Nvidia Purposely Reducing Hash Rate for RTX 3060 GPUs, Creates Cryptocurrency Mining Processors (CMP)

Crypto is ITAR-regulated in the U.S. I don't think there's need to turn over the source or deliberately install any backdoors but it is considered a weapon for the purposes of export.
I don't deal with that part of ITAR (but have with others) but that would then make sense if it's what is mostly restricting it. When PGP was new however, this was definitely the case (backdoor or weaken it, no compromise). If it stayed within USA it should be okay.. same reason I couldn't buy a PVS-14 easily here for a very long time (even when it's now ancient tech) but the yanks could play with them all day long.

https://www.freeswan.org/freeswan_trees/freeswan-1.5/doc/exportlaws.html
Bit more on it there and it also sites EAR which is closely related with ITAR.
 
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Kudos to Linus for calling Nvidia out on this BS.
Yeah kudos for what he did, just like what he did when Nvidia did the whole Hardware Unboxed shenanigans... then went right on promoting Nvidia's products because that's the way things go. I mean FFS he managed to cram two of his own personal ads (aka "sponsors") into the video saying Nvidia only cares about your money.
 
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Yeah kudos for what he did, just like what he did when Nvidia did the whole Hardware Unboxed shenanigans... then went right on promoting Nvidia's products because that's the way things go. I mean FFS he managed to cram two of his own personal ads (aka "sponsors") into the video saying Nvidia only cares about your money.

What he should have done, blacklist Nvidia and essentially ruin his income? Don't be ridiculous, he has a rather large company with workers he has to pay salary. There is a difference between being honest, sticking to your ground calling out bullshit when he sees it and sacrificing everything for the sake of foolish pride and self-righteousness.

And sponsors are how they make money. This is still essentially a "Tech tip" video and not a personal vlog. Sponsors are how his company makes money.
 
Yeah kudos for what he did, just like what he did when Nvidia did the whole Hardware Unboxed shenanigans... then went right on promoting Nvidia's products because that's the way things go. I mean FFS he managed to cram two of his own personal ads (aka "sponsors") into the video saying Nvidia only cares about your money.
Haters gonna hate. He has to run and grow his own business too and with a business that basically revolves around 3 core hardware manufacturers (AMD, Intel, and Nvidia), I don't know how you'd expect them to blacklist Nvidia as a sponsor for any future content. I also don't see how that invalidates any of his criticisms.

Contrary to popular belief; you can be sponsored by a company and still be fair and objective in your criticisms towards them as LTT and many other tech reviewers do across YT and the web against all three aforementioned companies.. But I know it's cool to shit on LTT and most other major reviewers too just because they're the most successful ones and they couldn't have got that far of their own accord or earned it outside of shilling for corporate sponsorships. :rolleyes:
 
Just like what happen with the Nintendo 64. Many years, there were ways to bypass the PIF-CIC chip for bootleg games but the chip itself was not cracked till 2015 (might be off by a year or two).

almost 20 years is certainly well past the life time off the product (as far as Nintendo is concerned)
And the lockout chips from that era were trivial compared to what they do today. Cryptographic signing is highly secure, you just have to have a secure implementation. Now the implementation they have might not be secure, but they keep getting better as we learn from past mistakes. Each time a company does something like this and it gets broken the others go "Oh, ok, better not do that." Plus since the technology is used for lots of other things, code signing on PCs/Macs, certificate chains on the web, login authentication for CAC cards, etc, etc there has been a lot of learning done.
 
So when they gimp them to suck at photoshop.... or gimp them for use in Blender... to sell more expensive quadros or some new creator card. Your going to defend them right ? How about game streaming ? not a major feature for 99% of users... but so many crappy twich users with 3 followers eating stock... perhaps they should gimp that and sell a streaming extreme version, help stock and solve the flood of fat dudes twitching right ?

How does that famous Niemöller poem go again ? lol
Sounds like market segmentation- I say good on them for maximizing profit.
 
So everyone disputing me on the first page for saying this was big news was very wrong in under a week:
1) This operates at firmware + driver level, so no it's not going to be easy to hack https://twitter.com/bdelrizzo/status/1362619264423747590?s=20
2) The existing GPU's in production, such as 3070/80/90 may be re-released (even already) (new SKU's) will potentially now have this as well. https://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDI...n-current-SKUs-to-be-phased-out.522945.0.html

;)

Anything to get away from wasteful mining coins. If it's going to be a hype train go to XRP or something that isn't wasting natural resources to exist.
 
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Kudos to Linus for calling Nvidia out on this BS.



I don't see how Nvidia can claim that producing these CMP cards will not cut into the Geforce card production; there's no way they're standing up additional facilities or lines for these CMP cards. And I def agree that it's highly wasteful since these cards will be useless and worth nothing after the next crash. So they should def just focus on making as much Geforce cards as possible so that when the crash does happen, the cards are still useful and worth something to the gamers who want them.

