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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

#351

Post by babypuncher »

Siira wrote: post #81
optymizer wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I woke up early back on launch day in October 2020 to buy a 3080 when they said it would be available. Couldn't get one. Periodically I'd check newegg and other sites to see if the shortage is gone. Nope, on 05/18 it's still out of stock everywhere. Throwing $750 on a piece of hardware to play games shouldn't be this horrendous of an experience. I for one am glad nVidia is doing something about it.

They should just raise the prices. Supply and demand, you know?

That is essentially what they are doing, but in a way that doesn't burn their long-term customers (PC gamers). There will be crypto ready SKUs of these cards sold at a considerably higher margin.

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

#352

Post by just-ok »

UnFleshedOne wrote: post #229
capableweb wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"If we didn’t have such a dire X I would be upset on principle, but I see this as a move that’s supposed to help ..." What worth is a principle if you don't still have it when it get challenged? Then it's just a opinion, which is fine by itself and it's ok to change opinion, smart people do it all the time. But don't call it a principle. Unlikely that mining will disappear because NVIDIA limits a specific algoritm/cl…

How big is each of your principles (in terms of information complexity) that they cover significant enough number of all possible conditions and circumstances?

I’m sure plenty of people would agree to an absolute “I don’t steal” principle—one that covers a pretty significant number of conditions & circumstances-and yet not go back to the register when they accidentally walked out of the grocery store with something, or compromise it more significantly under stress of hunger. In this case, one could argue “I don’t steal” was never a principle they actually held.

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

#353

Post by Vespasian »

SXX wrote: post #276
Vespasian wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Either proof-of-stake or ASICs are gonna make GPU Ether mining rather short lived. Nvidia fears that all those customers will vanish over night.

They only fears that those consumers gonna sell their used hardware which gonna cause drop demand for GPU for a long time.

Well if the invisible hand off the market works in favour of me for once, I'm not gonna complain

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

#354

Post by jcheng »

Corazoor wrote: post #324

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?

I didn't see Nvidia weigh in on the morality of any workload, just like nerfing FP64 performance in their GeForce cards wasn't a statement on the morality of double-precision workloads. They're trying to steer cards towards a particular segment of the market, there can be a lot of reasons for that.

For example, they might believe that while selling to gamers is less lucrative than selling to miners in the short term, the gaming market will always exist while the mining market dries up the moment GPU mining is no longer profitable; so maintaining a good relationship with the gaming community is important for their long term health. Or maybe they're just tired of gamers yelling at them.

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

#355

Post by fuzzy2 »

edave64 wrote: post #215
Scoundreller wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Going to be a fun future game of cat-and-mouse as miners figure out how to disable/bypass nvidia’s electronic countermeasures.

Probably not much of a cat-and-mouse game. Once they can bypass it once, all they have to do is not update. Unless Nvidia is prepared to release new hardware revisions every time.

No new hardware revision needed. Just a new on-card BIOS requiring a newer driver with a more fine-tuned mining detection. Should be trivial for manufacturers.

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

#356

Post by bobviolier »

throwaway879 wrote: post #346

Using a made up but probably good enough analogy, if scientist created a blackhole in the lab that could end up sucking in the entire planet and the solar system, would it be OK for someone to jam the mechanism that sustains it? I think of PoW gambling casinos slash Ponzi schemes (Bitcoin) in the same way. If the governments don't have any motivation to stop the mayhem, then the company whose products are being used…

Note that unfortunately they actually have a set of cards that are better suited for crypto.. they just don't want you to use these.

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

#357

Post by icoder »

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…

This is a bit of a two wrongs don't make a right: the fact that your energy retailer is taxing you doesn't (by itself) make it 'right' to use that energy for mining.

Ofcourse I totally understand you do as you do, on an individual basis, but that just stresses the point that this can only be regulated at the group/population level.

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

#358

Post by lacker »

Corazoor wrote: post #324

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?

how can anyone be ok with that?

I don't want to mine cryptocurrency on my graphics card. So given the choice of buying an unrestricted one off ebay for $2500, or a restricted one for the originally suggested price of $800, I would rather buy the restricted one. Nvidia isn't being dishonest, they aren't throttling the cards they already sold, they aren't claiming anything is moral or immoral, they are just offering a new product that does exactly what I want for cheaper. So I'm certainly okay with it.

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

#359

Post by jacquesm »

NVidia has a supply problem. Imagine making something that is so popular that you continuously run out of stock for the people that you originally intended your product for. The normal solution would be to crank up production to the point where you can supply all of your customers. Might even get some better economies of scale out of it too.

This is the dumb way to deal with the problem. Besides the fact that it will get hacked it alienates a good chunk of their customers who would be happy to drop more $ if there were more product.

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

#360

Post by skjoldr »

akersten wrote: post #123
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…

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.

...Why would you toss a perfectly working piece of equipment that brings you profit? If anything, there is a second hand market for mining cards for those who want to set up a mining farm for cheaper with a bit more risk.
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