I'm not going to buy a GPU with a hash limiter

michalrz said:
My issue with crypto is simply the amount of power it consumes.
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The power issue is overblown hysteria. It consumes a small percentage of global power output. And as has been pointed out, some of the larger networks are transitioning away from proof of work though that is not without some controversy.

noko said:
All viable currency can lead to illegal (by government laws) stuff. Unless you want zero privacy and every transaction you make totally qualified by whoever deem as legal.
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Maybe he doesn't, but there certainly are a great many people who would absolutely be fine with it. Many are willing to sacrifice just about anything for perceived safety, especially when it's someone else's freedom they're trading off and not something they care for.
 
noko said:
As for power, depends on the coin, BTC is enormous energy expense for a Crypto, while others would make banks energy cost per $ transferred look enormous.
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I had no idea about that one, aside maybe from that currency that uses storage. Either way sounds like something I'd start with once I get around to studying the topic.
 
I personally think the hash limiter isn't a bad idea at all. Assuming miners are the primary problem with supply, and looking at this objectively... gamers are already being forced to buy gimped cards like the 1060 and the 1660 because miners are presumably buying up all the cards that can perform better than that. And if you notice why those cards aren't hitting the same high prices, it's because their memory bandwidth is limited, which makes them far less useful as mining cards than a higher end GPU. Unfortunately, that segmentation sucks because cutting memory bandwidth does hurt gaming too, but not enough to make the card useless. The situation on the ground is already relying on feature segmentation. Introducing a hash limiter would enable gamers to have access to video cards that don't have gimped VRAM and memory bandwidth. They already make the difference between models mostly by disabling shader units, having different amounts of RAM or bandwidth, etc. Crippling compute capabilities in very targeted ways on consumer level cards would be a lot better than only being able to sell gamers cards that are gimped in terms of memory somehow.

Another way to look at it is that from nVidia's perspective, they don't really intend for these gamer-tier cards to be used for compute anyway, and that's exactly what miners are doing. They want people using GPUs for workstation or compute or whatever to pay more, because they know those customers need more reliability and features that gamers don't. Imagine if Intel had all the Xeon server level features enabled in Core series chips, and you found yourself competing with big companies and server farms to get a CPU? It would be pretty frustrating if all the CPUs were being purchased by people who need hundreds or thousands of them to run VMs or cloud services, with nothing left for normal consumers to use.

I think that in general gaming GPUs do need to evolve to become better at the specific kinds of calculations games require, and less useful for other kinds of calculations, because that's not supposed to be the goal of a GPU. It's not supposed to be used as a huge collection of math co-processors with dedicated fast ram. It's sold as, and meant to be used as, a graphics processing unit.

I don't have a moral problem with people selling GPUs for more than MSRP, but I also think that nVidia would be ignorant to continue to sell a product for less than it's actually worth for a purpose they never intended, while also doing nothing to help their would-be customers get their hands on the product for its intended use. Clearly the solution is that there needs to be some kind of product differentiation that allows them to target both markets. Over time, features could be added to gaming cards that would make them better at gaming but not help miners, while features could be added to mining cards that would make them better for that purpose. Both products need to become more specialized, this is how they are trying to get that specialization started.

I am mostly concerned that they won't be able to get the hash limiter to work, honestly, and that will leave us in a situation where the only cards available to gamers have to be crippled in even more severe ways.
 
blackmomba said:
How long have some of you been waiting for this crypto bubble to burst? Gotta be going on 3-4 years now right ?
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It seems to me crypto bursts whenever 1) the fed raises interest rates or 2) major crypto hack that affects a large percentage of the market

The first is kind of predictable IMO since the fed always telegraphs their moves months in advance.
 
The way I see it, NVIDIA is a private company. They have 4 customer bases: 1) The GAMERS, 2) Crypto Miners, 3) Graphics designers, 4)The AI/Deep Learning/Deux Ex Machina crowd. Whether they gimp some cards, and how many cards they gimp, will be determined by a careful analysis of which approach will make them the most money over the next 5 years. If you don't feel like they are trying hard enough to offer you a good product at a fair price, then don't buy their product. Whatever you do, don't buy it and then bitch about it.
 