Nvidia is trying to avoid the same problems they had with the last Bitcoin boom, and that's flooding the market with GPU's that will inevitably be displaced by ASIC's and therefore flood the market with discount graphic cards. That's one of the reasons why the GTX 1060 is still one of the most popular GPU's, and the same goes for the RX 480/580. Nvidia doesn't want miners selling their cards to gamers for a discounted price. Which is evil since Nvidia is controlling what you do with your GPU. This is the reason why the RTX 3060 is handicapped for crypto mining, so that miners buy the GPU without the HDMI or Display Port connectors. No gamer is going to buy a GPU that doesn't display anything.

This is why you should want good working open source drivers for Nvidia cards because you'd have more control over your GPU. Linus was right... both Linus's I mean. You know what I mean.
Linus-Torvalds-Fuck-You-Nvidia.jpg
 
Nvidia is trying to avoid the same problems they had with the last Bitcoin boom, and that's flooding the market with GPU's that will inevitably be displaced by ASIC's and therefore flood the market with discount graphic cards. That's one of the reasons why the GTX 1060 is still one of the most popular GPU's, and the same goes for the RX 480/580. Nvidia doesn't want miners selling their cards to gamers for a discounted price. Which is evil since Nvidia is controlling what you do with your GPU. This is the reason why the RTX 3060 is handicapped for crypto mining, so that miners buy the GPU without the HDMI or Display Port connectors. No gamer is going to buy a GPU that doesn't display anything.

This is why you should want good working open source drivers for Nvidia cards because you'd have more control over your GPU. Linus was right... both Linus's I mean. You know what I mean.
View attachment 331671
Indeed, the last crypto "crash" (re: used market flood) coincided with the 20 series release. It was perfect timing for people (not perfect for Nvidia) to grab 10 series cards and ignore the 20 series altogether. Related, I also believe this is why Nvidia is gimping VRAM on the 30 series, to prevent people skipping the 40 series when the time comes... You'll have to upgrade for that sweet, sweet VRAM.

I guess this is what happens when node improvements stall, and each new generation is barely better than the last... They have to start imposing as many roadblocks as possible to encourage people to upgrade. Curious to see if Nvidia refreshes the other 30 series cards soon, to impose the new restrictions.
 
Kudos to Linus for calling Nvidia out on this BS.



I don't see how Nvidia can claim that producing these CMP cards will not cut into the Geforce card production; there's no way they're standing up additional facilities or lines for these CMP cards. And I def agree that it's highly wasteful since these cards will be useless and worth nothing after the next crash. So they should def just focus on making as much Geforce cards as possible so that when the crash does happen, the cards are still useful and worth something to the gamers who want them.


Linus is doing what any good CEO does. Making product that will appeal to his viewers. That is his ultimate goal as a companies' CEO, profit. (See what I did there)

LOL.

Maybe he believes some of what he is saying, but parts seem disingenuous and/or misinformed, and some misleading.

He says "even car manufacturers are suffering..." and somehow equates this to nVidia? The car manufacturers problems are of their own making, at least partially. The ridiculous demand for chips of course contributes. But car manufacturers gave up their fab time, and the fabs sold that capacity to sony/microsoft/AMD/nVidia/Apple.

Because a mining card can't be used for gaming, in the future it will have 0 value because a gamer can't buy it?? So he WANTS miners to buy gaming cards??!? This is better because in 3 or 4 years YOU the gamer get to buy these old cards... umm, no thanks. Gonna call bullshit on that one. While I agree that mining cards are perfectly good for gaming once the miner stops using them to mine (they undervolt them for energy saving), the assumption the card is worthless is I believe inaccurate. To the casual miner, he is correct. Guess what, the casual miner isn't going to be buying the mining specific cards... Nor are gamers who also mine. Professional miners will be buying them. And they find ways to keep mining even when the bubbles burst. Burst bubble means all of the casual and miner/gamers stop mining. It's all part of the cycle, and them stopping is good for the professional miner. The professional miner keeps on mining... by this point the card is 100% paid for, so as long as the cost in electricity is less than the mining profit, they are sure as hell going to keep on mining. This is why I believe his statement about their value being 0 in 2 years is wrong. Mining is so insanely profitable, it is going to happen no matter WTF you, me, or nVidia does. And these parts could have a 5+ year lifespan as a mining part. When it comes to computing, that is a good rather typical lifespan.
...
Because something in the Phenom II days could be hacked/unlocked, mining cards will also be? Remains to be seen. Other posters have mentioned that nVidias' drivers and bios have not been hacked since (or might have been before) Pascal. If this is true, Linus doesn't know what he is talking about. Making a comparison to a cpu that launched in 2007.. The nVidia part he says something about unlocking was a GTX 465, this is from 2010, so also pretty old example. But the point he is trying to make is that eventually, good gaming GPU's will be put into the mining only cards. In a normal, healthily supplied market, this happens. In this undersupplied market, where nVidia is selling every single 3090 they can make, they are not going to be taking a 3090 chip and using it as a 3080, because they can sell it for more as a 3090. All chip manufacturers these days laser off parts of the chips not meant to be used (assuming it was a better chip than it is being sold as) to prevent those old unlock examples from ever being possible again.

