Still they crippled VFIO capabilities with driver updates in past so they had bad track of record years ago.

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

#296

Post by clarkmoody »

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.

GPUs are no longer used to mine Bitcoin. They would lose lots of money trying.

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

#297

Post by tshaddox »

ALittleLight wrote: post #245
mdoms wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is nonsense. Principles should adapt to the context they're applied in. In principle I'm against big government intervention into our personal lives, but you bet your ass I'm in favour of lockdowns when thousands of lives are at stake. I'm not going to let thousands of my compatriots die out of principle.

This is just imprecise statement of principle. It's more like you're against the government intervening unless they're credibly doing it to save lives. If someone discovered how to turn a microwave into a nuclear bomb, presumably you'd support government intervention to collect all the microwaves, even if they had to intervene a lot in our lives. Likewise, you support government intervention to reduce covid deaths, e…

Sure, you could just say that your “principles” are simply the entire exact sequence of actions you take in your life. That way you could by definition never change or violate your principles.

But usually people use “principle” to refer to a relatively concise statement that can be applied to a large variety of situations.

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

#298

Post by ALittleLight »

stale2002 wrote: post #260
ALittleLight wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their intent is to limit what people can do with their hardware. That strikes me as almost morally wrong. I tell the computer what to do. It doesn't tell me what to do. I think cryptocurrency is a scam and I'll be glad if/when it goes away and graphics cards become cheap again. However, I will never support hardware manufacturers infringing on the idea of general purpose computing for the sake of their business model…

> Their intent is to limit what people can do with their hardware. Not really. The intent is to get graphics cards in the hands of gamers and professionals, instead of in the hands of crypto miners. That is the end goal here. If you have a better solution, of how to do this without people getting around it via reselling, ect , please suggest it.

My solution is not to do that. Make and sell the cards to the people who will buy them. If you're selling out make more and/or raise prices.

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

#299

Post by rocqua »

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?

Because in the long term, they probably can't rely on mining for income. And if they stop selling gpus for a while, they are going to destroy their customer base. Gamers will get angry, people who use CUDA will look for alternatives, enterprise supply chain managers will look for more reliable manufacturers (AMD).

Essentially, this move would wreck their basic business. And dropping that business for crypto is very risky. It is also probably not what investors would expect.

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

#300

Post by xur17 »

banana_giraffe wrote: post #191
ahD5zae7 wrote: post #172

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…

My understanding is there is a concern that cryptocurrency miners are buying GPUs, using them for a few weeks to determine which ones they can overclock, and selling the ones they can't (and have probably limited the life of in the process) since you can probably sell a 30 series GPU for more than you got it for, even if you're upfront about it being used. All of that isn't possible with the mining-focused line, so N…

I hadn't heard of this before - do you have a link or something with more details?
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