NightReaver said:
Eh, I do some mining on a couple of older cards but I honestly wouldn't shed a tear if newer cards got gimped. Don't really care for self-righteous crypto culture.
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I'm not sure what is more annoying. Some of the fringe lunatics that are involved in the mining space, or the crybabies whining about gpus. Each seems to have their own brand of conspiracy theory and they both basically hate on each other.
 
Riptide_NVN said:
I'm not sure what is more annoying. Some of the fringe lunatics that are involved in the mining space, or the crybabies whining about gpus. Each seems to have their own brand of conspiracy theory and they both basically hate on each other.
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The gpu whining does get tiresome. Especially when it goes on for weeks...months...

Like okay...everybody knows by now.
 
Armenius said:
I guess everybody was wasting money before cryptocurrency was invented, then.
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In fairness, a top end "gamer" GPU in 2011 before crypto was only $699 (GTX 590 or AMD 6990). If some company is going to charge $1500+ for the new top end "gamer" GPU, it doesn't hurt to be able to make back some of that money passively.
 
kirbyrj said:
In fairness, a top end "gamer" GPU in 2011 before crypto was only $699 (GTX 590 or AMD 6990). If some company is going to charge $1500+ for the new top end "gamer" GPU, it doesn't hurt to be able to make back some of that money passively.
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They were also considerably less expensive to produce, both in terms of R&D and also manufacturing costs. We've long been past the point where die shrinks pay for themselves.
 
Rizen said:
They were also considerably less expensive to produce, both in terms of R&D and also manufacturing costs. We've long been past the point where die shrinks pay for themselves.
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I didn't say WHY the price increased. I just noted that it did, and it doesn't hurt to make back some of that money.
 
I honestly couldn't give a fuck if it's gimped for mining or not as long as I can get one at msrp. That's assuming nvidia come out with their own FE variant of the upcoming TI cards as that seems to be the only way to get a card at that price seeing as AMD haven't managed to figure out how to sell cards direct In the UK since December last year, so my only current option is an nvidia fe if I want to pay msrp.

Not getting bent over a barrel and paying more than 3090 money for a lesser card, people are paying crazy money for cards currently. Just about everything has doubled or close to doubled in price, some even higher.

A sapphire toxic 6900xt is currently selling at caseking Germany for over £2800, which is in and around $3900. Its fucking insanity.
 
Nebell said:
And I also think that limiting something on a card is a good reason for a lawsuit.
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In what world is that a good reason for a lawsuit? They are advertising up front that it has a mining limiter and you are buying that with full knowledge of the presence of that limiter. That would be like buying a Toyota Corolla and then suing Toyota because it can’t keep pace with a Ferrari on the race track.
 
Chris_B said:
I honestly couldn't give a fuck if it's gimped for mining or not as long as I can get one at msrp. That's assuming nvidia come out with their own FE variant of the upcoming TI cards as that seems to be the only way to get a card at that price seeing as AMD haven't managed to figure out how to sell cards direct In the UK since December last year, so my only current option is an nvidia fe if I want to pay msrp.

Not getting bent over a barrel and paying more than 3090 money for a lesser card, people are paying crazy money for cards currently. Just about everything has doubled or close to doubled in price, some even higher.

A sapphire toxic 6900xt is currently selling at caseking Germany for over £2800, which is in and around $3900. Its fucking insanity.
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To be honest, I won't be buying any card until I can get one for BELOW msrp. In a normal world, paying MSRP is like giving everyone in the supply chain free cookies.
 