Think about this from a profitability standpoint, if nVidia can sell a 3080 gpu to a miner for more than they can to a gamer, chances are they will. IF those sell for more (no idea the pricing), then this could happen. *Outrage!* The company is going after profits and not catering to ME?!?! It's fucking lol if he, you, or anyone expects that a company "owes" you something. "But they did all of this R&D from profits off product sold to gamers" How does that entitle me to a 3090? I've said previously that I believe the mining market is the equivalent of "frosting" to nVdia, not the main course. I still believe this to be true. nVidia knows the mining market is cyclical. If they can sell to miners at a higher profit, they probably should, at least in the short term, otherwise they miss the opportunity before the next bubble bursts. I don't like it, but I think that thinking that they owe me something is absurd.

Next he goes on about e-waste.. umm LOL?? Look at cellphones Linus, far more e-waste than mining cards. Really, a ridiculous and stupid argument. IT'S ALL E-WASTE EVENTUALLY... unless you are me, who still has a Geforce 3 Ti 500, a Geforce2MX, ATI Mach 64 (list goes on)... I've only sold 2 cards, a Riva TNT (as part of a whole computer), and Geforce GTX 580 because that was all they could afford and because I had 2, my first time trying SLI.

And now our sponser, mens grooming and body trimmers... yeah, this video was solely made because he cares about gamers.

... Mining only cards will have shit resell. ...
Now, this is second hand information, I am not a miner, but someone in the twitch channel where we watch for stock drops said he is mining with a single 3080, gets 80Mh (whatever the metric is), and is making $360 a month doing it. Mining only cards, miners will not be competing against gamers for stock. Miners are going to want mining only cards even IF they can't be resold in a few years because they will be AVAILABLE, and chances are they can still be sold for something.. and I think dedicated mining operations can get more than 2 years out of a card... When the bubble bursts, just stop investing in new hardware, and earn the profit on the cards you own. Should stretch out a cards mining life to 4 years if the bubbles are every 3. The 3080 (gaming card's) are selling for over $1000.. lets pretend we know the price of the equivalent mining only card, let's assume $1000 for a mining only 3080. Even at this price for a mining only card, it is going to pay for itself in less than 4 months... then it's all profit minus the ~$30 a month in electricity. Are they really going to care that the resell value in 2 years is only $200 vs say $400 if it was a video card? Seems doubtful that if I can spend $1000 now + $30 a month in electricity to make $6920 profits in 2 years, worrying about + or - $200 is a moot point.
 
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Also, you'd be surprised what people would buy on ebay. I've made hundreds of dollars on broken PC parts, miners can still sell old mining only cards if they want.

I do agree with Linus that it hurts gamers looking to buy old used cards on the cheap. Modern GPUs are built to last, and if they are well maintained (undervolting, etc.) then they can certainly still be good years and years after being mined.
 
This is why you should want good working open source drivers for Nvidia cards because you'd have more control over your GPU. Linus was right... both Linus's I mean. You know what I mean.
Not really, considering this is done at the firmware level and driver level, and they both sync.
 
Good point I guess if they can't fill their vacant slots with anything better.... it beats having an empty slot. lol I'm sure most miners are still after those 3080s anyway.... I am not sure the 3060 is going to be a big miner draw anyway. I mean the 3080 is still making 50-60% more.... and without a doubt the resell on the 3080s will be good for a solid year if they can't find a better card to slot in their mining hole.

3060 for miners seems like what you buy if you really can't land a better card. I am sure they see Nvidias move for what it is... and I'm sure as long as they can keep snagging 3080s they don't care what Nvidia does with the 60s.
3060ti has the best bang for buck after accounting for the power draw. It's more profitable per wattage unit.

Anyway my 2070s is currently mining at $30-40/wk...
 
Related, I also believe this is why Nvidia is gimping VRAM on the 30 series, to prevent people skipping the 40 series when the time comes... You'll have to upgrade for that sweet, sweet VRAM.
It maybe that reason because I know the last Bitcoin boom was the result of Ethereum which really liked having a lot of memory. Which might explain why Nvidia was caught with their pants down compared to AMD's 16GB of VRAM, and also why a RTX 3060 Ti has more VRAM compared to the 3070 and 3080.
I guess this is what happens when node improvements stall, and each new generation is barely better than the last... They have to start imposing as many roadblocks as possible to encourage people to upgrade. Curious to see if Nvidia refreshes the other 30 series cards soon, to impose the new restrictions.
I believe this is what happens when Nvidia prices themselves out of the market. Most people can't afford more than $250 for a GPU, and the RTX 20 series was all above $350. Nvidia's sub $300 cards like the GTX 1650 and 1660 were barely faster than the GTX 1060. This is why the RTX 20 series barely shows up on Steam's hardware survey. That and most games are still built around the PS4 and the GTX 1060 will easily do 1080p 60fps.

