Cryptocurrency mining makes a move to RTX 3000 Series Laptops

Have feeling Nvidia could do more from a technical sense to make it more difficult for their cards to be used in mining.

 

They could make their bios to clock down to 100 mhz when a miner is detected, making the gpu unusable for mining. Obviously nvidia has no interest in doing that, so they wont.

 

A true plague. No other way to describe it

 

I'd give anything if the government would step in and take steps to make all this "money for nothing" BS crash, causing everyone involved in it to lose everything they've invested. The whole thing is a boil on the ass of humanity.

 

Dude, crypto rigs are running 24/7, unless the owner needs to do some maintenance. If there's some local power billing system making power at night, for example, far cheaper than during daytime, I reckon it's possible someone might stop/scale down the system for the more expensive period. Not even the most hardcore gamer can keep gaming like that. Normal people game only a limited number of hours in a week, depending on their RL circumstances and if a new Elder Scrolls has finally been released. Secondly, the number of gamers don't expand that fast. Many people want to throw out their old card and get a new one. The new one might even eat less electricity. However, when the miners get practically all the cards, like now, every single one of those cards will be added to the 24/7 pool, whereas the gamers will still keep gaming with their old cards. So, when a card goes to mining, it's largely cumulative, when it goes to a gamer, chances are it changes very little, just replacing an old card. Now, of course miners also throw out old cards to replace with new ones, which is why I wrote "largely".

 

Probably they could do something on hardware (VBIOS) and/or software (drivers) level to make those GPU's inefficient for crypto mining, at least to do something to look good in the eyes of PC enthusiasts and gamers: "..hey folks, not that we didn't tried to stop this crap...", but...

But it would be just a waste of resources on their side, short term solution, miners would eventually find a way to crack this protection either by modded VBIOS or modded drivers, by now it's a well oiled machinery with a s#it load of genuis behind to jump in if something goes in the wrong way...

I'm almost positive someone (many of them) outhere is busting their asses and brain cells to crack the protecton behind PS5/XBSX/XBSS and use that (when comparing to GPU prices atm) relatively cheap hardware inside for mining crypto. Once that happens, if it ever happens or if it happens in this 2021 mining craze, for sure Sony and MS will be forced to do something because they'll be loosing a lot of money on games gamers wouldn't buy because they can't find a single next gen console out there to purchase.

PC entusiasts and gamers are left to fight their battle alone, neigther NVidia or AMD would or could do something to ease this fight. It's a harsh reallity, but we can just sit down and watch...

 

And then there's this: I buy a used GPU because I can't find a new GPU. The guy who is selling says: "almost new, I bought it in 2020". But in practice, the GPU is a lung that smoked 500 cigarettes/day. The GPU burns and I'm left without my old GPU, without the "new" GPU and I have nowhere to buy a really new GPU.

 

An interesting point. Maybe they could make an hardware chip that would throttle the GPU if it had a 100% usage for more than 3 hours or if it detected the 100% usage always running the same stuff over and over again, the same way they detect when the GPU is running Furmark and throttle the GPU for protection. Of course they would need to create some exceptions for those using their GPUs for professional but maybe it could be done.

The problem is that Nvidia and AMD don´t care about it! They are selling everything they make without any effort. They don´t need to spend money on marketing or make discounts because miners buy everything they can.

In the end for them, a sale is a sale, no matter if it´s a gamer or a miner. Of course they are not going to admit it...

 

think its bad now.
wait 20 years.
bitcoin will use 90% of all energy.

 

the sooner they ban bitcoin the better.
and every other coin.

 

In the past, I kept my hardware working 24 hours a day for file sharing. And yes, my PC always received the necessary care.
There is no hardware that does not decay, and gaming GPUs are not built to run 24/7 for 365 days a year.
Nobody stops you from disagreeing with me, but I don't buy cryptocurrency GPUs.

