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Nvidia is Nerfing New RTX 3080 and 3070 Cards for Ethereum Cryptocurrency Mining (theverge.com) 122

Nvidia is extending its cryptocurrency mining limits to newly manufactured GeForce RTX 3080, RTX 3070, and RTX 3060 Ti graphics cards. From a report: After nerfing the hash rates of the RTX 3060 for its launch in February, Nvidia is now starting to label new cards with a "Lite Hash Rate" or "LHR" identifier to let potential customers know the cards will be restricted for mining. "This reduced hash rate only applies to newly manufactured cards with the LHR identifier and not to cards already purchased," says Matt Wuebbling, Nvidia's head GeForce marketing.

"We believe this additional step will get more GeForce cards at better prices into the hands of gamers everywhere." These new RTX 3060 Ti, RTX 3070, and RTX 3080 cards will start shipping later this month, and the LHR identifier will be displayed in retail product listings and on the box. Nvidia originally started hash limiting with the RTX 3060, and the company has already committed to not limiting the performance of GPUs already sold.

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Nvidia is Nerfing New RTX 3080 and 3070 Cards for Ethereum Cryptocurrency Mining

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  • It's been years since I felt like messing with a mining rig, but on principle, I want a video card that doesn't artificially restrict what can be done with it.
    When it comes time to resell one, the unlocked ones you can use for mining will have much better resale value.

    And who knows? I might decide to repurpose one for mining in the future if some new crypto-coin comes alone that's feasible to mine with a GPU?

    The real issue here is nVidia's inability to gear up manufacturing enough to meet the demand.

    • If people think there's profit to be made redlining the things, how could you ever meet demand? More supply is just more money to be made until other parts run out or the cost of electricity goes up.
      • Charge more money for the part.

        • by sinij ( 911942 )

          Charge more money for the part.

          Here is the problem Nvidia has. Crypto mining demand is tied to crypto prices, which fluctuate widely. Gaming demand is more or less constant. Nvidia has constant production rate (fab) that is Very Expensive to scale up.

          Your choices:
          a)Shrink your gaming market share due to lack of product availability or high prices
          b) Scale up production at great expense and then have it sit idle
          c) Find a way to reserve some of your production for gamers.

          For example, I am in the market for RTX 3070, but I am not even bot

          • by Pascoea ( 968200 )
            Ding ding ding. This is a good move on nVidia's part. The majority of video cards are being hoovered up by crypto-nerds, driving the cost through the roof for gamers. Designing a decent card that is essentially useless for crypto mining would *hopefully* free up inventory for gamers. And I'm in the same boat, when I built my rig I had to skimp on the video card because nothing was available. I've bought one game since then, and it barely runs on my system. Why would I spend any more money until I can
            • by Cito ( 1725214 )

              Hell I'm still using my 2 old sli evga GeForce 670 ftw editions. I've got many games I play just fine on full, like gta 5, Fallout 4, latest far cry, no man's sky, all the mass effect, all dragon ages and many of those games around those years, from dead space 3, to wasteland 2, and all the Borderlands, but Ive been more casual and enjoying minecraft which even "pimped out" with shaders and texture packs I get 90-120fps. Plus I'm a very broke s.o.b. hehe so when I see the prices of these new cards even the

          • Hopefully it will work out for you and everyone else. I'm not a crypto-miner, but I'm also not a really serious gamer; I let my games stay recreational. I also write code to run on GPUs and such just for kicks or for educational purposes. *I* wouldn't buy a restricted card on principle, but apparently NVidia believes a lot of people will, and that it's somehow good for their bottom line to generate a new SKU for that group.

            Again, good luck.

          • by djinn6 ( 1868030 )

            If it takes 6 months to ramp up production, offer 6 month preorders at a fair price. No refunds.

      • by Anonymous Coward

        nVidia benefits more from selling video cards to gamers than cryptocurrency miners. Why? A sale is a sale, right? Not quite: a gamer who goes from 40fps medium settings to 120fps super settings brags to their friends, who then want the card. So I bet every 3000-series video card produces demand for 0.1 more 3000-series cards. But yet more -- Game developers then up the ante on the games by adding ray tracing, better physics, etc. So soon gamers *need* the new high-end video cards to play the games. T

        • by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

          Network effect is far stronger with miners than it can ever be with gamers. This is because of how proof of work crypto is generated in case of currencies like ethereum, where amount of currency generated per time slot is stable regardless of amount of work done by all miners in total.