Node improvements haven't stalled since the RTX 30 series is built on 8nm while AMD is using 7nm and Apple is using 5nm. Some cell phone manufacturers are using 3nm. The problem is for Nvidia to use these manufacturing processes is they would need to pay more money. Hence why Nvidia went with Samsung compared to TSMC, because they're cheaper.

He says "even car manufacturers are suffering..." and somehow equates this to nVidia? The car manufacturers problems are of their own making, at least partially. The ridiculous demand for chips of course contributes. But car manufacturers gave up their fab time, and the fabs sold that capacity to sony/microsoft/AMD/nVidia/Apple.
He means that chip manufacturing is so tight that producing a GPU for miners is a huge waste. So tight that car manufacturers are suffering.
Because a mining card can't be used for gaming, in the future it will have 0 value because a gamer can't buy it?? So he WANTS miners to buy gaming cards??!?
We aren't stupid. Nvidia doesn't make mining GPU's. I guarantee you that Nvidia is using the same chip for their mining cards as they use for the RTX 3060. Same GPU, same card, but different bios and driver. And of course missing video outputs because fuck you gamers.
This is better because in 3 or 4 years YOU the gamer get to buy these old cards... umm, no thanks.
For the past 10 years most of my GPU's have been mining cards after Bitcoin flops. My current Vega 56 was an old mining card. My old and still use Radeon HD 7850 was an old mining card. RX 470 that I bought for my nephew was an old mining card. All still works just fine.
Because something in the Phenom II days could be hacked/unlocked, mining cards will also be? Remains to be seen. Other posters have mentioned that nVidias' drivers and bios have not been hacked since (or might have been before) Pascal.
Yea and those posters have been wrong. Even Linus did a video a few years ago where they took a mining card and used modified drivers to mine on it. A GTX 1060 a Pascal card. He's made a video about this twice.

Think about this from a profitability standpoint, if nVidia can sell a 3080 gpu to a miner for more than they can to a gamer, chances are they will. IF those sell for more (no idea the pricing), then this could happen. *Outrage!* The company is going after profits and not catering to ME?!?! It's fucking lol if he, you, or anyone expects that a company "owes" you something.
Firstly they do owe me lots of tendies, and second you've got this wrong. Nvidia can sell to whoever but the problem isn't they're selling a 3080 to a miner but they're selling a 3080 Mining Edition to miners that can't be used for gaming. Once these are out performed by ASIC miners then they either get sold to other miners or end up in the trash. They don't end up for resale to gamers because Nvidia is blocking gamers from using them. Miners won't buy a RTX 3060 because Nvidia is handicapping them from mining on them.
 
It's a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation. nVidia can't control what you do with your card much beyond what they are doing with mining only cards. Mining is here to stay whether we like it or not. If they are saving chips from the trash to satisfy some small portion of demand, they should. This is also smart business wise as it means more profits.

The whole "hacked drivers" thing... the output is sent to onboard video. It's a kludgy fucking mess, if you want to dick with that, be my guest. But this doesn't mean that those chips used were usable as a GPU on a gaming card. A DIFFERENT CARD is used to generate the display output, the onboard video in this case. The chip used on that mining card could have had a damaged spot in the silicon that is required to run the display output. Does no one else get this??? The chip can't be used as a gaming GPU, it might as well be a mining part instead because at least it satisfies some of the demand. And if the display driver can be tricked again as he so vehemently claims, then this SAME SCENARIO will play out again with these 3000 series mining cards, meaning his point is completely wrong and gamers WILL be using these mining only cards eventually....

Fucking lol... he is putting on a performance for his viewers, most of you just eat it without looking at what is in it. It is his job to manipulate you.
 
If they are saving chips from the trash to satisfy some small portion of demand, they should. This is also smart business wise as it means more profits.
Who said they were saving chips from the trash?
The whole "hacked drivers" thing... the output is sent to onboard video. It's a kludgy fucking mess, if you want to dick with that, be my guest.
It's still a hacked driver and still got a mining card working.
But this doesn't mean that those chips used were usable as a GPU on a gaming card.
Where you getting this information from?
A DIFFERENT CARD is used to generate the display output, the onboard video in this case. The chip used on that mining card could have had a damaged spot in the silicon that is required to run the display output. Does no one else get this???
Again, where you getting this information from?

The chip can't be used as a gaming GPU, it might as well be a mining part instead because at least it satisfies some of the demand.
Seriously, where you getting this info from? You work for Nvidia or something?
And if the display driver can be tricked again as he so vehemently claims, then this SAME SCENARIO will play out again with these 3000 series mining cards, meaning his point is completely wrong and gamers WILL be using these mining only cards eventually....
Yea but we'll be fighting Nvidia the whole time with driver updates. Nvidia is the problem here.
 
