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I have no sympathy for miners, but purely from software freedom perspective this is maximally evil: closed-source software that decides what you can use your ha

• martinald 6y ago
  Surely it would be worth the same as the normal RTX 3060? It will have the same use for gaming?
  • robkop 6y ago
    They are removing all the display ports from the card so I can't imagine it can be used for gaming.
    • PartiallyTyped 6y ago
      It can be. NVDA's stance is utter bull. It is entirely possible to render video games and stream them to another display [1,2] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TY4s35uULg4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TY4s35uULg4 [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1nok2VlF1M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1nok2VlF1M [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfIibTBaoMM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfIibTBaoMM
      • qqii 6y ago
        It will be possible but as your third video suggests the number of cards that'll be used this way and not end up as landfill will be peanuts.
        • PartiallyTyped 6y ago
          I don't disagree, but I suppose the structure of my comment didn't convey the message correctly, that is, that NVDA is just maximizing profits while screwing over gamers because a) they can get away with it and b) they are an ever decreasing portion of their revenue.
          • dahart 6y ago
            Wait, how did you arrive at ‘screwing over gamers’ when this whole thing was done to keep 3060 cards available to gamers at reasonable prices?
            • MAGZine 6y ago
              If they just put these chips into regular cards then they could eventually be resold, to gamers, at a great price. Instead, during a global silicon shortage, nvidia is producing silicon that has one use and then into the trash.
              • dahart 6y ago
                You’re making a huge assumption that they could be resold, even if they’re the same chips. This could be an entirely new market for chips that have yield defects in the graphics units, that will not ever work for games, and were previously already put in the trash. And your theory doesn’t explain two things: - how this hurts gamers now, and - why if Nvidia just wanted profit and the chips are useful for games, why wouldn’t Nvidia simply do nothing and let the miners buy all the 3060s. Wouldn’t that be the most profitable thing here? In fact, why wouldn’t Nvidia just hike the price of the 3060? They could make a lot more money on miners if they wanted to, and really screw gamers. But that’s not what’s happening. So from a gamer’s perspective, I just don’t get being mad at Nvidia rather than being mad at the miners who caused this to happen, again.
                • PartiallyTyped 6y ago
                  > And your theory doesn’t explain two things: - how this hurts gamers now, and - why if Nvidia just wanted profit and the chips are useful for games, why wouldn’t Nvidia simply do nothing and let the miners buy all the 3060s. Wouldn’t that be the most profitable thing here? No it is not. If they mis-predict when the mining craze ends, they will be stuck with a huge inventory and no way to deal with it. The reason they will be stuck with the inventory is because the miners will be able to sell the second hand cards at a rate that NVDA simply can't compete with, so they end up as the bag holders just like it happened with the 1xxx series. Infact, I'd wager that DLSS and RTX were used as a hacky solution to drive people away from the 1xxx series because the 1xxx series was more than sufficient for 1080p gaming - which is the most common resolution. The 3xxx series, even the 3060 is an overkill even for 1440p let alone 1080p. This, to me, suggests that had NVDA not gimped the hashrate of the 3060, once the craze was over and the market was flooded with 2nd hand 3060, people would not be incentivised to buy anything above a used 3060 because it is a) an overkill for 1440p@120hz and b) it has much higher perf/$ than anything NVDA could offer with the 3xxx or 4xxx series and it wouldn't make any sense to go with anything higher anyways because 4k gaming doesn't seem worth it unless you are playing on a TV.
      • Shivetya 6y ago
        I am may be off base here, but isn't this how the Nvidia Geforce Now service work? Rendering on their systems and streaming to a dedicated client? I have used this service to play a few different games which I have licenses too where the developer no longer supports Mac; oddly this seems to have gotten worse with M1 chips.
        • jffry 6y ago
          > oddly this seems to have gotten worse with M1 chips. If a developer wasn't around or willing to recompile and test their game on x64 to support Catalina (which dropped support for 32-bit apps), then it's not surprising to me that they are also unable or unwilling to recompile and test and support the game on M1 ARM chips.
