9 ms·

They crippled their Geforce cards in terms of mining while simultaneously launching different, more expensive, dedicated mining cards[0]. [0] https://www.nvidi

by jperry 6y ago

They crippled their Geforce cards in terms of mining while simultaneously launching different, more expensive, dedicated mining cards[0]. [0] https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/cmp/ https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/cmp/

ziml77 6y ago
It's possible those cards are being made with chips that are too defective to output video. Unfortunately only Nvidia knows for sure and they're not going to say anything truthful about it.
- Rule35 6y ago
  If the cards were cheaper, or even the same price but available, then I doubt there'd be an outcry. But they charge more, for a surely defective part. It'd be like buying a car and finding a clause that says if you manage to make money off of it they'll take a percentage or "brick" the hatch or something, to prevent your profitable usage. Nvidia should back the fuck off and just sell a product.
  - rcxdude 6y ago
    Even if they were cheaper miners wouldn't like them: one thing which substantially reduces miners' operating costs is the resale value of the GPUs they are using. They can buy a GPU, mine on it for a year or two, and then sell it for ~50% of its original value (or even higher in today's markets). The mining cards with zero resale value (which will much more quickly become landfill) would need to be substantially cheaper to make this worthwhile.
    - Rule35 6y ago
      Right. But if they openly sold defective half-finished cards for mining they'd still be less popular products but people wouldn't feel insulted.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- paulmd 6y ago
  All of the mining card SKUs except one were confirmed to be using older Turing-based architecture on a completely different fab and node (and one that's not currently bottlenecked to the same extent as TSMC 7nm/Samsung 8nm are). So they are not harvested silicon, but they also don't compete for fab time either.
SloopJon 6y ago
I haven't seen any pricing on the CMP cards yet. Are you sure they're more expensive?
- paulmd 6y ago
  I would assume they would be. Miners price hardware based on the hashrate, resale value is nice as a safety but serious miners aren't figuring on dumping all their hardware the first time price drops a little bit. Take a look at the data compiled by Tom's Hardware and you'll see the 3060 Ti has a 51% price premium over the 3060 on ebay. That is the "mining premium" in action. The 3060 is a bit slower on paper but it mines pretty much as well. https://www.tomshardware.com/news/gpu-pricing-index https://www.tomshardware.com/news/gpu-pricing-index As such, if the mining cards mine twice as fast, they're twice as valuable to miners, and they'll pay twice as much for them. Pricing them less than gaming cards is leaving money on the table and completely unnecessary when they'll sell anyway.
babypuncher 6y ago
If they could actually enforce this then I would be all for it. Crypto mining is the biggest and most pointless waste of energy since nuclear weapons testing. All these crypto miners are just making the planet hotter, while pissing off people who have more legitimate uses for these cards but cannot realistically obtain one because they are being hogged by the miners.
- panzagl 6y ago
  Nuclear weapons testing kept us from using nuclear weapons, worth it.
  - px43 6y ago
    Who is "us"? Surely you don't mean the USA. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_a...
    - filoleg 6y ago
      The event you are linking to was the real world "test" of nuclear weapons. And quite a lot of people attribute the lack of real world "testing" of nuclear weapons since then to that specific event.
- px43 6y ago
  Eh, the vast majority of these cards are used by people who are rendering fantasy worlds so they can run around pretending to be an elf, or a soldier, or some other stupid thing. Lots of them are full grown adults too, just wasting time that they could be doing something meaningful with. That's way WAY dumber than powering a next generation global financial infrastructure.
  - madamelic 6y ago
    Wow, that's new. A cryptocurrency proponent who hates video games.
  - 6y ago

by jperry 6y ago

ziml77 6y ago

It's possible those cards are being made with chips that are too defective to output video. Unfortunately only Nvidia knows for sure and they're not going to say anything truthful about it.

Rule35 6y ago
If the cards were cheaper, or even the same price but available, then I doubt there'd be an outcry. But they charge more, for a surely defective part. It'd be like buying a car and finding a clause that says if you manage to make money off of it they'll take a percentage or "brick" the hatch or something, to prevent your profitable usage. Nvidia should back the fuck off and just sell a product.
- rcxdude 6y ago
  Even if they were cheaper miners wouldn't like them: one thing which substantially reduces miners' operating costs is the resale value of the GPUs they are using. They can buy a GPU, mine on it for a year or two, and then sell it for ~50% of its original value (or even higher in today's markets). The mining cards with zero resale value (which will much more quickly become landfill) would need to be substantially cheaper to make this worthwhile.
  - Rule35 6y ago
    Right. But if they openly sold defective half-finished cards for mining they'd still be less popular products but people wouldn't feel insulted.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
paulmd 6y ago
All of the mining card SKUs except one were confirmed to be using older Turing-based architecture on a completely different fab and node (and one that's not currently bottlenecked to the same extent as TSMC 7nm/Samsung 8nm are). So they are not harvested silicon, but they also don't compete for fab time either.

SloopJon 6y ago

I haven't seen any pricing on the CMP cards yet. Are you sure they're more expensive?

paulmd 6y ago
I would assume they would be. Miners price hardware based on the hashrate, resale value is nice as a safety but serious miners aren't figuring on dumping all their hardware the first time price drops a little bit. Take a look at the data compiled by Tom's Hardware and you'll see the 3060 Ti has a 51% price premium over the 3060 on ebay. That is the "mining premium" in action. The 3060 is a bit slower on paper but it mines pretty much as well. https://www.tomshardware.com/news/gpu-pricing-index https://www.tomshardware.com/news/gpu-pricing-index As such, if the mining cards mine twice as fast, they're twice as valuable to miners, and they'll pay twice as much for them. Pricing them less than gaming cards is leaving money on the table and completely unnecessary when they'll sell anyway.

babypuncher 6y ago

If they could actually enforce this then I would be all for it. Crypto mining is the biggest and most pointless waste of energy since nuclear weapons testing. All these crypto miners are just making the planet hotter, while pissing off people who have more legitimate uses for these cards but cannot realistically obtain one because they are being hogged by the miners.

panzagl 6y ago
Nuclear weapons testing kept us from using nuclear weapons, worth it.
- px43 6y ago
  Who is "us"? Surely you don't mean the USA. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_a...
  - filoleg 6y ago
    The event you are linking to was the real world "test" of nuclear weapons. And quite a lot of people attribute the lack of real world "testing" of nuclear weapons since then to that specific event.
px43 6y ago
Eh, the vast majority of these cards are used by people who are rendering fantasy worlds so they can run around pretending to be an elf, or a soldier, or some other stupid thing. Lots of them are full grown adults too, just wasting time that they could be doing something meaningful with. That's way WAY dumber than powering a next generation global financial infrastructure.
- madamelic 6y ago
  Wow, that's new. A cryptocurrency proponent who hates video games.
- 6y ago