HockeyJon said:
In what world is that a good reason for a lawsuit? They are advertising up front that it has a mining limiter and you are buying that with full knowledge of the presence of that limiter. That would be like buying a Toyota Corolla and then suing Toyota because it can’t keep pace with a Ferrari on the race track.
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I think they should change the model number to reflect the change (if they go back and limit the OG 3060, 3070, 3080). Even a "V.2" would go a long way to sorting out the differences.
 
JSHamlet234 said:
To be honest, I won't be buying any card until I can get one for BELOW msrp. In a normal world, paying MSRP is like giving everyone in the supply chain free cookies.
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You're gonna be waiting a looong time then unless you buy second hand when this crypto bubble deflates.

otxSmac.png

When prices get this bad you know things are fucked.
 
kirbyrj said:
I think they should change the model number to reflect the change (if they go back and limit the OG 3060, 3070, 3080). Even a "V.2" would go a long way to sorting out the differences.
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They can, but it doesn’t change the fact that you can’t sue them for buying a product that does what it’s advertised to do and expect to win that lawsuit.
 
HockeyJon said:
They can, but it doesn’t change the fact that you can’t sue them for buying a product that does what it’s advertised to do and expect to win that lawsuit.
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What exactly is it advertised to do? Are you guaranteed certain FPS? If it's suddenly came out and ran fortnite at half the frame rate because too many kiddies were buying GPUs would it be a problem? It still plays most games but it's just doing it at a slower rate on one of them. At the end of the day they are selling processing units not gaming devices. If they change the relative processing ability of certain tasks they should let buyers know..
 
NightReaver said:
Is it a secret that they want to gimp mining performance? I thought they mentioned it, unless I'm mistaken.
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I'm talking more about how you know whether or not you have a gimped one or not if they keep the same model numbers.

There were rumors that there would be respun variants of the 3060, 3070, and 3080 all with mining limiters. Only the 3090 would be exempt.
 
kirbyrj said:
I'm talking more about how you know whether or not you have a gimped one or not if they keep the same model numbers.

There were rumors that there would be respun variants of the 3060, 3070, and 3080 all with mining limiters. Only the 3090 would be exempt.
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I'd imagine it would show in the model number/SKU
 
So I'm trying to wrap my head around this whole gimping thing. Please excuse me while I think out loud for a bit.
Nvidia makes the most money by NOT gimping their cards. It maximizes demand, enabling them to sell as many cards as possible for as much money as possible.
The only way I can think of that makes Nvidia gimp these cards is if an entity with ALOT of money and ALOT of power makes them a deal they can't refuse.
Is there any other explanation? If not, who would want to stop people from mining? Who would want people to stop printing freedom bucks?
And here I am, more confused than when I started ;)
 
JSHamlet234 said:
To be honest, I won't be buying any card until I can get one for BELOW msrp. In a normal world, paying MSRP is like giving everyone in the supply chain free cookies.
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So you'll have to wait until the fed raises rates again in 2023 or so for crypto to pop...
 
kirbyrj said:
What exactly is it advertised to do? Are you guaranteed certain FPS? If it's suddenly came out and ran fortnite at half the frame rate because too many kiddies were buying GPUs would it be a problem? It still plays most games but it's just doing it at a slower rate on one of them. At the end of the day they are selling processing units not gaming devices. If they change the relative processing ability of certain tasks they should let buyers know..
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If the card is advertised specifically with a hashrate limiter, you can’t buy the card, and then turn around and sue Nvidia for poor mining performance. Nvidia is literally marketing hashrate limiters as an upcoming “feature” of the card, so they are letting buyers know.
 
The power usage argument is completely overblown and out of touch for multiple reasons, two listed below:

1) It's easy to alienate Bitcoin (and other POW coins for that matter) on usage and comparing them to what X country utilizes without considering the total cost to run the traditional financial system. These are networks that do not have the luxury of having all the infrastructure required to function and built over decades like the physical locations, server farms, personal, transportation costs, etc that the existing financial system uses to function. POW coins are easy to pick at because the usage is readily transparent but everyone seems to extrapolate linearly and disregard the efficiencies seen on what seems to be 12-18 month cycles of newer ASIC releases.
2) Mining farms can (and do) utilize power from areas/ventures that would otherwise have not seen their resources used--you know, those remote areas where no one bothers trying to extract energy because it would otherwise be prohibitive. I think it is a fantastic push to capture flaring as it's wasted energy from normal hydrocarbon E&P. If no one bothered to develop these, is it really a loss to humanity?