  • gsich 6y ago
    Not usable without display ports.
    • chrisseaton 6y ago
      You can still render without a display port and use the output image to for example stream it to another display.
      • SXX 6y ago
        Nvidia will make sure that no one can use "mining" cards like this.
      • gsich 6y ago
        You need another GPU for that. Not really practical.
        • chrisseaton 6y ago
          How do you think gaming streaming services work?
          • gsich 6y ago
            So I need two machines to used this GPU? Thats even worse. I know some trickery with an onboard CPU maybe works and thought you meant that.
            • chrisseaton 6y ago
              > So I need two machines to used this GPU? No? Why would they need to be in different machines? You can stream from one GPU to another, whether they're in the same machine or not. One GPU may be a cheap little one built into your motherboard. You probably already have it anyway! And even if you did need two machines... again that's how gaming streaming services work. Cheap end-user machines or iPad or just TV, and then a gaming system streaming video output somewhere else.
  • Hedepig 6y ago
    I might be wrong but I do not believe these are usable as "normal" graphics cards
• Havoc 6y ago
  Good point re landfill - haven't seen anyone else raise that
  • IMTDb 6y ago
    So people are going to build entire data centers to look for combination of bytes that yield a hash that is funny looking. And when it doesn't become profitable to do so anymore, the e-waste issue it generates is somehow the fault on the chip maker ?
    • asxd 6y ago
      Well yeah, since if the chip maker didn't come up with this product strategy the extra e-waste would be further limited. I think we can probably all agree that corporations should have some responsibility in the ramifications of their products.
    • swinglock 6y ago
      Yes. When a chip maker takes a multipurpose product that can be reused when no longer fit for one purpose, and instead makes it single purpose and not reusable for market segmentation reasons, they are absolutely somehow at fault.
    • gruez 6y ago
      >And when somehow it doesn't become profitable to do so anymore, the e-waste issue it generates is somehow the fault on the chip maker ? Well yeah, because the alternative would be that the miners dump them on the secondary market to gamers.
    • deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
• daniel-thompson 6y ago
  I assume it can still be used for other CUDA applications, although I doubt that miners will care much about that.
  • qqii 6y ago
    Who will be buying it though? Last time this happened mining cards without display output were sold much cheaper than their equivalent counterparts. The only saving grace they had were hacky Looking Glass style solutions.
    • the8472 6y ago
      Machine learning? VFX shops?
      • qqii 6y ago
        These industries certainly didn't buy mining cards last time.
• A12-B 6y ago
  On the contrary, this is the one example of a company doing something for the public good even when no one asked them to.
  • qqii 6y ago
    How so? Take this excerpt from the article: > Nvidia does state that these GPUs "don't meet the specifications required of a GeForce GPU and, thus, don't impact the availability of GeForce GPUs to gamers." Frankly, that doesn't mean much. What does Nvidia do with a GPU that normally can't be sold as an RTX 3090? They bin it as a 3080, and GA102 chips that can't meet the 3080 requirements can end up in a future 3070 (or maybe a 3070 Ti). The same goes for the rest of the line. Make no mistake: These are GPUs that could have gone into a graphics card. Maybe not a reference 3060 Ti, 3070, 3080, or 3090, but we've seen TU104 chips in RTX 2060 cards, so anything is possible. Combine with their after market value (see https://youtu.be/XfIibTBaoMM https://youtu.be/XfIibTBaoMM), this is no more than Nividia trying to spin goodwill whilst padding their bottom line.
    • DoctorNick 6y ago
      Because cryptocurrency mining is now one of the biggest contributors to climate change. It is killing the planet. It is a moral imperiative to shut it down by any means necessary.
      • amarshall 6y ago
        Sure, but Nvidia is now selling cards specifically marketed towards miners (CMP). Their goal appears to be profit, little more.
