Nvidia cripples cryptocurrency mining on RTX 3080 and 3070 cards

> "To help get GeForce GPUs in the hands of gamers, we announced in February that all GeForce RTX 3060 graphics cards shipped with a reduced Ethereum hash rate," Wuebbling added.

Is there any evidence that crypto mining plays a significant role in the ongoing hardware shortage? Any evidence at all? I see so many people complain about it, but I haven't seen any reason to believe crypto is one of the primary factors driving the shortage.

I don't mine or trade crypto. I acknowledge the many problems with current crypto offerings and have no interest in dealing with the tech until those problems get sorted out (if that ever even happens). But I inherently don't like the idea of a hardware company intentionally crippling general computing tech like this. And it's especially frustrating to see them try to spin it as a positive move for their customers.

The RX 6000 series was another huge step forward for AMD graphics hardware. Hopefully their 7000 series will be even more competitive. NVIDIA needs the pressure.

> Does this behavior anger anyone else on a deep level?

Yes. A lot of what has angered me about the situation is that there's these claims that these companies are going to help us as consumers but aren't actually doing anything that helps us. It is just show. They know it, we know it. So stop saying you're on our side and stabbing us in the back. As an example, look at NewEgg's product shuffle. It is a clear scam and actively helps miners. Microcenter, BestBuy, Amazon, and everyone else does the same thing but NE is the worst because the bundling with useless stuff.

You want to help consumers? I have 2 models for you:

1) Create a signup list (like EVGA, but just select the number, not this list for every variant). Send out cards as they come in.

2) Only sell cards once or twice a month and in large pools (many cards in stock). This way you have a reasonable quantity of cards to hand out for the high demand instead of the small quantity that bots are always going to get to first. It should take only basic statistics to understand this. If a bot has an 80% chance of getting a product first and a consumer 20% then we need a bigger pool to draw from, not more pools (with small number of cards). More (small) pools helps the bots and harms the consumers. Larger and less frequent pools results in a larger set of consumers getting the products.

With these two models you can better fight bots and stock doesn't need to be on the shelves for long periods of time.

Don’t be angry. Just try to understand it. It’s all we can ask.

The situation fascinates me. It's one heck of an expression of capitalist market forces. Gamers can't get computational capacity for their graphics, because the market-clearing price for computing is the value of the cryptocurrency that that GPU could be mining instead. Every pixel you calculate has an opportunity cost of that calculation's worth in cryptocurrency.

Nvidia wants to serve gamers over miners, presumably to establish and maintain brand loyalty for future purchases. If they can't increase supply, the only other way is to reduce miner demand. That's their goal; this limitation is just a technical detail of implementing that. Hardware segmenting to serve different markets has been a thing forever and I don't see any reason to call this out as any worse.

That said, I like that Nvidia and AMD are taking different approaches here. That's free market capitalism, let the invisible hand guide the outcome.

"GeForce Is Made for Gaming" Yea just like Microsoft Windows is made only for Internet Explorer and Microsoft Office. Piss off.