I'm buying the GPU for gaming only, dont mind them gimping it for mining. but let's be real, that still not gonna deter scalpers and miner to get the whole stock. The only real thing that would reduce the demand from miners are when the crypto currency crashes.
 
Linus is doing what any good CEO does. Making product that will appeal to his viewers. That is his ultimate goal as a companies' CEO, profit. (See what I did there)

LOL.

Maybe he believes some of what he is saying, but parts seem disingenuous and/or misinformed, and some misleading.

He says "even car manufacturers are suffering..." and somehow equates this to nVidia? The car manufacturers problems are of their own making, at least partially. The ridiculous demand for chips of course contributes. But car manufacturers gave up their fab time, and the fabs sold that capacity to sony/microsoft/AMD/nVidia/Apple.

Because a mining card can't be used for gaming, in the future it will have 0 value because a gamer can't buy it?? So he WANTS miners to buy gaming cards??!? This is better because in 3 or 4 years YOU the gamer get to buy these old cards... umm, no thanks. Gonna call bullshit on that one. While I agree that mining cards are perfectly good for gaming once the miner stops using them to mine (they undervolt them for energy saving), the assumption the card is worthless is I believe inaccurate. To the casual miner, he is correct. Guess what, the casual miner isn't going to be buying the mining specific cards... Nor are gamers who also mine. Professional miners will be buying them. And they find ways to keep mining even when the bubbles burst. Burst bubble means all of the casual and miner/gamers stop mining. It's all part of the cycle, and them stopping is good for the professional miner. The professional miner keeps on mining... by this point the card is 100% paid for, so as long as the cost in electricity is less than the mining profit, they are sure as hell going to keep on mining. This is why I believe his statement about their value being 0 in 2 years is wrong. Mining is so insanely profitable, it is going to happen no matter WTF you, me, or nVidia does. And these parts could have a 5+ year lifespan as a mining part. When it comes to computing, that is a good rather typical lifespan.
...
Because something in the Phenom II days could be hacked/unlocked, mining cards will also be? Remains to be seen. Other posters have mentioned that nVidias' drivers and bios have not been hacked since (or might have been before) Pascal. If this is true, Linus doesn't know what he is talking about. Making a comparison to a cpu that launched in 2007.. The nVidia part he says something about unlocking was a GTX 465, this is from 2010, so also pretty old example. But the point he is trying to make is that eventually, good gaming GPU's will be put into the mining only cards. In a normal, healthily supplied market, this happens. In this undersupplied market, where nVidia is selling every single 3090 they can make, they are not going to be taking a 3090 chip and using it as a 3080, because they can sell it for more as a 3090. All chip manufacturers these days laser off parts of the chips not meant to be used (assuming it was a better chip than it is being sold as) to prevent those old unlock examples from ever being possible again.

Think about this from a profitability standpoint, if nVidia can sell a 3080 gpu to a miner for more than they can to a gamer, chances are they will. IF those sell for more (no idea the pricing), then this could happen. *Outrage!* The company is going after profits and not catering to ME?!?! It's fucking lol if he, you, or anyone expects that a company "owes" you something. "But they did all of this R&D from profits off product sold to gamers" How does that entitle me to a 3090? I've said previously that I believe the mining market is the equivalent of "frosting" to nVdia, not the main course. I still believe this to be true. nVidia knows the mining market is cyclical. If they can sell to miners at a higher profit, they probably should, at least in the short term, otherwise they miss the opportunity before the next bubble bursts. I don't like it, but I think that thinking that they owe me something is absurd.

Next he goes on about e-waste.. umm LOL?? Look at cellphones Linus, far more e-waste than mining cards. Really, a ridiculous and stupid argument. IT'S ALL E-WASTE EVENTUALLY... unless you are me, who still has a Geforce 3 Ti 500, a Geforce2MX, ATI Mach 64 (list goes on)... I've only sold 2 cards, a Riva TNT (as part of a whole computer), and Geforce GTX 580 because that was all they could afford and because I had 2, my first time trying SLI.

And now our sponser, mens grooming and body trimmers... yeah, this video was solely made because he cares about gamers.


Now, this is second hand information, I am not a miner, but someone in the twitch channel where we watch for stock drops said he is mining with a single 3080, gets 80Mh (whatever the metric is), and is making $360 a month doing it. Mining only cards, miners will not be competing against gamers for stock. Miners are going to want mining only cards even IF they can't be resold in a few years because they will be AVAILABLE, and chances are they can still be sold for something.. and I think dedicated mining operations can get more than 2 years out of a card... When the bubble bursts, just stop investing in new hardware, and earn the profit on the cards you own. Should stretch out a cards mining life to 4 years if the bubbles are every 3. The 3080 (gaming card's) are selling for over $1000.. lets pretend we know the price of the equivalent mining only card, let's assume $1000 for a mining only 3080. Even at this price for a mining only card, it is going to pay for itself in less than 4 months... then it's all profit minus the ~$30 a month in electricity. Are they really going to care that the resell value in 2 years is only $200 vs say $400 if it was a video card? Seems doubtful that if I can spend $1000 now + $30 a month in electricity to make $6920 profits in 2 years, worrying about + or - $200 is a moot point.
Yeah, I don't need the whole story. Tell it to Linus. I watched the video. He is correct.
 