      • kamranjon 6y ago
        'One of the biggest contributors to climate change' - this is so far from being even remotely true
        • _jal 6y ago
• hoppla 6y ago
  I am hoping to repurpose the gpu/cmp for a hashcat rig once cards no longer provide income for miners. I fear I no longer will be able to use GPUs for this, and are crossing my fingers for cmps
• loceng 6y ago
  As the counter point, I, as a consumer of a GPU for non-mining purposes, appreciates the effort so demand is reduced for a product by a certain market segment - and thus allows the price to not be influenced by the demand of a decentralized, global MLM scheme. Also, you just don't buy that hardware - so it's not "what you can use your hardware for" - unless they're retroactively updating drivers to prevent the same use of already purchased projects. I'd argue your concern is an issue only due to patents that may prevent a competitor from coming in and making a competing product if the main producers are engaging in bad behaviours. Edit to add: I love the downvotes - they're such a strong way to sway someone's thoughts on something, so much effort gets put into clicking a downvote too - it must be serious business!
  • salawat 6y ago
    You shouldn't be, as this is yet another example of a company exploiting cryptographic signing and information asymmetry in order to lock you out of functional capability that you paid good money for. That abusive practice is the only thing enabling this kind of business pivot. The pivot also doesn't even achieve what Nvidia claims to be setting out for, because they are splitting already limited capacity to support two distinct product lines thereby halving the overall supply available. If anything, this is just making sure everyone pays inflated prices due to scarcity.
  • LMYahooTFY 6y ago
    >global MLM scheme. What I'll say is that the absurdity of this trite dismissal presents a large undertaking for anyone to begin to try and teach you what cryptocurrencies are. Most of the silicon valley billionaires acknowledge it as a promising technology, if that doesn't warrant some serious (read: many hours of difficult reading) consideration than expecting strangers on a message board to help you do it seems a bit entitled. I'll grant you that trite dismissal of cryptocurrencies in general is quite common on HN.
    • loceng 6y ago
      "What I'll say is that the absurdity of this trite dismissal ..." Are you talking about your trite dismissal of my stating it's a global MLM scheme - which it fits the pattern for precisely? And also a Ponzi scheme because the final latest adopters are left holding the bag - meanwhile wealth was unnecessarily transferred weighted towards the earliest adopters. Blockchain is a promising technology, designing it like Bitcoin to align people through financial gain (of an MLM) has unavoidable-unfixable pitfalls. You're welcome to go through my comment history to read more about the actual solution. You're making assumptions too that my stating it's an MLM scheme isn't backed up. I find it hilarious, the irony, of you claiming my comment is a trite dismissal - as yours has exactly the same depth as mine, with the only truth you state is that blockchain is a "promising technology." Your holier-than-thou defensive comments, articulated almost poetically, is getting more common though - as the more intelligent sucked into the MLM scheme get defensive and their guard goes up - feeling the need to defend their position, needing the price of Bitcoin to go up and up and up; while you're financially incentivized to write and spend energy, and others like myself with counter-narratives aren't financially incentivized to do so.
• lwhi 6y ago
  I agree. It's a bad move. Provide a better product for mining .. don't cripple what's out there. This feels similar to when Nurofen tried to repackage generic drugs for different types of pain. I.e. ultimately a branding exercise. -- Edit: spelling and s/paracetamol/generic drugs
  • throw14082020 6y ago
    I appreciate this move to make GPUs more available for non-crypto users. As someone who wants to buy an AMD GPU to run my Ryzen machine, I have been waiting 2 weeks because there is no supply of GPUs at the RRP price. I can only buy the 2 year old models for double the price they sold for.
    • iforgotpassword 6y ago
      We have a global chip shortage. NVidia isn't magically pulling more GPUs out of their asses. Yes as they claim some chips might be defective in a way that makes them unsuitable for a graphics card but still work as a mining chip, but if you believe that they won't redirect perfectly fine chips into mining card production if demand permits it, just because they care so much about gamers and not their shareholders, I got bad news for you.
