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

Cmon now...don't play games. You know that's all they are advertised for.
Says the guy refusing to acknowledge that gimping a product after release would not only be a legal nightmare but also entirely ineffective.....

Or the fact that Nvidia has been pushing GPU compute with CUDA for 15+ years now?

I get you don't like mining, but I have to assume you are just trolling at this point.
 
Says the guy refusing to acknowledge that gimping a product after release would not only be a legal nightmare but also entirely ineffective.....
If GPU's aren't used to mine Cryptocurrency like you said, then what's the problem? And exactly what are they gimping? Nothing it was designed for.

And I LOVE mining and Rockhouding. Its great fun.
 
Of course it matters, its not intended for cryptocurrency mining. Period. They can do whatever they want with the drivers, they own it.
What we are talking about here is firmware I would assume. You can't force people to install drivers or firmware... and lets be honest. Miners will simply find a way to flash older firmware on newer cards shipping with crippled firmware.

Again this is a PR stunt... don't be duped. Nvidia is not going to stop selling gaming cards to miners. Their customers (card suppliers) are not going to stop. What you think there going to start asking you what your going to do with that GPU and ask for ID ect when you buy a GPU ?

Unless these crypto only cards are 1/4 the price of a GPU with the same chip.... no miner would ever be stupid enough to buy them. Nvidia is not going to be selling the 1,000 of these they ever produce for 1/4 the cost.

As far as legal defense.... yes in general if you cut features after selling a product it ends up being a legal issue. Even if the features being cut are not on the front page of the marketing. I would say Nvidia talks about their compute performance more then just a little.

Anyway its hard to believe anyone seriously thinks Nvidia would really cut performance on anything where it would cost them sales. I really don't think they care where the dollar bills come from. Of course they want you to believe they see you as special. You know their GPUs are designed for gamers only wink wink tensor cores are there for RT yes thats the ticket... and they for sure for sure never sell in bulk to miners wink wink. I really hope no one is really that gullible.
 
What we are talking about here is firmware I would assume. You can't force people to install drivers or firmware... and lets be honest. Miners will simply find a way to flash older firmware on newer cards shipping with crippled firmware.

Again this is a PR stunt... don't be duped. Nvidia is not going to stop selling gaming cards to miners. Their customers (card suppliers) are not going to stop. What you think there going to start asking you what your going to do with that GPU and ask for ID ect when you buy a GPU ?

Unless these crypto only cards are 1/4 the price of a GPU with the same chip.... no miner would ever be stupid enough to buy them. Nvidia is not going to be selling the 1,000 of these they ever produce for 1/4 the cost.

As far as legal defense.... yes in general if you cut features after selling a product it ends up being a legal issue. Even if the features being cut are not on the front page of the marketing. I would say Nvidia talks about their compute performance more then just a little.

Anyway its hard to believe anyone seriously thinks Nvidia would really cut performance on anything where it would cost them sales. I really don't think they care where the dollar bills come from. Of course they want you to believe they see you as special. You know their GPUs are designed for gamers only wink wink tensor cores are there for RT yes thats the ticket... and they for sure for sure never sell in bulk to miners wink wink. I really hope no one is really that gullible.

Listen, Nvidia (and miners) bad, AMD good. That's it. Stick to the script, drop the sensible commentary :p
 
... how is this supposed to help? If people want to use GPU to mine they will then just buy the mining variant. That's still removing a die from the market to be used in gaming GPU's.

The only real benefit I can see is on the resale market. If people will stop using gaming GPU's for mining then the second hand cards won't already be burnt up before you buy one.
 
... how is this supposed to help? If people want to use GPU to mine they will then just buy the mining variant. That's still removing a die from the market to be used in gaming GPU's.

The only real benefit I can see is on the resale market. If people will stop using gaming GPU's for mining then the second hand cards won't already be burnt up before you buy one.

Also easier to resell a gaming GPU than a mining GPU when you're done with it - so more incentive to buy a gaming GPU instead or as well in theory. But also I doubt they account for that, it's either just a side perk or even it's just some individual employees take them home and sell them.

More of a factor for the bedroom miner (lol) I suppose.
 