Linus is cool, but he is just an opinion, of which I partially agree that's in part done for PR, but that's not at all the full story. The impact of this effect is real and will be felt. PR or not, that is true, thus, PR point is moot and mostly not as important in the end. People (miners, mostly) will skip buying these SKU's, because of what they did for some reason or another; may not be everyone, and it may end up being hacked, but there will be LESS people buying the card because of what NVIDIA did, thus, in the end, it is more impactful than just meaningless PR. Sorry Linus, you're not all the way right.

Every single company's actions to get you to buy a product is literally PR. Doesn't mean it's a bad thing; in this case, it will have a cause and effect outside of that. Don't get lost from that motif.
 
Does this mean its a bad time to consider mining?
I was thinking of mining to pay for an over-priced card
ponzi coin prices are way too volatile to make a go/no go decision based on a days activity. Of note, they've recovered about 1/3rd of todays early morning drop, fell back to the earlier nadir, and then bounced back to ~1/3rd recovery already. If they spend the next week or two steadily going into the toilet mining for your cards cost might be a bust; but there's no way to predict what will happen between then and now. (And remember you'll need several months of good returns to pay off a card.) 🙄
 
I logged into Coinbase for the first time since 2018, and there was $777 dollars worth of ETH waiting for me (seems like a lucky number). That was just left over change.

Guess I had forgot about that from when I was mining in the last boom. Did some calculation and the ETH I sold back then for $4K would have been worth $27K USD if I had held. Oh well.

But I think it's too late to get into it from a consumer perspective. You have to be mining for the long term, if you get in now and it crashes, you will be out a bunch of money with no way to recoup unless you hold out for the next boom.
 
ponzi coin prices are way too volatile to make a go/no go decision based on a days activity. Of note, they've recovered about 1/3rd of todays early morning drop, fell back to the earlier nadir, and then bounced back to ~1/3rd recovery already. If they spend the next week or two steadily going into the toilet mining for your cards cost might be a bust; but there's no way to predict what will happen between then and now. (And remember you'll need several months of good returns to pay off a card.) 🙄
I can send the card back or sel it, or use it to mine. I cant afford to keep it and not make it earn its keep though!
I logged into Coinbase for the first time since 2018, and there was $777 dollars worth of ETH waiting for me (seems like a lucky number). That was just left over change.

Guess I had forgot about that from when I was mining in the last boom. Did some calculation and the ETH I sold back then for $4K would have been worth $27K USD if I had held. Oh well.

But I think it's too late to get into it from a consumer perspective. You have to be mining for the long term, if you get in now and it crashes, you will be out a bunch of money with no way to recoup unless you hold out for the next boom.
That sux about the value, but $777 now is still nice to find in there!
 
What card do you have? I think selling on ebay (if you don't need it) would probably be a better short term move than mining. Just put for 1 cent no reserve, you'll get a lot of action.

At least you get the money upfront. With mining you'd have to mine for several months to break even, and there is no telling what the value will be tomorrow, let alone 6 months down the line.

Also, electricity is a big factor. For 1 GPU it's not so bad. I had a 6 GPU rig at one point (GTX 1060s) and my electric bill in the height of summer was $400 a month. I still made out okay in the end, but it totally ate most of my profits (and I was losing money when it crashed so I sold the parts).
 
What card do you have? I think selling on ebay (if you don't need it) would probably be a better short term move than mining. Just put for 1 cent no reserve, you'll get a lot of action.

At least you get the money upfront. With mining you'd have to mine for several months to break even, and there is no telling what the value will be tomorrow, let alone 6 months down the line.

Also, electricity is a big factor. For 1 GPU it's not so bad. I had a 6 GPU rig at one point (GTX 1060s) and my electric bill in the height of summer was $400 a month. I still made out okay in the end, but it totally ate most of my profits (and I was losing money when it crashed so I sold the parts).
Sapphire RX 6800 Nitro
I pair $929+tx for $1001 total. They dont seem really popular on eBay
That seems like a gamble with the no reserve thing??

I need a video card anyway so if I mined it for 2 months supposedly it will get $10/day after electricity according to this site. although its fluctuating.
https://whattomine.com/gpus?cost=0.13&button=
 
Does that site calculate taxes? Mining means you should be adding the coins gain acquired to your adjusted gross income, per the IRS, and on sale of the coins, that's a 2nd tax event.

I would think it's going to be ~30% less at minimum than the stated figure. I mean, of course if you're not including it on your taxes, that's one thing, but it's a fair question since some people may not want an audit.