I'm not by any means saying Bitcoin and POW is "green" but it seems foolish to parrot how destructive the energy consumption is without considering ALL the facts.

But I digress, carry on.
 
oblox said:
The power usage argument is completely overblown and out of touch for multiple reasons, two listed below:

1) It's easy to alienate Bitcoin (and other POW coins for that matter) on usage and comparing them to what X country utilizes without considering the total cost to run the traditional financial system. These are networks that do not have the luxury of having all the infrastructure required to function and built over decades like the physical locations, server farms, personal, transportation costs, etc that the existing financial system uses to function. POW coins are easy to pick at because the usage is readily transparent but everyone seems to extrapolate linearly and disregard the efficiencies seen on what seems to be 12-18 month cycles of newer ASIC releases.
2) Mining farms can (and do) utilize power from areas/ventures that would otherwise have not seen their resources used--you know, those remote areas where no one bothers trying to extract energy because it would otherwise be prohibitive. I think it is a fantastic push to capture flaring as it's wasted energy from normal hydrocarbon E&P. If no one bothered to develop these, is it really a loss to humanity?

I'm not by any means saying Bitcoin and POW is "green" but it seems foolish to parrot how destructive the energy consumption is without considering ALL the facts.

But I digress, carry on.
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Traditional financial consists of building buildings, maintaining and powering those buildings, workers driving to and fro, customer driving to and fro - sounds like a good thing dealing with jobs - Electrical, computers and networks, hmmm sounds familiar, Central banks with more networks, mining for metals for coins, cutting down trees (that is not green) making green bills and so on -> not cheap for power.

POW coins biggest issue I see is the more hashrate the more reward one can get -> creating a race to obtain the most hashrate. The assumption was one CPU one vote, decentralized but GPU mining was able to get more hashrate making CPUs obsolete which led into ASICs later with the same race for the most hashrate by faster compute devices or more units in an area. Is that needed to secure Bitcoin transactions? Absolutely not, the CPU's of 2010 can right now secure the blockchain if all the GPUs and ASICs and FPGAs were taken offline but that is beside the point. Monero is secured now with CPUs and not GPUs, ASICs or FPGAs. Verus is also secured by CPUs which have a better hashrate then the best GPUs (can use a GPU but it has low hashrates).

Crypto projects are coming up with viable solutions to minimize energy costs as well as centralization issues. The weeding out process is slow coming, there is like 4000 Crypto's, if 99.9% fail in the next 10 years that still leaves 40 to compete which seems like a good number but who knows. The ones that make it may not even be out yet, what if the Federal reserve Crypto is backed by Gold? US has more Gold then any other Country on this planet by a large margin. I see a lot of growing space for usage and acceptance except with many failing as time goes on.

As for Hashrate limiter, it will probably be virtually pointless due to how the next generation of Ethereum ASICs will slaughter everything out today, 1 ASIC beating 15 to 20 3090 hashrates combined. If anyone has gone through an ASIC cycle, it takes about 3-6 months from launch to see rapid decrease in rewards for a given hashrate. Depends also how many ASICs hit the street. Also Ethereum will go more and more Staking, where holders will process the blockchain (cheaply for power considerations) by putting up a Stake in which if they cheat or found to be untrustworthy they can loose their Stake, gone, puff. So I even question the real reason Nvidia would want to limit a card, it will not make cards readily available, Nvidia are already sending GA 102 to mining cards lol. It is a precedent which Nvidia can expand upon is one option I see and has nothing to do with getting more gaming cards to the gamer.
 