On the NVIDIA profit motive, they really have it all wrong, and investors should probably be pissed. Nvidia should discontinue the 3060ti, 3070ti and 3080. They should release mining cards essentially identical to the above cards with a single dvi port, and charge 2k average selling price, with a slight discount for the 3060 ti variant, and slight premium for the 3080 variant.

Release the gaming cards with reject cores from the mining cards and possibly crippled with whatever the cheapest possible ram is (gddr 5?) sell them at the original MSRP for the 30X0.

in this scenario, Nvidia would still sell everything they produce, but would maximize profits.
 
I thought they tried this before and crypto crashed before they got production spun up.

Seems like a decent idea in theory, but we'll see if it actually works.
 
What we are talking about here is firmware I would assume. You can't force people to install drivers or firmware... and lets be honest. Miners will simply find a way to flash older firmware on newer cards shipping with crippled firmware.

Again this is a PR stunt... don't be duped. Nvidia is not going to stop selling gaming cards to miners. Their customers (card suppliers) are not going to stop. What you think there going to start asking you what your going to do with that GPU and ask for ID ect when you buy a GPU ?

Unless these crypto only cards are 1/4 the price of a GPU with the same chip.... no miner would ever be stupid enough to buy them. Nvidia is not going to be selling the 1,000 of these they ever produce for 1/4 the cost.

As far as legal defense.... yes in general if you cut features after selling a product it ends up being a legal issue. Even if the features being cut are not on the front page of the marketing. I would say Nvidia talks about their compute performance more then just a little.

Anyway its hard to believe anyone seriously thinks Nvidia would really cut performance on anything where it would cost them sales. I really don't think they care where the dollar bills come from. Of course they want you to believe they see you as special. You know their GPUs are designed for gamers only wink wink tensor cores are there for RT yes thats the ticket... and they for sure for sure never sell in bulk to miners wink wink. I really hope no one is really that gullible.
Oh, I'm in no way defending their decision, Nvidia is a scumbag company that is for sure. All I'm saying is that a company can do whatever they want to do with their product.

I would argue that crypto mining is not a feature. Again we get into specifics of what is marketed by the company and what is "Popular" on the customer secondary market.

An example would be, the new Xbox's ability to play emulators and other console / arcade games. The Xbox isn't marketed to run emulators or other console / arcade games but it can do it, just like Graphics cards can crypto mine. But if Microsoft put out a patch preventing people from downloading the software or some other system, they would be within their legal right to do it, just like Nvidia is within their legal right to put out a driver to handicap cryptomining with their product.


But all this is moot, like you said, they will not stop selling to miners, why should they? They're making money hand over fist, and their sole purpose is to make money, as much and as fast as possible.
 
But all this is moot, like you said, they will not stop selling to miners, why should they? They're making money hand over fist, and their sole purpose is to make money, as much and as fast as possible.
Short term maybe, but if the PC gaming market crashes because of the current situation (because Nvidia are selling to miners on top of other current events) then it's bad for the long term.
 
Short term maybe, but if the PC gaming market crashes because of the current situation (because Nvidia are selling to miners on top of other current events) then it's bad for the long term.
Yeah, I guess you're right. It won't last forever I guess.
 
Listen, Nvidia (and miners) bad, AMD good. That's it. Stick to the script, drop the sensible commentary :p
AMD does the same thing... like I said early in the thread people thinking AMD crippled RDNA in regards to mining are silly. They just aren't as good at mining. lol
Hate Nvidia as I do I can still recognize they make the better compute cards right now.... yes I do believe AMDs hardware could probably do better. But even AMD is half hearted when they optimize anything for it... knowing that until the industry really switches from CUDA there basically hosed. Frankly they would need a card that was 20-30% faster then Nvidia compute wise to really push the industry away from CUDA at this point. Really I think its more likely Intel pushes things that way then AMD at this point. Intel knowing they probably won't compete very well in RASTER may have at least optimized for compute for their server business.
 
Also easier to resell a gaming GPU than a mining GPU when you're done with it - so more incentive to buy a gaming GPU instead or as well in theory. But also I doubt they account for that, it's either just a side perk or even it's just some individual employees take them home and sell them.