 

Not gonna happen, ever, lot's of money for R&D would be wasted on these "protection chips" or SW techniques inside drivers to prevent crypto just to realise some few hours or days later some genius dude on the payroll of some huge mega-miner(s) has found a hack to prevent this protection.

^^^^ Pretty much this, why bother, money comes easily...

The only thing they should be worried about long term looking is lets say year or year and a half from now when time comes for AMD and NVidia to release new GPU architecture and (hopefully) till then (or at the same time) this crypto bubble bursts with all that used hardware market flooded with all those used cheap RX 6000 and RTX 3000 cards who's going to buy their freshly released and again probably OVERPRICED GPU's? Many of us here thinking with our heads/wallets will just buy used previous gen GPU, dirty cheap, probably still under warranty, as a temporary solution until AMD and NV will be forced (if hopefully crypto 3.0 doesn't happens again) to drop the prices of the latest gen GPUs. But there is, and it's been like that for at least a decade, huge army of doesnt-matter-how-much-it-costs-I-need-to-have-the-latest-and-greatest PC early adapters out there willing to burn crazy amounts of money on the latest GPU technology. That's why now we are here where we are: 10 years ago top of the line entusiast GPU was how much, $500, $600... fast forward to 2021, top-tier GPU's with a bit of a "crypto-help" now costs $1500, $2000, $2500... if one can find any.

Scenario No.2 for PC, AMD and NV... Just imagine year, two or three from now (and this is a very plausible scenario if low supply thing continues this downhill route in next half a year or even more) dissapointed community of PC gamers and entusiasts willing to spend their money on new stuff drops below 70%, 60%: some will drop this expencive PC gaming hobby (many will, no doubt), some will go easy gaming route (consoles), some will return to retro-gaming (it's on a rise for sure), lots of heavy-productivity oriented users will turn their heads to the (very promissing, have to admit) latest Apple products... Who's gonna left to buy latest gen overpriced GPU? We all know who: those ones who accepted the "fact" that once the latest $500 GPU now in his latest itteration has to be "worth" $1500 or even more. Apple has "schooled" (better term: brainwashed) his heard of sheeps that way long time ago to do that, now they're lying on a pile of money...

 

I like my free PC gear ,thanks Crypto

 

Nvidia already do this. It's exactly what quadro and telsa cards are - cards built for different markets that gaming cards don't work well with due to restrictions built into them. I am sure if the crypto market looked like it was going to last (and we have no idea as gpu mining comes and goes) they would do the same again and have specialist mining cards. It a) allows them to make more money by selling the cards for more and (b) allows them to control their markets so for example they can make sure more gaming cards are available.

 

Tesla cards are another league. But Quadro cards are pratictically GeForce GPU's with a few mods here and there (on the PCB surounding GPU and different VBIOS) + specialised Quadro drivers = premium priced products for professionals. Had a pleasure, years ago, to take a visit to my friend who has a company for making graphics animations for commercials. Backthen he had a rendering farm made of regular (much cheaper than comparable Quadros) GeForce cards, not sure if they were GTX 4xxx or 5xx generation, modded on a hardware level (some smd component level modifications on the cards PCB) + Quadro VBIOS and those were actiong like a true Quadro cards. He was so proud doind that hack with a help of a local electronics genius. Huge amount of cards in that rendering farm, all of them in a giant closed loop (couldn't believe my eyes, but some year later he had a leak... yikes, it was bad), iirc it was around 3x cheaper for him to buy those GeForce cards and modd them to Quadros then buyin real Quadro cards.

 

Wait a minute... Are you that dude from another G3D thread who was happily scalping more than few GPU's bought at MSRP?

Scalping GPUs... Now mining with GPUs...

I've wasted too much time typing this, nothing here really worth quoting...

 

I have sold some free RTX 3080's that I bought with Crypto.I will be buying more PC gear with Crypto in the future like I have been for 10+ years.I've wasted too much time typing this, nothing here really worth quoting...