      • my123 6y ago
        The mining GPUs that they announced aren’t based on Ampere but on Turing AFAIK from the hash rate numbers that they gave. Not even the same manufacturing process...
      • reader_mode 6y ago
        Mining demand is volatile and will use whatever gives them best hashing/$ ratio - pissing miners off might lose you some cash short term but gamers are much more susceptible to branding, and not to mention devs optimise for popular hardware - if AMD suddenly became a major market % holder in the gaming market because NV shipped their silicon to miners, once mining dips down they get slammed. And if they are hoping production will ramp up to match demand some time in the future they still want to have a winning product.
• oakesm9 6y ago
  Gamers will generally try to avoid buying preowned graphics cards that have been used for mining. Running them 24/7 at full pelt tends to “age” they quicker than one that’s just been used for gaming.
  • vimy 6y ago
    Can electronics actually wear out?
    • tw04 6y ago
      Absolutely, it's materials science. Most electronics like this aren't meant to be run full-tilt 24/7, especially not under the conditions that crypto mining typically occurs. Subpar cooling, potentially dirty air - so lots of dust and particulate. Not to mention crypto miners will often have the GPUs overclocked on top of running full tilt to get every last hash out of it. It's about as brutal of a situation as you can get for a GPU.
      • gruez 6y ago
        >Not to mention crypto miners will often have the GPUs overclocked on top of running full tilt to get every last hash out of it. It's about as brutal of a situation as you can get for a GPU. This is false because miners often undervolt to achieve better efficiency. The popular GPU mining algorithms are all memory-bound, so you can undervolt your core clocks quite a bit and still get >95% of the original performance.
        • Retric 6y ago
          That depends on how valuable the last 5% of your hash rate is and local electricity prices. Running an OC especially for memory can objectively be the correct choice. For collage dorms for example rarely charge based on electricity use. Some apartment complexes also include electricity as part of the rent.
          • 6y ago
• m3kw9 6y ago
  Imagine the PlayStation was able to be used to mine crypto. Game developers depend on gamers to actually play their games, what would you have Sony do? Encourage it or do nothing? Pretty sure their obligations to any shareholders would be to limit it so more gamers can play and buy games for it.
  • anothernewdude 6y ago
    They literally did that with the PS3 for clusters (though not for crypto mining) and shut down the ability to do it.
    • robert_foss 6y ago
      And were sued for doing so. Removing functionality from an existing product is not acceptable.
      • michaelt 6y ago
        which is why they've announced this limitation before the 3060's release
    • bretpiatt 6y ago
      To my knowledge they didn't shut it down, PS4 architecture moved to standard x86 PC so no longer advanced vector units available through PlayStation that you couldn't get separately in an easier to work with way. This led to the rise of the current Top 500 which are a mix of CPU and GPU.
      • rincebrain 6y ago
        No, they famously shut down the ability to use PS3s for this and got sued for it.[1] Not ever having the functionality in the PS4 and later doesn't imply they didn't remove it in prior cases. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OtherOS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OtherOS
  • gruez 6y ago
• vsareto 6y ago
  >As soon as it stops being profitable for mining it will have zero resale value, and become e-waste. There's lots of old graphics cards no one sells or buys as well
  • sandworm101 6y ago
    There are, but these could be thrown put in a matter of weeks. As soon as bitcoin prices crash again, these cards are junk. By the time the next boom happens there will be a new generation of cards and these will be unprofitable. Nvidia is simply leveraging this predictable boom-bust cycle to make a quick buck selling a polluting product. This is Captain Planet-style environmental arrogance.
    • pmorici 6y ago
      These cards aren’t being used to mine bitcoin gpu mining hasn’t been applicable to Bitcoin since at least 2014. These cards are being used to Ming alt coins
      • sandworm101 6y ago
        Whatever the coin, it is all the same crypto market. The crash will come one day soon and these cards will be in dumpsters.
