Nvidia announces mining GPUs, cuts the hash rate of RTX-3060 in half • Hacker News Board

Re: Nvidia announces mining GPUs, cuts the hash rate of RTX-3060 in half

#221

Post by paulpan » Thu, Feb 18, 2021, 9:32 PM UTC

lxgr wrote: post #178

paulpan wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So true. Nvidia can't not know how resourceful cryptominers are - and to what lengths a miner will go to modify the firmware for even a few percentage point improvements. It'll just lead to a never-ending back and forth (will daily drivers become a thing?) until Nvidia decides it's not worth the effort. This just seems like a feeble gesture at appeasing gamers. What's interesting is that these "mining-crippling" chan…

Maybe there is some hardware enforcement involved? Also, retroactively capping functionality of a sold product seems like a PR and legal nightmare.

From the announcement it seems this is driver-side only, so a big nope.

Re: Nvidia announces mining GPUs, cuts the hash rate of RTX-3060 in half

#222

Post by unanswered » Thu, Feb 18, 2021, 9:33 PM UTC

A lot of comments are referring to hardware freedom to run what you want but I don't see anywhere in the article saying that you can't run whatever you want to on this hardware. It's just going to pretend to be slower hardware, not cut off capabilities. It seems entirely within Nvidia's moral rights to release a product that is not the best possible of all conceivable products; that's literally the point of the budget gpus anyway!

The behavior on display in this thread is highly reminiscent of the behavior of people demanding that open source authors do free work for them.

Re: Nvidia announces mining GPUs, cuts the hash rate of RTX-3060 in half

#223

Post by reilly3000 » Thu, Feb 18, 2021, 9:35 PM UTC

GPU supply is a huge problem, but this is a massively problematic solution. It likely won't even work; if it can be done w/ firmware, it will be reversed by firmware patches. I've been all through GPU firmware flashes in a quest to get both NVIDIA and AMD cards passed through to VMs w/ QEMU on Unraid, and I feel like this could be easily circumvented based on that experience.

Re: Nvidia announces mining GPUs, cuts the hash rate of RTX-3060 in half

#224

Post by TomVDB » Thu, Feb 18, 2021, 9:36 PM UTC

wtallis wrote: post #155

ChrisLomont wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Artificially limiting what you can and cannot do on your hardware is a bad precedent. Everything does it - from Intel chips being binned by performance, Windows versions and # of CPUs, and pretty much any big software products. Another way to see it is: it costs X to develop a line, and a vendor can charge everyone the same, no matter how they use it, or they can design and partition the line so users with different…

Binning chips for yield is different from artificially crippling chips. There's nothing wrong with taking an 8-core CPU with a defect in one core and selling it as a 6-core part, or underclocking it until all 8 cores are stable and selling it as a slower part. The odious part happens when fab defect rates drop and yield improves, so basically all the dies can function as 8-core chips. When that happens, Intel et al.…

> Product segmentation for software is also a different issue, because all the scarcity is artificial to begin with, with no natural underlying supply curves because there's no marginal cost to making another copy.

What you're saying is that due to some irrelevant production related factor, it's totally fine for a software company to price their product based on what the market is willing to pay, but as soon as a piece of hardware is involved, that principle doesn't apply anymore.

What about selling software that comes with a hardware copyright protection dongle? Under which category does that fall? The marginal cost of producing that dongle is not zero after all.

Re: Nvidia announces mining GPUs, cuts the hash rate of RTX-3060 in half

#225

Post by cat199 » Thu, Feb 18, 2021, 9:37 PM UTC

paulpan wrote: post #160

cybrexalpha wrote: post #9

Have nvidia lost their minds? It's going to take days for mining operations to reverse-engineer the driver and undo this. So commercial operations won't be affected at all. Worse, their detection isn't going to be 100% perfect. What if After Effects does something that looks "kind of" like mining. Is it just going to be crippled? What will nvidia do then? Suggest I buy a Quadro for AE support? This will only penalise…

So true. Nvidia can't not know how resourceful cryptominers are - and to what lengths a miner will go to modify the firmware for even a few percentage point improvements. It'll just lead to a never-ending back and forth (will daily drivers become a thing?) until Nvidia decides it's not worth the effort. This just seems like a feeble gesture at appeasing gamers. What's interesting is that these "mining-crippling" chan…

> This just seems like a feeble gesture at appeasing gamers.

