Nvidia nerfs RTX 3080, 3070, 3060 Ti GPUs to shoo away Ethereum miners Nvidia says it will slash the cryptocurrency-mining abilities of newly made RTX 3080, RTX 3070, and RTX 3060 Ti graphics cards. Those cards will be marked as LHR, or Lite Hash Rate, to indicate their capabilities have been limited, and will ship from the end of this month. It is hoped that by halving the hash rate of these …
is there ANY ideas out there as to when we may actually expect to see some decent GPX cards in the shops available to buy ?
built daughter a new PC so she can run the 3d modelling software she needs for her Uni course, but of course, the GPX is an old one [1050] from the spare parts bin, it works, but she could really do with a xx90 to do it all justice :o(
as for crypto in general, it is getting close to being a zero sum game for producers, and so it is looking better to buy some of the damn things, and ride the storm
What the GPU makers need to do is have a buy back scheme for the previous gen. Yank the chips off and make larger beefier boards for mining out of the eWaste.
Gamers get to upgrade to cutting edge kit, miners get faster kit. Everyone is happy.
It would be possible to do as a third party if GPU chips weren't such a black box technology.
At least a 1050 is ok for the actual modelling. Renders might take a lot longer, and she might eventually hit limits with scene size due to limited VRAM, but depending on the course she might rarely ever be running ray-traced renders or working with large complex scenes. For just floating around the scene modifying things with the cheaper shader modes, The GPU doesn't usually matter very much.
Source: have done a lot of modelling (including a college course) on both a 1050ti and a 1060.
IMHO instead of waiting for an overpriced, rare RTX, if she is going to go into the CAD industry she should consider putting the money towards a used Pascal Quadro, say a P4000. All the web benchmarks of "RTX vs..." are about gaming performance, irrelevant for her circumstance.
In Solidworks, Autodesk and the like, Quadro is proven to have optimized performance plus better stability than any standard desktop gaming card.
I have to wonder how long before 3D gaming/modeling and proof-of-work hashing get harder to tell apart, to the point either the hashing trolls make an algorithm the cards can't distinguish or a new gaming engine comes along that gets nerfed on the LHR cards...
Not sure, but it's clear Nvidia knows how to mutate thier hardware to increase profits from crypto. This has nothing to do with gamers or crypto or any other excuse, it's just Nvidia making more cash. Know how to fill a landfill 2x faster for 2x the cash? Sell 2x the hardware.
This reminds me of the tale how the industries in laundry detergent figured out how to double their profits... they simply doubled the holes in containers.
But ultimately you're right. Well that or either Nvidia will have to start gimping thier GPU's for gamers as well just to make sure they can sell to miners. Slippery slope.
I've got a 2080 for gaming - and I'm just leaving my PC (powered by renewables) on 24x7 for mining.
Makes ~£30 a week. Not a life changing amount - but if you'd stretched to buy a gaming PC, it quite handily chips away at the outlay.
Or looking at it another way - quite handily covers the depreciation of buying the latest and greatest.
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Look out, the soCiALisM is coming to get you!
The far simpler explanation is nVidia care about maintaining their multi-decade customer base of video gamers and don't want them to switch to a competitor or to a next gen console in case they don't come back.
"care about maintaining their multi-decade customer base" matches one of the definitions of socialist, while controlling supply matches one of the definitions of state socialism.
nVlidia already have an "optimisations" that switches off the GPU when monitor disconnected, but that has just created a market for HDMI dongles that pretend to be monitors.
They are right to be weary of being pushed into crypto segment, because the Ponzi scheme will collapse eventually, and want a customer base left when it does.
My view is that crippling cards to perform integer arithmetic slowly, won't work, but will make GPU programming more complex.
It's better to produce an alternative to "proof of waste" than to control supply
> "care about maintaining their multi-decade customer base" matches one of the definitions of socialist, while controlling supply matches one of the definitions of state socialism.
Wow, the hallucinogens you're taking must hit real hard, to make you think any company is even remotely socialist.
Socialism: a theory or system of social organization that advocates the ownership and control of the means of production and distribution, capital, land, etc., by the community as a whole, usually through a centralized government.
The key is "one of the definitions", not the definition: Friedrich Engels (Karl Marx's buddie) was a "socialist", but also a factory owner. The illustration was not to suggest that nVidia is "socialist", but as a preface to the proposition that it will fail.
"proof of waste" is just about the most stupid idea for consensus in a digital-ledger and a waste of the computational power of a GPU: the answer is not regulation of supply, but innovation to remove the need
That assumed the need can be innovated out. What if the need feeds on innovation? Take cryptomining. It feeds on innovations to get more hashes per second, Their demands and gamer demands overlap quite a bit, creating a conundrum, but the former are more ruthless.
"care about maintaining their multi-decade customer base" matches one of the definitions of socialist, while controlling supply matches one of the definitions of state socialism.
I hate to break it to you Comrade, but several countries (including the UK) require companies to consider the actions taken with respect to the long term effects of their actions.
Wow, socialism now being used as argument against a company trying to stop an international shortage in GPU's and trying to spin it as a bad thing. You either vote Tory or Trump???