        • LMYahooTFY 6y ago
          This comment doesn't even make sense. What does "the same crypto market" mean?
          • sandworm101 6y ago
            The same as any other industry. The coins are all tied together in the same manner as something like the auto industry, biotech, aviation or real estate. Individual prices can rise and fall on their own merits, but there is a larger tide as investors choose to move their money in/out of the entire sector.
• tyingq 6y ago
  I suppose people cracking passwords might buy otherwise outdated CMP cards. Could be a boon for that space.
• social_quotient 6y ago
  Yeah, imagine if this applied to trucks. No one could use one for non truck bed usage. Ford disables ignition if it detects the bed is empty after X concurrent uses or miles. Trucks generally are often wasted (from a green perspective) because people like them not for their intended design utility. Same for single passenger SUV usage etc... (I drive an SUV - not trolling those that do)
  • thgaway17 6y ago
    Yeah it would suck, but if Ford F150s were selling for $100,000 because drag racers were buying them up, I don’t think I’d mind.
    • gruez 6y ago
      That's not exactly the same because vehicles are essential for everyday life (commuting), whereas GPUs aren't.
      • marcooliv 6y ago
        well, it's fundamental for my business, GPU overpriced can affect people's life.
        • o-__-o 6y ago
          I just want to upgrade my 9 year old pc. I’m not looking forward to spending $400 for what should cost $170
          • Shared404 6y ago
            Contact local small-scale computer repair shops. We often have used GPU's for around the price range you're looking for. They won't be fantastic, but probably an upgrade for a 9 year old machine. Edit: I should also add, a lot of the really small scale shops also don't list 100% of their inventory online, with the benefit that it doesn't get scalped up like everything else.
• ezoe 6y ago
  Yes. I am using Nvidia GPU even though I know it's so non-free, so unfriendly to the point Linus gave the middle finger and all. But I thought it's okay since I were to use it for proprietary video games anyway. But I have never thought they are this evil. With this move, Nvidia products are forever included in my boycott list.
• arcticbull 6y ago
  > The CMP version is a straight-to-landfill product. As soon as it stops being profitable for mining it will have zero resale value, and become e-waste. Like literally every other piece of Bitcoin or crypto mining technology. It’s straight to the landfill every 6 months. Bitcoin generates 100 GRAMS of ewaste for every transaction. Every 2 transactions consumes as much energy as driving a Tesla from SF to NY [edit for clarity: round trip] and as much ewaste as throwing your phone out the window along the way. Don’t hate the player; hate the game. Nvidia is maximizing shareholder value as per their charter, creating differentiated product offerings for different segments. Quadro, RTX, CMP. It’s all segmentation, and better, likely binning. I wonder if CMP products are just failed RTX and Quadro parts they’re offloading. For every card Nvidia doesn’t sell, Ant will sell 2 ASIC miners. Time to push back on proof of waste, and end the economic incentive.
  • SSLy 6y ago
    No one mines bitcoin on GPU's anymore, since 8? years.
    • jrrrr 6y ago
      [citation needed]
      • arcticbull 6y ago
        Here ya go: https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption/ https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption/ And here: https://www.solarreviews.com/blog/how-much-does-it-cost-to-charge-a-tesla-is-it-the-same-as-the-cost-to-charge-other-electric-vehicles https://www.solarreviews.com/blog/how-much-does-it-cost-to-c...
        • jrrrr 6y ago
          What needs a citation is the comment I replied to, SSLy's assertion that: > No one mines bitcoin on GPU's anymore, since 8? years.
    • 6y ago
• 29athrowaway 6y ago
  You mean like having to login to Facebook to use Oculus hardware?
• logicchop 6y ago
  Agree on the "evil" part (or maybe "irritating"), but if I recall correctly from a few years ago, Nvidia has done this before with full access to the encoder only being available in the Quadro line.