Color me cynical, but this seems like a strong gesture at increasing margins on GPU computing by upselling using cryptocurrency and gamers as PR pawns/scapegoats

if Nvidia is selling more cards than they can produce/distribute at desired target prices they should produce more cards and improve their distribution networks..

Re: Nvidia announces mining GPUs, cuts the hash rate of RTX-3060 in half

#226

Post by TomVDB » Thu, Feb 18, 2021, 9:37 PM UTC

the-enterprise wrote: post #63

(1) Many gamers are miners in their spare time! (2) Big Mining operations actually write their own drivers (3) Huge Mining operations even use custom boards (4) I heard that that Nvidia has been selling silicon directly to the big boys ( https://wccftech.com/nvidia-allegedly-sold-175-million-worth... ) (5) With this action I expect its only the little guys getting removed from the game here (1) a huge benefit for the…

> (2) Big Mining operations actually write their own drivers

Strong claims require strong evidence.

Re: Nvidia announces mining GPUs, cuts the hash rate of RTX-3060 in half

#227

Post by Zenst » Thu, Feb 18, 2021, 9:42 PM UTC

Would be better if they just did specialised versions of their datacenter systems geared towards the issue and capitalise upon it for a win win around. However as a stop-gap solution that won't impact many, but some crypto miners - I can see what they are going for.

Re: Nvidia announces mining GPUs, cuts the hash rate of RTX-3060 in half

#228

Post by dumbfounder » Thu, Feb 18, 2021, 9:42 PM UTC

ralmidani wrote: post #50

I would normally be appalled by such an action, but the supply issues for RTX 30x0 cards are beyond ridiculous. Mining trashes the environment and, for the majority of crypto assets/volumes, does not provide genuinely valuable economic activity besides speculation (I say that as someone who has put thousands of dollars into crypto in the past). Why should people who want to try some ML/DL at home (maybe they even nee…

I think it absolutely makes sense for them to customize their products for the market they want to serve, even if it is artificial, that is their prerogative. But the product is just for gamers that want better games. I think it's funny that is the moral high road here.

Re: Nvidia announces mining GPUs, cuts the hash rate of RTX-3060 in half

#229

Post by pyr0hu » Thu, Feb 18, 2021, 9:42 PM UTC

kyriakos wrote: post #176

baybal2 wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even $2000 video cards are sold out I'm speechless

It doesn't surprise me. My 2yo GPU is selling in EU for double the price I originally bought it from the same retailer. Its the first time computer hardware is actually not depreciating but gaining value as it ages.

Same, bought a GTX1660 Super, and the price doubled since. It's madness what's happening on the GPU market.

Re: Nvidia announces mining GPUs, cuts the hash rate of RTX-3060 in half

#230

Post by gabereiser » Thu, Feb 18, 2021, 9:43 PM UTC

kyriakos wrote: post #176

baybal2 wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even $2000 video cards are sold out I'm speechless

It doesn't surprise me. My 2yo GPU is selling in EU for double the price I originally bought it from the same retailer. Its the first time computer hardware is actually not depreciating but gaining value as it ages.

A year ago I bought a RTX 3070 when I rebuilt my entertainment rig. I replaced a GTX1080 and got rid of it. I should have kept it and resold it. It's crazy and I wish there were two categories of cards. Mining cards and Gaming cards. Looks like NVidia feels the same and is making dedicated cards for the basement farmers.