More of a factor for the bedroom miner (lol) I suppose.
There are a good number of medium size mining operations of a couple hundred cards tops. Of course they factor in card resale. Why wouldn't they. There the sellers you see that look like legit second hand computer shops that have listings on 6-12 month old cards where the listing has 20-50 available. :) A lot of these outfits... basically buy 100 cards at the same cost your local computer part supplier would get, then they sell them as used 6 months later for what they paid for them or a small profit. Making the only cost of mining being the actual electric bill.
 
Oh, I'm in no way defending their decision, Nvidia is a scumbag company that is for sure. All I'm saying is that a company can do whatever they want to do with their product.

I would argue that crypto mining is not a feature. Again we get into specifics of what is marketed by the company and what is "Popular" on the customer secondary market.

An example would be, the new Xbox's ability to play emulators and other console / arcade games. The Xbox isn't marketed to run emulators or other console / arcade games but it can do it, just like Graphics cards can crypto mine. But if Microsoft put out a patch preventing people from downloading the software or some other system, they would be within their legal right to do it, just like Nvidia is within their legal right to put out a driver to handicap cryptomining with their product.


But all this is moot, like you said, they will not stop selling to miners, why should they? They're making money hand over fist, and their sole purpose is to make money, as much and as fast as possible.
In your analogy though... what if Microsoft NOW today after selling bunch of their shiney new Xboxs (but not quite that many yet)... said you know what hey all these old games you guys are running at 120 fps. Well we want to sell a XBOX EMULATION edition that does that. So we are firmware updating your old xboxes so they only run at 60fps. I mean its not that they aren't capable but we want you to buy this one which we are now going to market as a emulation xbox.

Really again what is the point.... are we supposed to believe that Miners.... the people that are at the fore front of flashing cards, and figuring out how to bypass wattage envelopes and the like aren't going to undo this firmware fix basically instantly if its profitable to do so ?
 
In your analogy though... what if Microsoft NOW today after selling bunch of their shiney new Xboxs (but not quite that many yet)... said you know what hey all these old games you guys are running at 120 fps. Well we want to sell a XBOX EMULATION edition that does that. So we are firmware updating your old xboxes so they only run at 60fps. I mean its not that they aren't capable but we want you to buy this one which we are now going to market as a emulation xbox.
That would be fine, older games don't need to run at 120fps. Most only run at 20-30-60 anyway, 50 if its PAL.
 
That would be fine, older games don't need to run at 120fps. Most only run at 20-30-60 anyway, 50 if its PAL.
That's what I alluded to on the previous page. Instead I was dog pilled by a bunch of miners.
 
As much as I wanna clap for Nvidia, is this just for the 3060? Why not the other cards? Kinda seems like Nvidia wants the crypto miners to go after more expensive cards.
Would they need to change something to the other card to make it impossible for someone that want to mine to install the current bios on them ?

It is not obvious if their attempt will work but it seem easier to be possible with a new product.
 
Nvidia could make mining cards work, be desirable, and profitable for all parties involved, if they follow this simple outline. This is off the top of my head. I'm sure the list could be improved with a hour long brainstorming session of engineers, and product managers.

  • Kill the fancy fine jeweler FE packaging - save say $10-$15 per card
  • Kill the fancy heatsink and fan - a mining card could even be passive - just a nice heatsink that an external fan can blow across - save probably $50+ per card (I've read the FE heatsink and fan cost as much as $150 per card -- we don't need all that - just a passive heat pipe heatsink array that has holes to ziptie a dual ball bearing 120mm fan on is perfectly sufficient (and probably preferable because the fan can easily be changed or the card passively cooled by a big single external box fan.
  • Kill all the display ports, and leave off the circuitry which should save a significant amount of money -- I have no idea how much - but no more license cost for HDMI, nor 2.1 port costs (which I hear are actually surprisingly expensive), no RAMDAC costs, gsync chip costs, etc.
  • Kill the warranty - give it a 90 day warranty - save say $25 per card (in expected warranty claims? - guessing here).
  • Nvidia sells these cards ONLY FIRST PARTY via bulk sales of quantity six minimum (allows for cheaper shipping and handling making it more lucrative to ship 6 cards to a single address than 1 card to six different addresses), and the cards can be packaged only in a static bag and cushioned six, 12, 18, 24 pack boxes.
  • Implement a mining only driver that optimizes hash rate and power usage for the mining cards - combines the undervolt, overclock that afterburner provides directly into the driver, plus pick up and provide optimizations that might be third party like the Eth Pill of the Pascal generation cards.


