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

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

#161

Post by earthtolazlo » Tue, May 18, 2021, 8:52 PM UTC

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.

Proof of work makes me angry. I have a difficult time getting too upset over any attempt to curtail it.

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

#162

Post by kevincox » Tue, May 18, 2021, 8:52 PM UTC

moogly wrote: post #68

Why only reduce them to half the performance? How about 0%. I predict this will do absolutely nothing for general availability of these cards.

Because halving the performance makes them unprofitable to run. If you buy one you can still try mining, and if it falsely detects mining your desktop won't crash, but professional miners won't be interested.

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

#163

Post by floil » Tue, May 18, 2021, 8:52 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…

It's not a whole new level. An aspect of Quadro differentiation has, since ages ago, been based on selectively disabling features that the consumer gpus silicon was capable of. It's the same strategy here.

This makes sense to Nvidia because it creates a segment differentiation and will allow them to charge more for the higher hash rate parts.

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

#164

Post by yellow_lead » Tue, May 18, 2021, 8:53 PM UTC

Alekhine wrote: post #23

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.

It'll be a good opportunity to see some nice hardware hacks, sure. But I'd guess serious miners don't really wanna deal with that shit and will just buy the miner-specific cards or use ASICs. This measure just raises the bar enough to make it a hassle.

Miners are already doing hacks like this, i.e ETHlargement pill (which alters memory timings on 1080/1080Ti cards to improve ETH mining).

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

#165

Post by caconym_ » Tue, May 18, 2021, 8:53 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…

My next GPU is going to be one that a) supports the features I want, and b) that I can actually go out and buy without putting hundreds or thousands of dollars into some economic parasite’s pocket. It’s not just “hard” to buy high-end GPUs right now—it’s impossible unless you make a lifestyle out of chasing them down.

If this has any effect on anybody who isn’t a crypto miner, it’s going to be to open up possibilities and/or save them money. I have trouble finding fault with that, and we’re surrounded by far more egregious erosions of our “right” to buy and use general-purpose computers.

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

#166

Post by TacticalCoder » Tue, May 18, 2021, 8:53 PM UTC

endgame wrote: post #126

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…

4) Crippling the ability to GPU passthrough (subpoint of (2), I suppose)

All I can say is that that company well deserved Linus Torvald's famous middle finger: "NVidia has been the single worst company we've ever dealt with, so NVidia F--- YOU!"

And they certainly haven't disappointed since back then.

Petty.

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

#167

Post by fay59 » Tue, May 18, 2021, 8:53 PM UTC

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?

I absolutely despise cryptocurrency, so this may not be accurate, but my understanding is that they’re only reliable if many independent people mine. If NVIDIA kept all its GPUs and mined Bitcoin instead of selling them, it could control more than 50% of the hashing capacity. This could allow NVIDIA to double-spend bitcoins, the possibility of which would probably crash confidence in the asset.

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

#168

Post by vladvasiliu » Tue, May 18, 2021, 8:54 PM UTC

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 suppose the "long term customers" for these GPUs are gamers, right? Don't they also come and go? I don't particularly follow this as I'm not really into games, but it seems to me that AMD has had quite an impressive growth recently. Does that mainly come from people new to the market? I'm actually a "new to the market" buyer, and I bought an AMD mostly because I'm mainly a Linux user and didn't want to take any chances with nvidia given the horror stories I've seen floating around these parts.

The issue with the GPU market is that since it's a duopoly, customers don't really have anywhere else to go. My impression is that people mostly bounce between the two. I'm not sure how many people have that much of a "brand loyalty", especially since this is the "enthusiast sector", so I guess people don't just buy whatever they find at the corner store.

To me, this looks more like market segmentation, the same way that you can't run virtualization on their consumer products, and you can't have ECC RAM on consumer intel chips. I really don't think they're doing this from the goodness of their hearts towards those poor gamers who are priced out of the market, but because they figured that miners would be ready to pay more. Which is pretty obvious, since scalpers are managing to sell those at outrageous prices, someone has to be buying them, right?

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

#169

Post by joe_the_user » Tue, May 18, 2021, 8:54 PM UTC

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 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 Adobe's creative suite? Student software versus professional software, etc.

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

#170

Post by patrickk » Tue, May 18, 2021, 8:55 PM UTC

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #78

varispeed wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the business case for prioritising casual non-tech customer over bulk order specialist customer?

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…

Actually GPUs used for mining are typically undervolted to keep power costs down, and by running them 24/7 there is less thermal expansion and contraction so they’re not expected to fail at higher rates than other GPUs.

Source: I used to mine ETH years ago on used AMD GPUs when that was still profitable. From perusing mining forums this is still standard practice. I eventually sold all the GPUs and all of them worked flawlessly.