Nvidia adds anti-mining technology to RTX 3060
One week before the much-anticipated release of the RTX 3060, NVIDIA made a surprising announcement of “nerfing” the RTX 3060 by cutting down its Hash Rate to half. This move was made to “ensure Geforce GPUs end up in the hands of gamers.” In the same blog post, details of the NVIDIA Cryptocurrency Mining Processor (CMP) were also announced.
The RTX 3060, which is NVIDIA’s latest upcoming release, will be one of the most anticipated GPUs of NVIDIA’s RTX 30 series, and will receive half of its original Hash Rate, which is targeted specifically for Ethereum mining. Moreover, NVIDIA PR Manager, Bryan Del Rizzo, said that unlike the typical driver bypass that people did on previous iteration GPUs, this one will implement a secure handshake between the RTX 3060 and BIOS, which makes the previous bypass methods obsolete.
Hi Ryan. It's not just a driver thing. There is a secure handshake between the driver, the RTX 3060 silicon, and the BIOS (firmware) that prevents removal of the hash rate limiter.
— Bryan Del Rizzo (@bdelrizzo) February 19, 2021
Meanwhile, the NVIDIA CMP HX series, according to the blog post, is said to be a “Dedicated GPU for Professional Mining” will be a “fully open, airflow-optimized bracket which is configured to allow a greater number of GPUs to be controlled by one CPU,” and is optimized to ensure that mining investors get their mining investments back.
NVIDIA has revealed four CMP HXs in the lineup: 30 HX, 40 HX, 50 HX, and 90 HX. All four vary in terms of performance power, pins, and memory.
Not everyone’s happy with the new anti-mining GPUs
In hindsight, fans of the gaming community are delighted with NVIDIA’s recent move. However, YouTube channel Linus Tech Tips isn’t a fan of NVIDIA’s new stunt. In a recently posted video on February 21, Linus expressed massive disappointment over NVIDIA for launching the CMP as a means of prioritizing their stock price instead of actually solving the problem with the current stock shortage of GPUs.
Linus revealed that NVIDIA’s CMP isn’t the company’s first attempt to crack into the crypto mining industry. He reminded viewers of the GP106, which was the GTX 1060 with a chip cooler, no display outputs and also a lockdown driver that made sure that it won’t be used for gaming.
Linus goes on to argue that in the context of global shortage with GPUs, issues with scalping and a sudden surge of crypto mining creating an “exclusive” GPU that is solely meant for mining will not address the shortage of Silicon production (and GPU shortage). Even worse is that the newly released CMPs will have no resale value whatsoever, unlike traditional RTX GPUs that can potentially still be sold at a certain amount, taking a page from the massive number of RTX 1080 Tis sold in 2018 when crypto mining slowed down.
Linus speculated that NVIDIA’s move will ensure that consumers will buy both crypto mining CMPs while also potentially buying the latest GTXs that will come out in the near future because CMPs will “not end up flooding the second-hand market.”
The RTX 3060 is set to launch on February 25 and will be priced starting at $329, or roughly estimated around P15,950. While no official announcement has been made for the NVIDIA CMP’s price and exact date of availability, the NVIDIA blog vaguely states that all 4 HX variants will be available within the first half of 2021, with 30 HX and 40 HX available in the first quarter of the year.
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