• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Nvidia to cease 3000 series and replace with anti-crypto mining variant

cormack12

Gold Member
Source: https://www.3dcenter.org/news/gerue...ten-ampere-portfolios-mit-cryptomining-bremse

Using Google Translate

Based on the addendum tweet in particular , it can be seen that this is due to the expiry of all previous Ampere graphics cards *(excluding the GeForce RTX 3060)*and their simultaneous replacement by new graphics card models is to be implemented. These new models do not necessarily have to bring new or modified hardware specifications with them, but can definitely have exactly the same hardware specifications. The new models could therefore only have the cryptomining brake as a change compared to their predecessors. The point of the measure is that the new models can then no longer evade the cryptomining brake via BIOS flash or older drivers - because the device ID is different and nVidia has not had it for a long time (so easy ) can manipulate.

The shape of the whole thing, however, is still unclear: Speculatively, there could be a "5" series - GeForce RTX 3065 Ti, GeForce RTX 3075, GeForce RTX 3085 and GeForce RTX 3095 - or a "SUPER" series with an identical purpose. nVidia could also decide on completely different names or even different technical data.

j83evX.jpg
 

IbizaPocholo

NeoGAFs Kent Brockman

Polelock

Member
If only all gpus would have this done. I want to get a new one, but I'll not pay double or triple because people want crypto. I'm good.
 

DrCheese

Member
This would be a good move. At the end of the day, if your primary target market is PC gamers, yet all your supply is sucked up by miners you are just pushing them over to console gaming, which will hurt long term when GPU mining becomes useless.

Sure they're making a boat load of cash right now, but they're thinking long term here.
 
Odd question, and probably better if I just google it:

But I dont understand crypto mining, and what GPU's have to do with it.

In fact, I dont understand crypto mining at all. What the hell are they mining, and if its bitcoins, how in the world do you mine something that is virtually made?

Isn't bitcoins a virtual currency? Why do you have to mine them?

Ignore this question if it's a "better off to google than asking here" sorts thing.
 

ljubomir

Member
Odd question, and probably better if I just google it:

But I dont understand crypto mining, and what GPU's have to do with it.

In fact, I dont understand crypto mining at all. What the hell are they mining, and if its bitcoins, how in the world do you mine something that is virtually made?

Isn't bitcoins a virtual currency? Why do you have to mine them?

Ignore this question if it's a "better off to google than asking here" sorts thing.
You have to compute them. GPUs are good at it.
 
Odd question, and probably better if I just google it:

But I dont understand crypto mining, and what GPU's have to do with it.

In fact, I dont understand crypto mining at all. What the hell are they mining, and if its bitcoins, how in the world do you mine something that is virtually made?

Isn't bitcoins a virtual currency? Why do you have to mine them?

Ignore this question if it's a "better off to google than asking here" sorts thing.
It's pretty complicated and quite shady.
 
Odd question, and probably better if I just google it:

But I dont understand crypto mining, and what GPU's have to do with it.

In fact, I dont understand crypto mining at all. What the hell are they mining, and if its bitcoins, how in the world do you mine something that is virtually made?

Isn't bitcoins a virtual currency? Why do you have to mine them?

Ignore this question if it's a "better off to google than asking here" sorts thing.

Cryptocurrencies are not real so cannot be physically minted.

In order to generate a form of digital scarcity Bitcoin (et al) were designed to leveraging mining as a means to produce new coins into circulation. Mining serves a dual purpose:

1. Protects the network from Byzantine attacks by leveraging cryptographic consensus algorithms to enforce consistency of replicated state across all nodes
2. Miners participate in calculating/solving a hard cryptographic problem (which can only be solved via brute force processing & whose algorithmic complexity ramps on a incrementally increasing curve to reduce to amount of coins which can be produced over time) whose reward is the creation (minting) of new coins to the miner to spend/sell/exchange/stake/whatever

The latter used to require a modest CPU to accomplish and now requires the most powerful GPUs and dedicated ASICs to maximise hashing rate and yield the best economic returns (ultimately you're trading electricity for Bitcoin and investing in masses of mining HW to do it).
Eventually only the largest mining farms will be able to mint any coins and eventually there will be no more Bitcoin to mint.

Aka "just google it". :)
 
Last edited:
There's gotta be a point where Nvidia goes: It's cool that we have all this profit from miners and scalpers, but gamers are now either going AMD, or to new consoles. I know resources are scarce due to COVID and what not, but there's going to be a massive sour grapes in the PC community if Youtubers keep getting cards for test, show off how awesome they are, and then the average consumer gets overcharged to shit. I remember Nvidia saying these cards are going to be super affordable MSRP etc on their reveal and marketing, and it has now gone all to shit.
 

JohnnyFootball

GerAlt-Right. Ciriously.
Odd question, and probably better if I just google it:

But I dont understand crypto mining, and what GPU's have to do with it.