I think with these changes - and with first party bulk sales Nvidia could get the cards down to half the price of gaming cards. At 1/2 price the gaming card variant, I'd buy six or 12 without blinking.
 
Last edited:
As others have pointed out, anyone with a dedicated box will use dedicated drivers and this won't matter a damn bit.

This is just PR, mining farms hire ex-Nvidia engineers to make them custom bios and drivers. Once the HW is in your hands, no lock out works, especially when you have the same engineers who made the lock-out on payroll to un-lock it.

But Nvidia claims that their drivers can't be hacked

https://www.pcgamer.com/nvidia-ethereum-mining-limiter-cannot-be-hacked/#comment-jump
 
Even if this is legit, I don’t think it will matter. NVIDIA doesn’t own any FABs. They can’t just ramp production up. They have to purchase production time. So by the time they can get these mining chips produced, we’ll probably be on the 4000 series.

It seems Ampere is the lost generation.
 
Nvidia could make mining cards work, be desirable, and profitable for all parties involved, if they follow this simple outline. This is off the top of my head. I'm sure the list could be improved with a hour long brainstorming session of engineers, and product managers.

  • Kill the fancy fine jeweler FE packaging - save say $10-$15 per card
  • Kill the fancy heatsink and fan - a mining card could even be passive - just a nice heatsink that an external fan can blow across - save probably $50+ per card (I've read the FE heatsink and fan cost as much as $150 per card -- we don't need all that - just a passive heat pipe heatsink array that has holes to ziptie a dual ball bearing 120mm fan on is perfectly sufficient (and probably preferable because the fan can easily be changed or the card passively cooled by a big single external box fan.
  • Kill all the display ports, and leave off the circuitry which should save a significant amount of money -- I have no idea how much - but no more license cost for HDMI, nor 2.1 port costs (which I hear are actually surprisingly expensive), no RAMDAC costs, gsync chip costs, etc.
  • Kill the warranty - give it a 90 day warranty - save say $25 per card (in expected warranty claims? - guessing here).
  • Nvidia sells these cards ONLY FIRST PARTY via bulk sales of quantity six minimum (allows for cheaper shipping and handling making it more lucrative to ship 6 cards to a single address than 1 card to six different addresses), and the cards can be packaged only in a static bag and cushioned six, 12, 18, 24 pack boxes.
  • Implement a mining only driver that optimizes hash rate and power usage for the mining cards - combines the undervolt, overclock that afterburner provides directly into the driver, plus pick up and provide optimizations that might be third party like the Eth Pill of the Pascal generation cards.


I think with these changes - and with first party bulk sales Nvidia could get the cards down to half the price of gaming cards. At 1/2 price the gaming card variant, I'd buy six or 12 without blinking.

Heres the thing.....

Even if Nvidia was selling them mining 3060s at $150 a card.... it would still be a shit value for a miner.

There is NO math that fixes the main issue. Which is supply SUCKS.

Because supply sucks if I'm a miner. I setup a distro deal with a middle man distributor. (the same folks that sell PC parts to every small computer store in the world... very few are buying direct folks) I get retail supplier pricing on the 200 3080s I order. I set them up to mine for 4-6 months. (and if I am doing my business accounting properly heck I probably am not even out that investment before the 6 month of product in my hands). Month 6 I pull all 200 of them and sell them on line as Used parts for A FUCKING profit. As I am pulling those cards out to sell my min wage employee is slotting their replacements.... which I also just bought from that same distributer in whatever amount made sense to achieve the proper discount level.

