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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

#501

Post by onethought »

icoder wrote: post #357
onethought wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Not really. I’m not sure I even believe the “grids weren’t designed for feed in” bs. Wires don’t care where the electrons come from, and they have no problem with me drawing the same load I feed in... so something doesn’t add up. But I’m no electrician... just cry a little at 7-10kw excess that i either have to pay to feed in or earth.

I don’t see anything I’m doing as a wrong. Literally just wasted energy... why not convert it to $?

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

#502

Post by paulmd »

Vrondi wrote: post #142
dorkwood wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could the price ever reach a point where you would say it infringes on the general public's freedom to purchase? Or are all prices simply greater and greater inconveniences?

No. There is no constitution of any nation which says you are owed the freedom to be guaranteed that a luxury good (like gaming graphics cards) will be available when you feel like buying it. Market scarcity of luxury goods has no infringement on anyone's freedom. Just like market availability of luxury cars or gold jewelry in no way infringes on anyone's freedom.

the beauty is that there's no constitution of any nation that says miners are entitled to cheap gaming GPUs for their farms either.

if NVIDIA wants to segment you out of the gaming market, that is their right as well. Free market cuts both ways - you are free to start up your own company and do it your way.

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

#503

Post by akelly »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #453
akelly wrote: post #441

This won't really do anything for availability or reducing scalper pricing. Miners are a sizeable proportion of sales but far from the majority. Gamers will be able to buy more of these GPUs but less of the non-LHR or AMD GPU's. GPU prices won't actually change. The real reason Nvidia is doing this is that when mining profitability inevitably drops, either because of a crypto price crash or Ethereum moving to Proof o…

> Nvidia is trying to get miners to buy mining-only cards I thought the non-LHR cards are fully featured?

They're not producing fully featured cards anymore. They're separating the market into RTX-LHR for gamers and CMP for miners.

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

#504

Post by paulmd »

neither_color wrote: post #77
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…

While I wholeheartedly agree that nvidia should do this, what bothers me is that they take functionality away without adding anything in or lowering the price. They are selling a "technically" inferior SKU for the same price.

> take functionality away without adding anything in

coincidentally they just announced official support for GPU passthrough on consumer gaming cards, very likely as an olive branch to prosumers to calm the outrage over this issue.

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

#505

Post by ALittleLight »

bscphil wrote: post #458
ALittleLight wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the choice was between restricting food - i.e making it less profitable to burn, to make it more available to the hungry and letting food be free and the hungry starve, then that's a pick between the best of two bad options. Clearly it's better to feed people than let food be unrestricted. In this case though the choice is between restricting hardware to give gamers more affordable GPUs. The benefit doesn't match…

You missed the (extremely good) point that istorical is making. The argument in this subthread has been over whether we should be mad at Nvidia on principle . For example, as capableweb puts it: > 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. Y…

No, I think I addressed that point directly. It is morally wrong, or against principle, in my view to do things that cause people to starve to death and to impose arbitrary limits on things. When the only possible choice is between two wrongs, letting people starve or limiting the combustibility of our food, we should pick the least-wrong of the two options - limit food combustibility in order to feed more of the starving.

This is not abandoning a principle but rather picking a higher principle to follow when two or more principles conflict. The point I was making is that we are not currently in this situation. We aren't starving people by denying them access to the latest and greatest graphics cards for cheap.

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

#506

Post by cle »

creato wrote: post #497
akelly wrote: post #441

This won't really do anything for availability or reducing scalper pricing. Miners are a sizeable proportion of sales but far from the majority. Gamers will be able to buy more of these GPUs but less of the non-LHR or AMD GPU's. GPU prices won't actually change. The real reason Nvidia is doing this is that when mining profitability inevitably drops, either because of a crypto price crash or Ethereum moving to Proof o…

One of the issues people have mentioned in this thread is that cards sold by miners are often burnt out or nearly burnt out. In that case, it seems like cutting off miners from the secondary market would be an improvement for the secondary market.

I don't know much about GPUs and am curious how this "burn out" happens, do you have a link for those of us who'd like to read more about this?

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

#507

Post by RhysU »

actually_a_dog wrote: post #469
akelly wrote: post #441

This won't really do anything for availability or reducing scalper pricing. Miners are a sizeable proportion of sales but far from the majority. Gamers will be able to buy more of these GPUs but less of the non-LHR or AMD GPU's. GPU prices won't actually change. The real reason Nvidia is doing this is that when mining profitability inevitably drops, either because of a crypto price crash or Ethereum moving to Proof o…

> The real reason Nvidia is doing this is that when mining profitability inevitably drops, either because of a crypto price crash or Ethereum moving to Proof of Stake, the miners will flood the used market and ruin Nvidia's profits for a few quarters. Nvidia is trying to get miners to buy mining-only cards, because those can't be sold to gamers down the line. They'd rather mining cards become e-waste in a few years t…

Someone learned from the Cisco hardware glut in the dot com crash!