          That means that the more powerful total GPU capacity of all miners, the more work each miner has to put in for the same return. So every time someone in the pool adds a new GPU, everyone else loses income. And the only way to

    • by DarkOx ( 621550 )

      the unlocked ones you can use for mining will have much better resale value.

      Will they? So far it seems like the economics of mining have made it the case that miners really only want to spend the power and cooling running the fastest GPUs they get their hands on. Realistically the better marginal value in used last generation GPUs would be for people what want them for gaming.

    • by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

      Perfect. Nvidia's strategy working as intended.

    • by spun ( 1352 ) <<loverevolutionary> <at> <yahoo.com>> on Tuesday May 18, 2021 @12:26PM (#61397164) Journal

      Okay, but were you going to buy an unlocked one? How? Where? Personally, I like video cards that are currently available for purchase at MSRP. I have zero desire to mine anything anytime in the foreseeable future. I never resell video cards, I run them until they die of old age, then I buy a new one.

      Th real issue here is we are in a global pandemic that is fucking the supply chains of nearly every industry, and my current video card has died, so I want to purchase a new one. I loudly applaud NVidia's decision to screw miners, as it means I have a better chance of getting what I want.

      • by Pascoea ( 968200 )

        I like video cards that are currently available for purchase at MSRP.

        No kidding.

        I loudly applaud NVidia's decision to screw miners, as it means I have a better chance of getting what I want.

        I'll second that. I've been riding a 5 year old video card for those specific reasons. I'm not paying 1.5-2x retail.

    • The real issue here is nVidia's inability to gear up manufacturing enough to meet the demand.

      Nvidia is fabless and there is a global shortage of fab capacity.

      TSMC is their primary fabber and has a huge backlog.

    • by Ecuador ( 740021 )

      The real issue here is nVidia's inability to gear up manufacturing enough to meet the demand.

      Eh, you don't understand how this works.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • When it comes time to resell one, the unlocked ones you can use for mining will have much better resale value.

      Makes sense, you'll have paid a premium to have an 'un-restricted' video card, so it should resell at a similar premium.

    • It's been years since I felt like messing with a mining rig, but on principle, I want a video card that doesn't artificially restrict what can be done with it.

      The artificial restriction is to allow you to be able to buy one of the video cards at all.

    • the unlocked ones you can use for mining will have much better resale value.

      I suggest you research this. Mining is very bad for the cards. [youtube.com]

      • Not really scientiific... what happens to a 2 year old card that wasn't mined with? What about one that was heavily gamed on?

    • There was some talk that Nvidia would unlock the full potential .... I don't know 6 months or a year after the card was sold. It's in their interest after all to keep 2nd hand prices high.

  • ...miners bypass this LHR restriction.
  • "We believe this additional step will get more GeForce cards at better prices into the hands of gamers everywhere."

    The problem with this is the nerfed hashrate on the 3060, and presumably the newer nerfed cards, is still higher than a 1660 Super/Ti and miners are more than willing to buy those at obscene prices. These new cards will have a better hashrate, better resale value AND have the potential that the nerf can be broken at some point in the future. There's no reason at all to think this will deter m

  • I find it HILARIOUS that Nvidia thinks they can control what you do with a driver. There was a hacked driver released in a single day for the 3090 with reduced hash rate. There is also a popular hacked driver for NVENC jobs.
  • Nvidia is playing a game here. They pretend to push back against crypto-currency mining when, in fact, they are doing the opposite. Miners and gamers both need cards. There is a shortage of chips. Limiting the hardware or software does nothing. Making mining only cards hurts gamers directly and indirectly. Miners will generally sell their video cards once they get tired of wasting electricity. These cards will be resold to gamers needing cheap cards. Mining only cards will become trash instead. Gamers will
    • They're not making crypto-only cards, they're making crypto-unfriendly cards. It shouldn't impact their resale value to other gamers later on.