• trhway 6y ago
  first they came for the miners... As Nvidia opens itself to those games, i can see how Russia or China say would legislate for the drivers to have to refuse to run say specific crypto algorithms or specific neural nets training if it includes specific names, terms, phrases. "RTX 3060 software drivers are designed to detect specific attributes of the Ethereum cryptocurrency mining algorithm, and limit the hash rate, or cryptocurrency mining efficiency, by around 50 percent." open source drivers have been long due. Now there is real $Billions staked on that need.
• 2OEH8eoCRo0 6y ago
  Is it impossible to game on these?
  • solarkraft 6y ago
    While officially impossible, theoretically it should be work, in the same way as laptop GPUs (the dedicated GPU gives the rendered image back to the integrated GPU for seamless switching instead of outputing it directly). It has been tried 2 years ago on LinusTechTips: https://youtu.be/TY4s35uULg4 https://youtu.be/TY4s35uULg4 TL;DW: Very weird and extremely unofficial, but it can be done. These might still be some cheap rendering cards on Linux when they're used up.
    • Animats 6y ago
      Depends on what NVidia takes out. If they remove the triangle fill units, they're unsuitable for graphics but OK for "mining". That leaves the more general purpose parts that let you do arithmetic in parallel. Those might also be useful for machine learning.
    • bserge 6y ago
      There's used Tesla M6 cards (top of the range Maxwell GM204 cores, 8GB of RAM) going for really cheap sometimes. They have no video output, but you can use them in laptops with hybrid graphics thanks to the output being routed through the CPUs IGP as you said. Needs quite a bit of driver fuckery to have it recognized as either a GTX 980m or a Quadro M5000m, and you lose HDMI/DP output, but it's not a bad card for an upgrade if you only use the internal display. I'm surprised there are no MXM to PCIe x16 adapters, these kinds of cards are cheaper than desktop ones (due to the market/pricing being totally screwed) while providing similar performance.
  • Hendrikto 6y ago
    That’s the intention at least. They lack output ports, for example.
• quickthrowman 6y ago
  > The CMP version is a straight-to-landfill product. As soon as it stops being profitable for mining it will have zero resale value, and become e-waste. You are aware that this already happens to BTC ASICs when the new generation of ASIC comes out, right? Straight to the landfill. BTC is very wasteful, this is not new.
  • jagger27 6y ago
    The difference being that NVIDIAs dies were otherwise usable for other tasks, unlike Bitcoin SHA ASICs.
• dheera 6y ago
  NVIDIA should instead just require people to take an exam about either games or machine learning in order to be able to purchase a GPU. Problem solved.
• boulos 6y ago
  Is that true? I imagine it's going to be immediately reused for folks who just want cheap CUDA parts.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• ta988 6y ago
  Try scanning a dollar bill and importing it in Photoshop.
• _carbyau_ 6y ago
  Will CMP versions really be so single use as to be only good for mining? I want to know if I could use one as a second card for 3D rendering. Although I guess the render farm people will know about that and suck those all up...
• loser777 6y ago
  If it has CUDA support it might make sense post-hashing for a cheap deep learning setup. I have two P106-100s (last gen "mining-only" cards) that were very cheap (compared to a GTX 1060) secondhand. The only hit is in PCI-E bandwidth if they decide to go with nerfed PCI-E 1.1 only.
• tgsovlerkhgsel 6y ago
  Is the CMP not still useful for non-cryptocurrency computing purposes? Could it possibly even be usable as a second card in a SLI setup?
• sonthonax 6y ago
  It's only evil if you believe in absolute software freedom. But in reality NVidia is perfectly within its rights to apply differential pricing for people who want to play games, and those who want to mine bitcoin. Who can really blame NVidia for this? The actual target market for these products, gamers and the lower end graphics professionals, have been plagued by supply issues. In the long term NVidia stands more to gain by providing consistent supply.