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

#508

Post by didericis »

cletus wrote: post #490

I hope this is more successful than the last attempt (3060 Ti) where the "crippling" was just software and it was quickly circumvented, partly through NVidia's own screw up (they released a beta driver that didn't have that limitation). It's almost impossible to buy a GPU now. Anywhere you can occasionally buy them is heavily botted. Some sellers try and mitigate this eg Zotac has a queue system of questionable effec…

> Apologists will point to most crypto-mining using renewable energy. Yes, because hydro is the cheapest power. But all the hydro power use can actually limit the power and/or make it more expensive for everyone else.

As an admitted apologist, that's one of the weaker arguments. The most compelling to me is that power usage isn't properly compared to traditional banking. Sustaining all of the people and in person infrastructure required for traditional financial transactions requires more than just calculating the cost of transmitting the transaction. In fact those parts are comparatively cheap, it's the verification that's expensive, in both systems. All of the people employed in banks who play any kind of role have an enormous amount of cost associated with their employment. I'd like to see a comparison of heating and cooling costs for all of the banks in the world, which is just a small slice of the total cost of traditional banking, factored in to comparisons. The only one I've seen compared it to the computing cost for processing VISA transactions, which didn't seem like a proper comparison.

I'm also generally suspicious of some people (not everyone) who's gut instinct to environmental impact are limiting the spread of innovative and extremely useful ideas rather than looking at how to decrease the impact, particularly when those ideas help to decrease reliance on powerful central authorities. Proof of work is the innovation that allowed cryptocurrencies to scale to the level they are today, and it's precisely that work that allows them to operate securely despite being decentralized. Abandoning it because of the impact rather than reducing the impact would be like abandoning cars rather than making them electric and more efficient.

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

#509

Post by beckingz »

orangecat wrote: post #366
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…

Scalpers hurt literally everyone. They help people who are willing to pay the higher prices, and they provide a market signal encouraging producers to increase output.

The issue is that production is inelastic compared to demand, so scalping provides no additional value and creates higher prices by making demand seem even higher.

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

#510

Post by paulmd »

nickff wrote: post #86
tshaddox wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don’t these hardware manufacturers already deliberately reduce the performance of some chips just so they can sell them for cheaper without actually developing and manufacturing an additional line of chips (i.e. price discrimination)? This doesn’t seem much different.

De-rated units are usually chips that didn't perform as well as they could have. A variety of manufacturing discrepancies (defects) can cause excess heat dissipation or non-functional cores. Selecting what a given unit should be rated to (clocked at or enabled to do) is often known as 'binning', and is common throughout the electronics industry.

> De-rated units are usually chips that didn't perform as well as they could have

"usually" is not correct here. They are sometimes chips that didn't perform as well, but usually they are actually higher-tier chips that are artificially locked down to perform at lower levels.

AMD had over 80% of their Zen1 chips and over 70% of their Zen2 chiplets coming off the line with 8 fully functional cores. Yet they probably have 60% of their demand being 6-core or 12-core parts (2x 6-core chiplets). What do they do? Lock off 2 cores and sell 8-core parts as 6-core parts and 12-core parts.

It is nice that they have something to do with the chips that actually are broken, but most of them are just gimped for price discrimination and market segmentation.

https://wccftech.com/amd-zen-yields-80-all-8-cores-functiona...

https://www.guru3d.com/news-story/amd-zen-2-production-yield...

Same for the Phenom II X3 - almost all of those really had 4 functional cores and you could usually turn them back on. Why were they being sold as 3-cores? Price discrimination and market segmentation.

Or for a more recent example - the rumors of an impending 3080 Ti launch in January turned out to be true! Someone got a picture of the actual chips, with a big line through the 3080 Ti part number, re-marked with the part number for a 3090. NVIDIA decided to cancel the 3080 Ti launch, and sell the parts as 3090 - and those parts were actually 3090 tier parts that were being marked down and sold as 3080 Tis.

https://videocardz.com/newz/nvidia-quietly-remarking-geforce...

It is a reality in this industry that you are constantly being sold artificially gimped parts, because price discrimination is the financially optimal strategy. It's better to charge a price-insensitive customer way more, and to still have high-volume parts for price-sensitive customers, than to have insufficient inventory to supply price-sensitive customers, or to price everything "fairly" and lose the price-sensitive customers due to prices being too high. But due to the way yields and binning work (you don't want to have high-volume SKUs that are difficult to produce - you want high yields even in your top SKUs) you have the most parts available in the bins that have the lowest volume, and the lowest amount of (broken) parts available in the lower bins that you sell the most of.

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