Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Nvidia cripples cryptocurrency mining on RTX 3080 and 3070 cards

bleepingcomputer.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

421–430 of 818 posts

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

#421

Post by pizza234 »

coolspot wrote: post #219
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…

1) I have NVidia RTX 2060 in my Linux laptop (Lenovo Legion) and NVidia RTX 3070 in my Linux Ryzen desktop. Previously had 1060 in Intel Linux desktop. Zero issues.

I'm on the same boat, however, it's a bit unclear if parent is complaining [also] about their open source support. Their antagonistic position towards open source (AFAIK there's no comparison to AMDNvidia open source drives) is a big issue for me.

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

#422

Post by dr_zoidberg »

coolspot wrote: post #219
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…

1) I have NVidia RTX 2060 in my Linux laptop (Lenovo Legion) and NVidia RTX 3070 in my Linux Ryzen desktop. Previously had 1060 in Intel Linux desktop. Zero issues.

The driver you are using is a BLOB that comes from closed source. Many people who use Linux are against that, and would rather have open source drivers (which I think nvidia used to have but discontinued?).

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

#423

Post by slownews45 »

ajmurmann wrote: post #403
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…

Aren't scalpers only there because the product is clearly underpriced? Why not increase prices till the scalpers are gone or simply auction the GPUs off? That's clearly what the market is pointing at.

Absolutely - if they wanted they could make a killing (short term) and auction to Eth farms.

That said, they are trying to preserve market / mind share in the longer term with existing customers (gamers, AI/ML) and partners (OEMs etc). And those folks aren't ready to pay the crypto price point.

So they are giving up short term money (from auctions etc) for ideally long term market share.

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

#424

Post by shados »

ajmurmann wrote: post #403
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…

Aren't scalpers only there because the product is clearly underpriced? Why not increase prices till the scalpers are gone or simply auction the GPUs off? That's clearly what the market is pointing at.

Normally I'd agree (eg: I think limited concert tickets should simply be auctioned off).

This is a little trickier. You have a consumer grade product aimed at a mass market segment (gamers) being used as a glorified financial market device (crypto).

You could just sell it at whatever price people are willing to pay for (crypto) and make a big buck. You'd likely wreck the gaming industry in the process. If you feel the crypto market is there to stay forever and that it's your best bet as a manufacturer going forward, it could possibly be a good move.

If you think its a temporary fad though, that the gaming market has a larger long term return (if it's allowed to thrive), and that this setback, even if temporary, is harmful to your long term plan, then it's an issue. If you think that the gaming industry beyond the GPU market (eg: streaming grids) have value, and you want to foster those because it will make more money in the long run, then the current situation isn't looking so good.

What it looks like is a large public company thinking more than quarter to quarter for once. It's actually kind of confusing, but that's what it looks like to my untrained eyes.

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

#425

Post by krapht »

dijit wrote: post #389
eropple wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This can be just as easier, and probably more truthfully, read as "miners can no longer make the used market a minefield by selling overtaxed consumer cards without disclosing their provenance." Because, yeah, having ex-miner cards burn out is a pretty common thing on the used market. Great! Cryptocurrencies are not inherently good or valuable and cryptocurrency people aren't special and their world-burning habits an…

> Because, yeah, having ex-miner cards burn out is a pretty common thing on the used market. This is mostly a myth, miners cards are usually undervolted, and only a subset of the card is used. If your CPU only used it's floating point unit then it wouldn't be as intense as if you were using the whole thing. The only potential issue is thermal damage, but that's hard to place and has to be close to, or in excess of 90…

? My CPU actually underclocks itself if I am running a heavy AVX-512 workload. Actually, back when I had it in a cheaper motherboard, my system would crash because the MB couldn't deliver enough power to the CPU.

But I agree with the first sentence. Lots of miner cards are undervolted because what matters is performance per watt, just like many server cpus.

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

#426

Post by vehementi »

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…

No. Only the miners. All for this.

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

#427

Post by jhauris »

ajmurmann wrote: post #403
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…

Aren't scalpers only there because the product is clearly underpriced? Why not increase prices till the scalpers are gone or simply auction the GPUs off? That's clearly what the market is pointing at.

Short term they could make a lot of money that way, but then they may lose gamers who will likely still want gpus after miners no longer need them. It's not a one off transaction.

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

#428

Post by colejohnson66 »

ajmurmann wrote: post #403
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…

Aren't scalpers only there because the product is clearly underpriced? Why not increase prices till the scalpers are gone or simply auction the GPUs off? That's clearly what the market is pointing at.

Because the scalpers won’t go away. There will always be some poor sap willing to pay double market value for a scalped product.

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

#429

Post by judge2020 »

saurik wrote: post #151
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?

While having the cards is tablestakes, and newer cards can do more for less, in the end--even for Ethereum--you really still are spending more on electricity than hardware, and so you can have all the cards in the world and still not be able to mine crypto effectively. Most mining is thereby done in other places in the world where the externalities on power generation and use (clean or dirty, both) are less well trac…

Ethash is actually more profitable when underclocking and power limiting the card for max efficiency. With cheap electricity around $0.10/kWh this can mean $0.30 a day on $7 in profit.

a 3070 with an average 60 Mh/s: https://whattomine.com/coins/151-eth-ethash?hr=60&p=120&fee=...

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

#430

Post by tshaddox »

ALittleLight wrote: post #298
stale2002 wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Okay, so the end result is exactly the same for one of two groups: miners or gamers. Nvidia just gets to choose which group gets access to cards.
Post reply on HN