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NVIDIA's licensing. Note that the 3060/3070 is a "GeForce" whereas a 4000 is a "Quadro". Then look at the GeForce driver EULA: https://www.nvidia.com/content/Dr

NVIDIA's licensing. Note that the 3060/3070 is a "GeForce" whereas a 4000 is a "Quadro". Then look at the GeForce driver EULA: https://www.nvidia.com/content/DriverDownloads/licence.php?lang=us&type=GeForce https://www.nvidia.com/content/DriverDownloads/licence.php?l... > No Datacenter Deployment. The SOFTWARE is not licensed for datacenter deployment, except that blockchain processing in a datacenter is permitted. I could never figure out why they allowed blockchain processing, given how wasteful much of it was and how it impacted card supply for years, but there you go.

pmontra 3y ago
Because they made a lot of money selling to miners at prices that maybe they couldn't ask to gamers?
- 8organicbits 3y ago
  Wouldn't the GeForce license then say "no block chain" and a different NVIDIA brand (BlockForce?) would allow it, letting NVDA charge more for large scale mining? Otherwise it looks like gamers and miners are paying the same prices.
  - bbatsell 3y ago
    They do. But since most miners would just ignore the license, they implemented LHR (low hashrate) beginning on GeForce 3000-series that detects the types of ops used for mining and artificially slows the GPU to about 25% of its actual speed.
    - pmontra 3y ago
      They did that but with mixed success. One random link from a Google search: https://old.reddit.com/r/EtherMining/comments/t4mwxj/workaround_for_mining_throttling_slowdowns_with/ https://old.reddit.com/r/EtherMining/comments/t4mwxj/workaro...
      - latchkey 3y ago
        Their source code got leaked and it was reverse engineered to defeat it. That said, it was all kind of late in the game, GPU mining died not too long afterwards.
- sodality2 3y ago
  I bet that now the AI demand spike will be the new crypto demand spike that NVDA latches onto.
Aerroon 3y ago
This seems insane to me. It makes me even more confused that AMD/Intel aren't trying their hardest to go after AI compute. Nvidia is basically leaving the door open. But I suppose that the idea could be to protect their gaming market in a way. If datacenters were buying up gaming GPUs then that could cause shortages for regular customers.
- latchkey 3y ago
  AMD is trying their hardest.

pmontra 3y ago

Because they made a lot of money selling to miners at prices that maybe they couldn't ask to gamers?

8organicbits 3y ago
Wouldn't the GeForce license then say "no block chain" and a different NVIDIA brand (BlockForce?) would allow it, letting NVDA charge more for large scale mining? Otherwise it looks like gamers and miners are paying the same prices.
- bbatsell 3y ago
  They do. But since most miners would just ignore the license, they implemented LHR (low hashrate) beginning on GeForce 3000-series that detects the types of ops used for mining and artificially slows the GPU to about 25% of its actual speed.
  - pmontra 3y ago
    They did that but with mixed success. One random link from a Google search: https://old.reddit.com/r/EtherMining/comments/t4mwxj/workaround_for_mining_throttling_slowdowns_with/ https://old.reddit.com/r/EtherMining/comments/t4mwxj/workaro...
    - latchkey 3y ago
      Their source code got leaked and it was reverse engineered to defeat it. That said, it was all kind of late in the game, GPU mining died not too long afterwards.
sodality2 3y ago
I bet that now the AI demand spike will be the new crypto demand spike that NVDA latches onto.

Aerroon 3y ago

This seems insane to me. It makes me even more confused that AMD/Intel aren't trying their hardest to go after AI compute. Nvidia is basically leaving the door open. But I suppose that the idea could be to protect their gaming market in a way. If datacenters were buying up gaming GPUs then that could cause shortages for regular customers.

latchkey 3y ago
AMD is trying their hardest.