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> Is this really good news, or is this just Nvidia playing both sides? To be clear, these CMP cards are still the same exact silicon that goes into GeForce and
by qqii 6y ago
> Is this really good news, or is this just Nvidia playing both sides? To be clear, these CMP cards are still the same exact silicon that goes into GeForce and Quadro graphics cards. They don't have video outputs, cooling should be improved (for large-scale data center mining operations), and they're better tuned for efficiency. But every single GPU sold as a CMP card means one less GPU sold as a graphics card. What's perhaps worse is that while miners can still use consumer cards for mining (maybe not the upcoming RTX 3060, depending on how well Nvidia's throttling works), gamers can't use these mining cards for gaming.
> 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.
Nivida isn't risking anything.
They boost their sales now by selling mining cards knowing they won't enter the seccond hand market to compete with their new products.
They gain good PR with their mining locked 3060 cards. Gamers praise them without internalising that a number of mining cards would have been binned lower and sold, but instead an artificial restriction allows Nivida to allocate behind the scenes.
- MAGZine 6y agoThey're actively not winning good pr because gamers realize they're being screwed despite nvidia's rhetoric, and miners can now no longer recoup some money from old cards they no longer need by reselling to gamers. And, everyone realizes how shit this is for the environment. You can say Nvidia is making a smart business decision (questionable) but to say this isn't anything other than a pr disaster imo is incorrect. The people who were the target of their press releases saw right through it.
- dahart 6y ago> miners can now no longer recoup some money Ah, you’re a miner? You’re worried about their ability to make money? > gamers realize they’re being screwed How, exactly?
- qqii 6y ago> miners can now no longer recoup some money When it was no longer profitable miners sold their GPUs on the uses market, here is evidence of that: https://youtu.be/plrsxEGYO-A https://youtu.be/plrsxEGYO-A > gamers realize they’re being screwed Linus Tech Tips' video and the /r/hardware discussion puts this best: https://youtu.be/plrsxEGYO-A https://youtu.be/plrsxEGYO-A
- dahart 6y agoIt's true that cheap cards were available when bitcoin crashed in 2018. I'm not arguing that cheap cards weren't available. I'm saying the feeling that cheap cards are a huge positive for the gaming community is missing the forest for the trees, and forgetting the pain of what happened before there were cheap cards. Cheap cards came around eventually long after the cards had been unavailable and waaaaay overpriced. It was a relief for gamers that the bubble popped, but on balance, it was not a good thing that they had the bubble.
- qqii 6y agoThe initial sentiment in hacker news and reddit threads was overwhelmingly positive for nividia and against miners. Now that some time has passed and Linus (from LTT) has released his video I'd say the sentiment is still mixed. I'm still seeing many tweets praising nividia for finally taking a step for gamers. Here's an austrilian tech Youtuber who should know better: https://youtu.be/jnoNryem-G8 https://youtu.be/jnoNryem-G8