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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

#331

Post by just-ok »

tshaddox wrote: post #66
capableweb wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> refusing to even acknowledge or entertain criticism I'm not advocating for you not listen to criticism aimed towards your principle. But if your principle gets put to the test and you abandon it, it's no longer something you fundamentally agree on, it was some "light belief" that you had.

Replace “principle” with “scientific theory.” Why shouldn’t principles be subject to tests and criticism?

In the same way that a scientific theory was meaningless if it failed a test, a principle was meaningless if it needed to be adjusted when actually put to use.

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

#332

Post by m463 »

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…

I thought the miner cards were cheaper. They are set up for mining and don't have video out.

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

#333

Post by dlp211 »

bee_rider wrote: post #109
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The casual customer will still be buying GPUs 10 years from now. The bulk order GPU miners will stop ordering GPUs the minute mining becomes unprofitable. With proof-of-stake and ASICs on the horizon, this could happen rather abruptly. When miners are done with GPUs, they're going to unload them on the secondary market. The used GPU market is going to be flooded with GPUs that have been overclocked and run with the d…

And it is a pretty common complaint that companies sacrifice long-term interest for short term concerns. It is interesting to see a company apparently intentionally make the opposite decision (and have people still complain).

Isn't this true of any and every decision? There will always be people with different opinions, so when a decision is made, those on the "losing" side of that decision will complain.

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

#334

Post by diplodocusaur »

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?

How do you know they didn't?

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

#335

Post by flyinghamster »

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…

> Look at the GTX960, which launched at $150 in 2014, against the 3060 which launched at an MSRP of $330.

Looks like I'll be hanging on to my 960 for the foreseeable future, then. I'm not interested in mining, but I've started thinking a bit about playing with CUDA, and I'm suddenly a lot less interested if Nvidia might decided to gimp my work because I inadvertently did $FOO that is commonly done by miners.

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

#336

Post by nitrogen »

_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 use my GPU to render visualizations for my work and for educational YouTube videos. It's not just gaming, but even then, belittling gaming is kind of silly. Entertainment has value too, and that entertainment supports lots of actual people doing actual work.

And crypto itself is the biggest hit to general purpose computing outside of the walled garden world of phones. What computing can be done if crypto speculation consumes all available computing power?

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

#337

Post by babypuncher »

godelski wrote: post #306
outworlder wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> It was eye-opening to see Cyberpunk running almost perfectly on DAY ONE with the same performance as Windows. I'm looking at Cyberpunk right now (because it is on sale) and Steam says it is windows only. Most of my Steam library doesn't work on linux, what are you running differently? I'm only just getting back into games after a long hiatus.

Windows-only games can run on the Linux version of Steam using a feature built into the app called Steam Play, which allows games to be run on unsupported platforms using compatibility layers. Steam comes bundled with the Proton compatibility tool, a fork of Wine maintained by Valve. It has very high compatibility, as long as you aren't looking to play competitive multiplayer titles.

Here's a community maintained compatibility list: https://www.protondb.com/

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

#338

Post by mrb »

Deukhoofd wrote: post #286
savant_penguin wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that miners will simply workaround the downgrade software (as they did in the past) and regular consumers will be the only ones with crippled hardware

Reading the Nvidia announcement it's not a software upgrade, but a change in hardware. It only affects cards made after late May.

Nvidia did not say it will be a hardware limitation. In fact, they will almost certainly implement it in software. For example a "Lite Hash Rate" card will probably have a bit permanently set to 1 in the firmware/eeprom. The driver will read the bit, and arbitrarily enforce the restriction on such LHR card. This solves potential legal issues of retroactively crippling cards already out in the market, since only new cards sold from now on as "LHR models" will have the bit set to 1.

But miners will find another software hack (just like they did for the RTX 3060 earlier) to bypass the restriction.

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

#340

Post by munk-a »

Deukhoofd wrote: post #286
savant_penguin wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that miners will simply workaround the downgrade software (as they did in the past) and regular consumers will be the only ones with crippled hardware

Reading the Nvidia announcement it's not a software upgrade, but a change in hardware. It only affects cards made after late May.

I still think it's pretty likely we'll see a work around, but if that work around is a custom made firmware patch (like it was for the driver update they deployed IIRC) then that will probably mean the chips you purchased have a less rosy long term cost as future driver updates won't be applicable to your altered firmware. If it requires any physical tinkering with the chip then it definitely increases the effective cost by forcing a labour/card cost and opening up the possibility of expected chip defect as you break some proportion of the hardware you purchase in the process of fixing it.

That all said - yea some people are totally going to hack that or my name isn't 46 DC EA D3 17 FE 45 D8 09 23 EB 97 E4 95 64 10 D4 CD B2 C2.

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