People don't get it... there are a lot of miners running pretty much like computer shops. The computer shop owners... that owned your local parts shop 10 years ago... man they figured out they could make more milking the hash from those cards before they sell them as used a few years back already. It's a hell of a lot better then running a computer part shop and trying to survive on a single digit profit margin.

Nvidia... knows this... if they don't there stupid, and I don't like them but there not stupid. The entire idea of making mining cards is stupid. Yes ideally you could strip off all the gamer stuff, drop the ports and make a fantastic hashing machine. But they have zero resell and that is why no one will ever buy them. Frankly its why a lot of miners running those 100s strong GPU farms don't switch to ASICs. ASICs are worthless hunks of metal you gotta pay to dispose of properly after they become a loss to operate a year or so after you invest in it. Outside of the couple big super massive GOV backed players ASICs are a bad return on investment for that reason.

GPU farms done right pay for themselves before they hash one bit of data. That is what the supply chain is up against. Frankly I don't see how it changes either.... Nvidia AMD Intel no one is in business to make it harder to sell stuff. If someone comes along and says I'll pay you full pop cash for that entire shipment. One payment process, no other paper work. Nvidia isn't even in control of most of that as most of the product ends up in middle man distribution channels. Its not like Asus MSI ect have 100% control of every card sale to end users either. If XXXY distro company that deals with Poland decides to sell all 2000 cards they just got to 2 customers and save themselves 100s perhaps 1000s in paper work and Credit card processing ect ect... HOW the fuck does Nvidia stop that ? They can't they have no control over that situation unless they decide to ONLY sell direct... limit sales to one card per customer... and ask for a couple pieces of ID to prove your a real person.

The only real solution.... Nvidia AMD Intel whoever needs to make ENOUGH product for everyone. lol It seems like that is an issue right now... but this is just lip service, a PR stunt nothing more.
 
This is pure propaganda from NV marketing and bullshittery Dept.

A pure CYA move to distract from the fact Nv is selling ASICs directly to Miners by the tens of thousands at least.
 
Well thanks Bryan for telling the miners geek squads what they need to do.... intercept the handshake and spoof it.

I heard once that blu rays would be unbreakable as well. If this is really more then just firmware I'm sure it will stand for a week or two. A lot more on the line financially then a few ripped flicks.

OF course from what we all know... miners are having no issues getting 3070/80s into their farms. I am not even convinced 3060s will be a hot miner buy for the big massive supply sucking outfits. Unless they really can't fill their slots with the more profitable cards.
 
There could be another side to this for the CMP products. They might have so many (enough) defective dies that can still mine, but not be usable for graphic cards that they are doing this to sell off the defective dies.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Axman
like this
Even if Nvidia was selling them mining 3060s at $150 a card.... it would still be a shit value for a miner.
According to this:
https://www.nicehash.com/profitability-calculator/nvidia-rtx-3060-ti

a 3060ti make $50 USD of profit a week at 10 cent USD that kwh, would a $150 3060s be really shit value for a miner ?

Even if it would be $25 a week for $150 that would be ridiculous value, it seem to me, so much that you would need to be really pessimistic for an upcoming crash or not able to mine yourself to not keep it instead of selling it at that price right now (the website above is maybe totally wrong).
 
Last edited:
... how is this supposed to help? If people want to use GPU to mine they will then just buy the mining variant. That's still removing a die from the market to be used in gaming GPU's.

The only real benefit I can see is on the resale market. If people will stop using gaming GPU's for mining then the second hand cards won't already be burnt up before you buy one.
I agree with limiting hardware being wrong as far as a guy using it how he wants.
At the same time Im not buying used cards because I dont want a used up turd.
 
According to this:
https://www.nicehash.com/profitability-calculator/nvidia-rtx-3060-ti

a 3060ti make $50 USD of profit a week at 10 cent USD that kwh, would a $150 3060s be really shit value for a miner ?

Even if it would be $25 a week for $150 that would be ridiculous value, it seem to me, so much that you would need to be really pessimistic for an upcoming crash or not able to mine yourself to not keep it instead of selling it at that price right now (the website above is maybe totally wrong).

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.
 
Back
Top