      • by Misagon ( 1135 )

        They are actually making both kind of GPUs for different markets.

        The crypto-only GPUs are made with the video-out portion fused off, probably because it did not pass testing. NVidia would have trashed such chips if they hadn't been able to sell them to "miners".

        • They are actually making both kind of GPUs for different markets.

          The crypto-only GPUs are made with the video-out portion fused off, probably because it did not pass testing. NVIDIA would have trashed such chips if they hadn't been able to sell them to "miners".

          Technically NVIDIA doesn't manufacture chips at all; they're an R&D company. They produce the designs and outsource the actual production.

        • Doubtful they have many that don't pass testing.

    • Basicly, Nvidia wants their cut of the crypto market by selling mining cards for double, without trashing their traditional gamer market who they see as their strategic market, whilst miners are fly by night. They want to have a bit of cake and eat it too. And Nvidia doesn't care about the 2nd hand gamer market, except in so far as it affects their sales. They'd be not entirely unhappy if 2nd hand cards went away actually.

  • ...can I pay them with ETH, or do they accept only the good old cash ?!?
  • A few people want to buy Caterpillar bucket excavators to have jousting battles with while a whole bunch of other people want to dig for lithium ore.
    If you take this a step further, a lot of games are subscription-based which means that the game companies are losing money when people mine cryptocurrency.

  • And how soon are they going to self-own and "inadvertently" release the bypass for this?

  • Big talk from a company that "accidentally" released drivers that unlock mining capabilities a few weeks after the last time they made this broad announcement.

  • by kyoko21 ( 198413 ) on Tuesday May 18, 2021 @02:11PM (#61397490)

    This will become a slippery slope. If a manufacturer can determine your usage of a product just to make sure they can sell you another product of the same exact nature, you can see more and more manufacturers do the same thing.

    Why sell you a barbecue when they can sell you two simply with a software configuration? Barbecue A only heats up to 400 degrees. Barbecue B only can sustain temperatures between 400 and 500. If you want to cook something for lower temperatures but for long periods of time you will have to buy A. If you want to cook something with higher and sustained temps you will have to get B. You can't just buy one now because they made deliberately crippled their own device just so they can sell you more because they can't trust you with it.

    Barbecue B are for the "pros". Barbecue A is the "lite" version.

    Freemium - it means free, but not really.

  • The bigger fool scheme has gone on much longer than I could ever have imagined, still not sure if it will go on for days or decades yet. It is still just money laundering and speculation. No significant transacting is actually occurring. Now the joke crap like Doge and Shiba are getting piled into and making the news. It was funnier when it was the Blockchain Lemonade headline.

    I'll shed zero tears when it all comes back to earth.

    • Those darknet markets do quite a bit of business. But there's room to crash. Silk Road worked fine when bitcoin was $14. Er... as I heard it from a friend. Allegedly.
    • Blockchain technology is here to stay and despite all the joke currencies out there there are a number of legitimate things happening in the crypto space that have significant real world applications. Like Helium [helium.com] for example.

      There's also a lot of interest in crypto in parts of the world that don't have access to traditional banking. And smart contracts give Ethereum a lot of potential uses.

      Is there a lot of speculation still going on with crypto; sure. Is it possible that the value of Bitcoin drops signif

    • Crypto is a hedge against fiat currency. The US enjoys a relatively stable currency.

      But what if you live somewhere where the currency/environment isn't... the best? Think high inflation or excessive taxation, etc.

      Scroll down here to see the top countries adopting crypto currencies by some metrics, you will see my point:
      https://blog.chainalysis.com/r... [chainalysis.com]

      A volatile crypto currency is a better bet than a guaranteed high rate of inflation or other fiat currency degradation. Third world demand will continue to

      • No, crypto is a ponzi scheme. People can't see it because of all the techno babble associated with it.

  • I'm pretty sure the majority of folks only want to hear one thing from Nvidia at this point: When the F do you plan to address
    the shortage so someone other than scalpers and miners might be able to get their hands on a current gen GPU ?

    It's like Sony showing off all the amazing things the PS5 is capable of, except they tend to overlook that very few folks have
    managed to get their hands on one of those either. :|

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