In fact, I dont understand crypto mining at all. What the hell are they mining, and if its bitcoins, how in the world do you mine something that is virtually made?

Isn't bitcoins a virtual currency? Why do you have to mine them?

Ignore this question if it's a "better off to google than asking here" sorts thing.
You're gonna get more ignores than you are anticipating. There are some excellent youtube videos that kind of explain it.
 
I'll believe it when I see it.
I still feel either they need to do something against scalpers, or they need to fundementally gimp or lockout mining operations from consumer cards. The amount of lol pictures going around where the Chinese buy up 3000 Series cards and Laptops are frustrating for the average user. Same shit happening with the consoles. Everybody wants to buy these, but can't cause bots and scalpers keep hitting the supplies.
 

RoboFu

One of the green rats
If only all gpus would have this done. I want to get a new one, but I'll not pay double or triple because people want crypto. I'm good.
They big problem with doing this to already released cards is they would degrading cards already sold. That’s a big no no at a legal level.
 

prag16

Banned
If only all gpus would have this done. I want to get a new one, but I'll not pay double or triple because people want crypto. I'm good.
Yep. This is exactly why my 970 is still limping along. I'll probably even get moved into my new 10600k build I'm doing soon. At least for a while.
 

KungFucius

King Snowflake
They big problem with doing this to already released cards is they would degrading cards already sold. That’s a big no no at a legal level.
Why would you think he is suggesting they retroactively do this on existing cards? I assume he was saying they should have done this from the start to limit the mining part of the 30XX demand. The rumor is new cards will have this. So the 3080 will be replaced by the 3080g or something that is basically the same GPU just gimped for mining so only gamers will want it. Then from now on they would likely continue to do this. It will also give them a better handle on the market. They now have a mining product so they can sell those to miners and GPUs to gamers and allocate chips to each product line in a way that makes sense for each market.
 

Phase

Member
I really hope this can solve the problem. I've been slowly buying parts this year as I normally do with builds to save money, but the only 3080's I find are $2500+. Like wtf. The card released at $700.
 

Phase

Member
Yep. This is exactly why my 970 is still limping along. I'll probably even get moved into my new 10600k build I'm doing soon. At least for a while.
Same thing I'm going to do. My 1070 is going straight into my new build until the prices come down or this new line is released.
 
Last edited:

Pagusas

Elden Member
So basically id be an idiot not to use my 3090 for mining now that the GPU supply will ultimately drop for other miners making profits/demand go up higher for those that do. or is mining going to become cheaper in general forcing people to scale their mining up to make it worthwhile?

A single 3090 won’t net you much if any profit, and cost more in electricity to run then you’ll earn from mining.
 
A single 3090 won’t net you much if any profit, and cost more in electricity to run then you’ll earn from mining.
Not what i've read online. planning on looking into it anways since i have an extra 2080 ti laying around but was told a 3090 will get me almost double the returns.
 

eot

Banned
Odd question, and probably better if I just google it:

But I dont understand crypto mining, and what GPU's have to do with it.

In fact, I dont understand crypto mining at all. What the hell are they mining, and if its bitcoins, how in the world do you mine something that is virtually made?

Isn't bitcoins a virtual currency? Why do you have to mine them?

Ignore this question if it's a "better off to google than asking here" sorts thing.
"Mining" is trying to create something that when you run it through a hash function comes out with x number of leading zeros. Like 000000000ADNJASD123LAD2.

Because hashing algorithms are designed to be one way (though it's hard to prove), the only way you can find the input that when hashed gives you at least that many zeros is to guess randomly, so that's what miners do.

The thing that they hash is actually a list of transactions that people have broadcasted that they want to make, so it's basically a ledger. They then add another transaction to the ledger saying "I get some free bitcoin", then they append random garbage to the end to change the hash. If they don't get a hash with at least x zeros, they try again with other random garbage at the end. If they succeed then they have created another 'block' in the blockchain, and it's a chain because in addition to the list of transactions the thing they hash also contains a unique id of the previous block. After they succeed they transmit the block they found, and all the other miners can easily verify that it hashes to the correct thing.
 
Last edited:

Snake00

Member
Odd question, and probably better if I just google it:

But I dont understand crypto mining, and what GPU's have to do with it.

In fact, I dont understand crypto mining at all. What the hell are they mining, and if its bitcoins, how in the world do you mine something that is virtually made?

Isn't bitcoins a virtual currency? Why do you have to mine them?

Ignore this question if it's a "better off to google than asking here" sorts thing.
Miners vote with their processing power and decide which transactions are valid.
If the honest miners control more than 51% of the overall processing power and therefore have 51% of the votes, the system stays secure. The miners are rewarded for their efforts with coins.
 
I honestly feel pretty mixed about this. On the one hand it stops cryptominers buying up all the cards (which is good!)...on the other hand it also stops the little guy from making back a little of the cost of his gaming PC on the side.
 
Top Bottom