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I remember when GPUs were just vertex and pixel shaders... I don't know what basic computer tasks a modern gaming system uses its GPU to do, but 'compute' can be a totally different SKU and I'd be fine with it.
 
FrgMstr said:
If you believe Nvidia is doing CMP cards and limiting mining on gaming cards is for the benefit of gamers, you have been hoodwinked. This is all being done to limit the impact of a gaming card price crash when the crypto bubble bursts. It is about keeping prices high on the secondary market and not pulling down new cards with it.
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This is exactly why. Nvidia has some very bright data analysts running various forecasting models all day, and both the CMP cards and (still rumored, not officially announced) mining-gimped RTX cards are a carefully planned shock-absorber against the likelihood of mining profitability slowly tailing off into summer.

Nvidia can't directly control whose hands their products ultimately fall into because secondary and greymarkets will always find a way, but they can modulate featureset.
 
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mda said:
I remember when GPUs were just vertex and pixel shaders... I don't know what basic computer tasks a modern gaming system uses its GPU to do, but 'compute' can be a totally different SKU and I'd be fine with it.
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Unfortunately, GPU's - and compute power in general - has kind of transcended the days of frittering life away playing videogames with space aliens every night. It's now the defacto engine of so many new and emerging markets that didn't exist 2, 5, 10 years ago. It has become as important as energy resources to superpower nations; the new arms race; cold and hot wars will eventually be fought for control over it.

In fact it's already happening, example PRC (China) subsidizing energy costs of industrial scale bitcoin mining within its borders, which has had the effect of tilting the majority of that chain's global hashpower to being in China. And while for years casual observers have been balking "Whats the point of bitcoin if I can't buy a cup of coffee with it", China had its eyes fixed forward years into the future understanding the global financial revolution that was unfolding.
 
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noko said:
Crypto projects are coming up with viable solutions to minimize energy costs as well as centralization issues. The weeding out process is slow coming, there is like 4000 Crypto's, if 99.9% fail in the next 10 years that still leaves 40 to compete which seems like a good number but who knows. The ones that make it may not even be out yet, what if the Federal reserve Crypto is backed by Gold? US has more Gold then any other Country on this planet by a large margin. I see a lot of growing space for usage and acceptance except with many failing as time goes on.
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There's no way the US is backing anything with gold again with only 8,000 tons, people will just sell the crypto to clean out the treasury of the gold. The Breton Woods gold standard started when the US had 22,000 tons of reserves and that barely lasted 15 years before most of that gold got cleaned out and allied nations had to start bailing out the dollar through the London Gold Pool.

Besides, most experts agree China is understating it's reserves significantly, it's the #1 producer of gold in the world (2000 tons annually), and the #1 importer, and doesn't export any of its production, and only occasionally increases its official reserve amount by 50 tons here or there annually. Most believe they have well over 10,000 tons of real reserve. But even that isn't close to how much the US had post WW2, and we already know how that show ended in 1971. If anything oil (and US military protection rackets) has been a much better way to back the dollar than gold ever has.
 
JSHamlet234 said:
So I'm trying to wrap my head around this whole gimping thing. Please excuse me while I think out loud for a bit.
Nvidia makes the most money by NOT gimping their cards. It maximizes demand, enabling them to sell as many cards as possible for as much money as possible.
The only way I can think of that makes Nvidia gimp these cards is if an entity with ALOT of money and ALOT of power makes them a deal they can't refuse.
Is there any other explanation? If not, who would want to stop people from mining? Who would want people to stop printing freedom bucks?
And here I am, more confused than when I started ;)
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Kyle mentioned it earlier and DPI quoted it. If they sell specialized cards for mining they avoid creating a massive glut of used cards available to gamers down the line whenever those cards become unprofitable to the miners. You or I, or many of the people here, may be hesitant to buy a card used for mining but those will still easily sell on ebay and elsewhere. Nobody needs to worry about Nvidia not making more money than before. (y)
 
tryin49 said:
Kyle mentioned it earlier and DPI quoted it. If they sell specialized cards for mining they avoid creating a massive glut of used cards available to gamers down the line whenever those cards become unprofitable to the miners. You or I, or many of the people here, may be hesitant to buy a card used for mining but those will still easily sell on ebay and elsewhere. Nobody needs to worry about Nvidia not making more money than before. (y)
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I see it now, that makes sense. The 4000 series would be a pretty hard sell if miners were dumping 3000-series en masse right before its release. People would scoop up a cheap Ampere based card and then stand pat for a generation or 2.
 