Also, there's several real negative effects from mining on your computer, mainly GPU hardware degradation over long periods of time. Not trying to tell you what to do, just wondering if people only take the rosy side of this into account into their profit equations. Maybe with one year of experience doing this can chime in?
 
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I'm not knowledgeable about it really but I have read that they tend to undervolt the gpus for stability (especially if in a bank of many of them heat wise and psu wise) and for an overall cost/performance tweak. That's one of the reasons why people are saying the used mining card market to budget/patient pc gamers is normally a benefit to that segment in the end. Sure they are running without idle a lot longer though. People doing this sound like they are flipping their hardware as part of the calculated costs, figuring out how much mining time they need to pay for the full cost of the card then getting at least something for the used gpu(s) and subtracting that - so they aren't worrying about their used hardware lasting in their rigs after a few years at all. It's all in a rotation.

Taxes I'm guessing people aren't claiming them anymore than they are non taxed out of state purchases but that's just a gut feeling. I don't know how well it is regulated.

For me, living in one of the top ~ 3 states in electric costs always made me shy away from the idea in the first place. In the summer the house's central air or another localized AC "R2-D2" unit in a server/storage room would have to combat such a setup's heat too, even in a basement. So the electric costs would be pretty high here.

Again, I'm not up on the whole scheme but I'm pretty sure you can also buy into leans on bitcoins sort of like derivatives or stock value. So you don't have to actually mine them to have money invested in them (which can still have some benefits as a currency) either. Of course you are using your own money outright in that case and hoping for the value to go up rather than generating income using gpus and large amounts of electricity.
 
Taxes I'm guessing people aren't claiming them anymore than they are non taxed out of state purchases but that's just a gut feeling. I don't know how well it is regulated.
Definitely a question on Turbo Tax now, but then again they still ask if I bought anything out of state HA! as if I'd tell them if I did.
 
Definitely a question on Turbo Tax now, but then again they still ask if I bought anything out of state HA! as if I'd tell them if I did.
Making it an explicit question changes your behavior from willful ignorance to knowingly providing a false statement. The latter makes it much easier for the taxman if they pick your return out of a hat to make an example out of.

In terms of practical implementation, IMO PA did a reasonably good job by not requiring itemizing smaller purchases (IIRC under $600); and instead allowing the payment of an estimated use tax based on your income that's probably smaller than the actual number if you did an out of state vacation or made a few internet purchases from companies not collecting tax yet.
 
Does that site calculate taxes? Mining means you should be adding the coins gain acquired to your adjusted gross income, per the IRS, and on sale of the coins, that's a 2nd tax event.

I would think it's going to be ~30% less at minimum than the stated figure. I mean, of course if you're not including it on your taxes, that's one thing, but it's a fair question since some people may not want an audit.

Also, there's several real negative effects from mining on your computer, mainly GPU hardware degradation over long periods of time. Not trying to tell you what to do, just wondering if people only take the rosy side of this into account into their profit equations. Maybe with one year of experience doing this can chime in?
Depends on your tax bracket how much you need to pay the tax part, but rule of thumb is once you mined and received the coin -> that is counted as income for the value of the coin mined.

Now I just put the profits into an IRA so it is tax free until pulled from the IRA and invest that money to make more money. Of course everything mined has to be counted on the IRS forms, especially like from Coinbase where they work with the IRS but also gives you all the data/forms you need to file with the IRS. I also use BitcoinTaxes to figure all of this out which you can import from Coinbase and most big Exchanges, which also will import right into Turbo Tax.

If you have previous older cards that still mine well, then you don't have to buy anything new to mine with. Here are my older gaming/mining cards going to town making an estimated $35+/day, ~$1000/month. Been cashing out once transferred to Coinbase into $ in their FDIC insured account.

OldCards.jpgResults.jpg
I use other cards not shown as well and they add up quick for current take home. I believe this will be short lived, as in less than 6 months and really depends mostly on Bitcoin price, no other coin has effectively broke away from BTC price except the back by $ coins which remain virtually constant with the $. Yes if you are going to mine one needs to also obey tax laws as best as possible to prevent much grief.
 
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Depends on your tax bracket how much you need to pay the tax part, but rule of thumb is once you mined and received the coin -> that is counted as income for the value of the coin mined.

Now I just put the profits into an IRA so it is tax free until pulled from the IRA and invest that money to make more money. Of course everything mined has to be counted on the IRS forms, especially like from Coinbase where they work with the IRS but also gives you all the data/forms you need to file with the IRS. I also use BitcoinTaxes to figure all of this out which you can import from Coinbase and most big Exchanges, which also will import right into Turbo Tax.

If you have previous older cards that still mine well, then you don't have to buy anything new to mine with. Here are my older gaming/mining cards going to town making an estimated $35+/day, ~$1000/month. Been cashing out once transferred to Coinbase into $ in their FDIC insured account.