Anything that means people can get a decent gaming rig has to be worth a try. If it wasn't for the greed that capitalism has generated and the ease crypto currencies can be used to create that (supposed) wealth. We wouldn't be in the this mess and I could get a nice 3080 GFX card.
(Think I spun that round quite well.)
nVidia are socialists now?! Caring about your existing customer base is good business, not chuffing socialism. It's easier to keep an existing customer happy than to keep trying to find new ones. But you do you with your tinfoil, socialism, and other strange habits. Trump supporter perhaps? Or left pond libertarian?
No, he's a narcissistic, sociopathic, con-artist who managed to hit his biggest score ever and as long as he keeps one step ahead of everyone who he's conned and the various state and federal agencies that are looking to press criminal charges against him, he's got it made.
get it right.
I've just paid £1200 for a s/h Palit RTX2080Ti because my original GPU died and I needed one _now_ for work. In the current stupidity I counted myself lucky to have found one but it leaves a really sour taste in the mouth. £1200 was the original MMR for that card on release. How far do you want prices to go? £2K per video card? £3K?
Idiot.
Go away and consider carefully what you have just said.
So instead of complaining, use it and enjoy it & then when you are not actively using it, do some mining with it & give it 6 months to 12 month depending on your power rate and you'll have most likely gotten all your money back and have a card left that cost you nothing when all is said and done.
Then on top of that it will still have decent resale value.
Or you could be happy that Nvidia will "save" you by making sure that you have to pay for the card, can't make any money on the side with it & it's worth very little when you upgrade.
They should really just put the prices up rather than make moral judgements about their customers.
Are they making moral judgements?
The cynic in me would say they've found a way to profit by selling some cards at a huge markup without appearing to be taking full advantage of a demand heavy market with inelastic supply. (They could just put up the prices, but the bad PR could hurt over the long term).
And the driver changes ensure you'll pay the markup because we're... erm... alturistically doing it for the gamers?
It's called having your cake and eating it I think. ;)
"The cynic in me would say they've found a way to profit by selling some cards at a huge markup without appearing to be taking full advantage of a demand heavy market with inelastic supply"
nVidia haven't increased their charges for the GPU dies, but the AIB partners have increased their MSRPs for the finished product (same with AMD)....
nVidia haven't increased their charges for the GPU dies, but the AIB partners have increased their MSRPs for the finished product (same with AMD)....
...but they have started selling CMP mining cards which are GPUs without the output stage, and it's these that are selling at a much higher price.
Many = all.
Why buy a crippled card at higher price that has no resale value.
Also,large scale miners will mine with these cards removing the limits, it is the people in their dorms etc that will be affected by the drivers crippling them, as they also want to play games,etc
"We really need to have a look at our economic model"
"Why!?"
"Well, our customer base is shrinking"
"And that's to be expected. Don't worry, an equilibrium will be found and that customer base will stabilise soon enough"
"But what about the accusations that we are murderers? That doesn't sit well with me one bit"
"It is the market that is doing the murdering. Not us. We just sell vegetable oil to the highest bidder. And just because the highest bidder happens to be the petrochemical industry, and not the food industry, then who are we to make a judgement?"
"Two thirds of the world can no longer afford cooking oil, because the other third are filling their cars up with it, and that is leading to famine and malnutrition. Life expectancy is falling and we are directly involved"
"Bloody socialist. Why don't you accept my offer to buy you out, and then your soft namby pamby conscience will be troubled no more!"
"Because I have a conscience! There's no way I'm leaving a sociopath like you in charge, to let your inhuman ideas run amok"
"So let governments sort it out then"
"You mean the people we have been buying off left right and centre from the very beginning. They're more inhuman than you will ever be"
"Mmm. I'm not sure I like that unintended compliment. I'll need to run that through my AI program some more. Perhaps I'm due a software update..."
I seriously doubt there's an actual moral element involved. It's more of a market segmentation thing. They have cryptocurrency users willing to pay a premium to be able to do more hashes, and a larger community that can't justify that premium. They may also realize the possibility that the crypto bubble could burst; if that happens, they'll be especially happy that they maintained the other markets for their products.
As a publicly held megacorporation, nVidia's main (some would say only) task is to increase shareholder value. It is at least arguable that nVidia has done so here. Generally speaking, if a corporation speaks of morality, I assume a financial motive.
Except as enabler for illicit transactions in the darkweb and payment method for crypto blackmailers, crypto currencies have no real world use.
They don't feed anyone, neither they cure the sick.
Fulfilling the demand for crypto currencies, supporting an ever extending market of illegal drugs and other stuff, is causing that modern gaming gear became unaffordable for decent hardworking people.
It is good NVIDIA is trying to limit this, they are of course aware that in a capitalist world, it is only a matter of time before someone comes up with an idea to provide good graphics performance which can not be used as tool for drug money makers.
"It is good NVIDIA is trying to limit this, they are of course aware that in a capitalist world, it is only a matter of time before someone comes up with an idea to provide good graphics performance which can not be used as tool for drug money makers."
I don't see how. Heavy math performance is needed in both 3D modeling/gaming and crypto hashing. nVidia in this case is like a knife manufacturer: their flagship product is unavoidably multi-use with at least one of the uses being unsavory. Sometimes, you just can't avoid the bad press, just as you can't blame the knife manufacturer the next time a mass stabbing hits the news.
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