HockeyJon said:
If the card is advertised specifically with a hashrate limiter, you can’t buy the card, and then turn around and sue Nvidia for poor mining performance. Nvidia is literally marketing hashrate limiters as an upcoming “feature” of the card, so they are letting buyers know.
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Why don't you read what I said again. I said that Nvidia was rumored to "re-release" the 3060, 3070, and 3080 with mining limiters. Not come up with new models. So if I buy a 3080, I don't know if I'm going to get old stock without the mining limiter or new stock with the mining limiter if they go that route. That's a problem.

If a new release like the 3070Ti/3080Ti, is advertised with the mining limiter that's different.

The whole discussion is honestly a joke as ETH is moving to proof of stake and no other algorithm is gimped. If I can make $10 a day now with a 3080, I can still make $5 a day mining something else other than ETH even with a "mining limiter."
 
AI/ML applications dwarf gaming and mining by a lot. I buy 1 GPU for myself per 2 years avg. I buy 100+ per year via pc work systems and AI/ML application development. I have 24 3090s on order this month, and 8 A100 GPU in a DGX-A100 on the way, my 4th DGX purchase in 4 years. If there is a shortage, the MI/AI front doesn't feel it for any more than just a slight delay in receiving the orders.
 
kirbyrj said:
Why don't you read what I said again. I said that Nvidia was rumored to "re-release" the 3060, 3070, and 3080 with mining limiters. Not come up with new models. So if I buy a 3080, I don't know if I'm going to get old stock without the mining limiter or new stock with the mining limiter if they go that route. That's a problem.

If a new release like the 3070Ti/3080Ti, is advertised with the mining limiter that's different.

The whole discussion is honestly a joke as ETH is moving to proof of stake and no other algorithm is gimped. If I can make $10 a day now with a 3080, I can still make $5 a day mining something else other than ETH even with a "mining limiter."
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Which makes the limiter in the first place pointless from a mining prospective (does it affect other type of applications that require huge memory bandwidth?). So why is Nvidia bothering in the first place? That is my question since Ethereum while the most profitable coin now is not the only coin that is profitable and GPU mining it will become much less profitable later this year. Unless the price just keeps going up. My CPU 3960x does $4.00 a day mining Verus (VRSC), 62.4mh/s while the 6900 XT same coin is 22mh/s, have not tried it on the 3090. CPU mining now is viable, while I can make more with VRSC than Monero (XMR), XMR is still profitable at around $3.10/day.
 
Slade said:
AI/ML applications dwarf gaming and mining by a lot. I buy 1 GPU for myself per 2 years avg. I buy 100+ per year via pc work systems and AI/ML application development. I have 24 3090s on order this month, and 8 A100 GPU in a DGX-A100 on the way, my 4th DGX purchase in 4 years. If there is a shortage, the MI/AI front doesn't feel it for any more than just a slight delay in receiving the orders.
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Yep, GPUs are not just for games and that piece of the pie is shrinking day by day.
 
Depending how hard the July update hits mining profitability, Nvidia's nerf may not actually matter.
And if the PoS merge happens at the end of the year, we're just looking at July-Dec post-update. Nvidia's nerf only applies to Eth, if another coin takes off it won't be affected.

If we were having this conversation in February or March it would be a different story...
And I do think Nvidia silently nerfing existing cards (3060 ~ 3080) is some serious bullshit. Don't mess with existing cards unless you update the SKUs.
 
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