I use other cards not shown as well and they add up quick for current take home. I believe this will be short lived, as in less than 6 months and really depends mostly on Bitcoin price, no other coin has effectively broke away from BTC price except the back by $ coins which remain virtually constant with the $. Yes if you are going to mine one needs to also obey tax laws as best as possible to prevent much grief.
How do you connect multiple cards together like that?
 
How do you connect multiple cards together like that?
I am using my old Intel 6700K system which has 6 pcie slots (4 1x and 2 16x), currently using only 5 of them so I have room for one more card but would have to take out one of the 1080Ti's to get access. Anyways you use Riser adaptor cards that plug into your video card and motherboard:
https://www.newegg.com/en-labs-model-006c-riser-card/p/17Z-00AT-00005?Item=9SIACJF5W72830
1614212936793.png
For mining, a 1x pcie slot is more than enough even if pcie 2.0, as found on AMD older motherboards. The Intel system is flawless and just works. For a period of time I had 2 1080Ti's, 1 5700XT, 1 Vega 64 LC and Radeon Nano all working on it but that was very cumbersome setting up. Anyone who thinks AMD drivers are not robust, when they can actually handle 3 different generations of cards, OC etc. I think are wrong. I rearranged my many different cards in my systems better and now everything is easier to manage. You can make the card holders out of anything, crates, wood, angle etc. Here I reuse T-Slotted framing I had from a previous project not being used, most of the pieces were already cut and worked without cutting to much of my extra framing.

Nvidia cards seems to want a monitor hooked up to them, I don't have dummy monitor plugs, that is why you see the SLI bridge hooked up, for some odd reason SLI configuration allows both cards to mine around 45mh/s, while when not in SLI one card will throttle and be like 32mh/s. AMD cards do not need any monitor hooked up at all for them to work at 100%. AMD cards are also way easier to OC then the Nvidia cards due to driver options allowing this. MSI afterburner with the previous configuration would lock up the computer as soon as you opened it. With Nvidia, using EVGA P1 software which only see's EVGA cards works well.
 
I am using my old Intel 6700K system which has 6 pcie slots (4 1x and 2 16x), currently using only 5 of them so I have room for one more card but would have to take out one of the 1080Ti's to get access. Anyways you use Riser adaptor cards that plug into your video card and motherboard:
https://www.newegg.com/en-labs-model-006c-riser-card/p/17Z-00AT-00005?Item=9SIACJF5W72830
For mining, a 1x pcie slot is more than enough even if pcie 2.0, as found on AMD older motherboards. The Intel system is flawless and just works. For a period of time I had 2 1080Ti's, 1 5700XT, 1 Vega 64 LC and Radeon Nano all working on it but that was very cumbersome setting up. Anyone who thinks AMD drivers are not robust, when they can actually handle 3 different generations of cards, OC etc. I think are wrong. I rearranged my many different cards in my systems better and now everything is easier to manage. You can make the card holders out of anything, crates, wood, angle etc. Here I reuse T-Slotted framing I had from a previous project not being used, most of the pieces were already cut and worked without cutting to much of my extra framing.

Nvidia cards seems to want a monitor hooked up to them, I don't have dummy monitor plugs, that is why you see the SLI bridge hooked up, for some odd reason SLI configuration allows both cards to mine around 45mh/s, while when not in SLI one card will throttle and be like 32mh/s. AMD cards do not need any monitor hooked up at all for them to work at 100%. AMD cards are also way easier to OC then the Nvidia cards due to driver options allowing this. MSI afterburner with the previous configuration would lock up the computer as soon as you opened it. With Nvidia, using EVGA P1 software which only see's EVGA cards works well.
I only have the one card, but when I start mining (possibly) ill want to add another. I am building a system with an ITX mb so my options will be less.
 
I only have the one card, but when I start mining (possibly) ill want to add another. I am building a system with an ITX mb so my options will be less.
It is nice to have options, if you can squeeze in a MicroATX board then you can get more than just 1 pcie slot. Many small cases can fit MicroATX motherboards.

As for Nvidia and their mining line, will the top card have a NVLink Bridge and can be used with a gaming card? How will the drivers behave when you have a mixture of a gaming card and a mining card installed on the same motherboard with Nvidia? Will the Nvidia Mining cards be usable for like 3d rendering or other compute stuff? If they are only for mining and cuts off everything else they are basically a very stupid buy.
 
It is nice to have options, if you can squeeze in a MicroATX board then you can get more than just 1 pcie slot. Many small cases can fit MicroATX motherboards.

As for Nvidia and their mining line, will the top card have a NVLink Bridge and can be used with a gaming card? How will the drivers behave when you have a mixture of a gaming card and a mining card installed on the same motherboard with Nvidia? Will the Nvidia Mining cards be usable for like 3d rendering or other compute stuff? If they are only for mining and cuts off everything else they are basically a very stupid buy.
mATX wont fit in my case Im afraid Corsair NR200
Interesting questions that Im curious about also now that you have asked.
 
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