Nvidia cripples cryptocurrency mining on RTX 3080 and 3070 cards • Hacker News Board

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

#321

Post by babypuncher » Tue, May 18, 2021, 9:49 PM UTC

creato wrote: post #291

amelius wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think it's more that Nvidia knows datacenter customers have the money to pay a premium for "datacenter grade" products.

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

#322

Post by knz_ » Tue, May 18, 2021, 9:50 PM UTC

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…

> I'd dreading Nvidia crippling deep learning for all those not paying X more dollars (as the situation already is for server farms).

This already changed years ago when NVIDIA removed the last non-crippled double and half precision GPUs from their product lineup. The cheapest GPU you can buy for ML now is the titan v, which was $3000 at launch.

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

#323

Post by k12sosse » Tue, May 18, 2021, 9:51 PM UTC

luma wrote: post #140

akersten wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They are clearly marking the new models with a new suffix on the model number. As someone who has been trying for months to buy a 3080 and has zero interest in crypto, this is fantastic news... IFF it means I can actually purchase a card. This doesn't make me angry, and I don't think it should make you angry either.

I got mine after a 6 months wait on EVGA.com. Worth the wait. Best of luck

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

#324

Post by Corazoor » Tue, May 18, 2021, 9:51 PM UTC

I find the argument for this move unconvincing: Nvidias failure to meet demand is somehow the fault of... the customers? But since there are morally aprehensible workloads, it is totally fine to... throttle them? Not prevent or contractually prohibit, as one might expect... And of course it is Nvidia who decicdes on the morals of your workload.

I mean, seriously, how can anyone be ok with that?

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

#325

Post by bouncycastle » Tue, May 18, 2021, 9:51 PM UTC

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…

GPUs by definition are not general purpose computers. Remember the G in GPU stands for Graphics, not General.

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

#326

Post by pdimitar » Tue, May 18, 2021, 9:52 PM UTC

SXX wrote: post #295

pdimitar wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yep, that's what worries me. They are cautious for now but if they don't meet pushback (or a financial hit) they might get bolder and start applying more and more restrictions.

This is likely too paranoid for many but the technical possibility is there and believing in the good heart of a huge business is to me not a sound strategy.

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

#327

Post by munk-a » Tue, May 18, 2021, 9:52 PM UTC

knz_ wrote: post #304

Justsignedup wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> a) let's keep consumer grade stuff stable in price Consumer GPUs had far from a 'stable price' before the mining boom. GPUs have more than tripled in MSRP once you factor in that NVIDIA has moved lower-tier chips that previously only featured in their lowest end x50 and x60 tier GPUs up the stack and started selling them for $400+ MSRP. Look at the GTX960, which launched at $150 in 2014, against the 3060 which laun…

I don't know how you think that if GPUs were cheaper then miners would be buying less of them. Miners are a black hole for computing power - they can absorb near infinite amounts of processors since they know (or strongly believe at least) that they'll pay for themselves pretty quickly.

I think Nvidia has some problems and their chips should be cheaper - but if that were the case then this solution (splitting the markets into regular consumers and miners) would be even more necessary.

I also disagree with it being malicious, I think it's a perfectly reasonable decision to attribute to some pretty sane decisions around market preservation. We here know about miners eating up the GPU supply, but for the average consumer Nvidia is just hording their chips or they're idiots that didn't produce enough - no matter what the imagined reason they're the people between the average consumer and shiny ray tracing in minecraft.

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

#328

Post by ALittleLight » Tue, May 18, 2021, 9:52 PM UTC

tshaddox wrote: post #297

ALittleLight wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm not familiar with any definition of the word principle that includes the idea of "concise".

Principle as I'm using it here is a moral belief or guide. It's less a description of what you do and more an explanation for why you do what you do.

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

#329

Post by mrkramer » Tue, May 18, 2021, 9:52 PM UTC

kaldorf wrote: post #317

mrkramer wrote: post #256

Like I said for electricity, aren't you free to do with your GPU whatever you want?! This is anti-consumer they should be sued. Just like ISPs wanted to slow your traffic for services they don't like and didn't succeed hardware producers can not limit what you do with your purchased hardware.

Other people doing research etc. need GPUs . If rich people started to hoard all food or ffp masks, shops would intervene first (they did during the hoarding last year) and the government would follow if that wouldn't help.

I guess you are referring to the Tragedy of the Commons[0] but in the market efficient economy there should be enough producers(supply) to serve high aggregate demand. This action by NVIDIA only shows that GPU industry is highly concentrated and that more competition is needed. It seems like NVIDIA is a victim of its own success since it can not produce enough GPUs.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons

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

#330

Post by wpietri » Tue, May 18, 2021, 9:52 PM UTC

_vertigo wrote: post #145

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'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…

No principle exists in a vacuum. In practice, all are balanced against other principles.

Let's run with your "software should be free" as an example. Licenses like the GPL family apparently work against that, in that they add restrictions. But so-called "viral" licenses aim to maximize a different kind of freedom for a larger number of less powerful players. Some call this hypocritical, but it's just balancing principles while taking into account outcomes.

Another way to put it is that principles for most aren't religious commandments; they're mental tools to push the world toward a set of preferred results.