Thursday, April 15th 2021
NVIDIA to Introduce a New GeForce RTX 3060 GPU SKU with Ethereum Mining Limiter
Some time ago, NVIDIA introduced its GeForce RTX 3060 graphics card with GA106-300 Ampere GPU SKU. The GPU was the first to feature NVIDIA's latest additions like Resizable BAR and crypto mining algorithm limiter that limited the performance of the card while mining. However, despite NVIDIA's intention to keep the card out of the hands of crypto miners, there has been a lot of flaws in the plan. A lot of people discovered that the card still managed to turn in profits with the limiter enables. Later, NVIDIA accidentally released a driver that actually removes the limiter and enables the GPU to mine at full capacity, making the company's efforts useless.
Today we have new information that NVIDIA will launch an updated GeForce RTX 3060 GPU SKU that features a different ID, in the quest to limit card's mining performance. According to HKEPC, NVIDIA is producing updated GeForce RTX 3060 GKU SKUs with GA106-302 ID that should launch sometime in May, which are supposed to replace the GA106-300 SKUs now present. The software and the drivers will use the new ID to identify new SKUs and limit the performance of the card at mining tasks such as Ethereum mining. That way, it ensures that no driver version or bypass can trick the software to enable the card to use its full mining power and it shall render it unprofitable. Additionally, kopite7kimi, a known hardware leaker, claims that NVIDIA is also preparing updated GPU SKU IDs for GA104 and GA102 GPUs, with GA102-302/202 and GA104-302/202 variants supposedly coming.
Sources:
HKEPC, @kopite7kimi (Twitter), via VideoCardz
Today we have new information that NVIDIA will launch an updated GeForce RTX 3060 GPU SKU that features a different ID, in the quest to limit card's mining performance. According to HKEPC, NVIDIA is producing updated GeForce RTX 3060 GKU SKUs with GA106-302 ID that should launch sometime in May, which are supposed to replace the GA106-300 SKUs now present. The software and the drivers will use the new ID to identify new SKUs and limit the performance of the card at mining tasks such as Ethereum mining. That way, it ensures that no driver version or bypass can trick the software to enable the card to use its full mining power and it shall render it unprofitable. Additionally, kopite7kimi, a known hardware leaker, claims that NVIDIA is also preparing updated GPU SKU IDs for GA104 and GA102 GPUs, with GA102-302/202 and GA104-302/202 variants supposedly coming.
96 Comments on NVIDIA to Introduce a New GeForce RTX 3060 GPU SKU with Ethereum Mining Limiter
With no real passion or corner for Scalpers, of which your admittedly one.
So I wouldn't expect many to agree with any of your well reasoned pro capitalism and pro scalper points.
Imho there should be limits on consumer purchases and bots should be banned just like they are for concert tickets in some countries.
I wouldn't legalise re sale but I don't like it too much either, but it's a necessary thing.
Can we try to mooch back to the topic though please.
Putting it that way, I think anybody mining for profit in the moment is fighting a losing battle. Difficulty continues to increase as more miners jump on the bandwagon, so it doesn't really make sense to continually spend money to keep making the same (or hopefully even a bit more) money when a $700 graphics card makes $8/day. Each card has roughly an 88 day (call it 3 months) ROI with the market exactly as it is, and that's assuming you have free electricity and you are finding 3080s at MSRP, and not counting the cost of any supporting hardware, which is extremely generous. No, they have to be looking at profits later. They're hoping the prices will grow in the future.
That said, I'm not sure Ethereum is a safe bet. There's supposed to be some change coming soon that changes the way Ethereum is mined. I've got no idea what this means for the profitability of mining Ethereum, or the price of Ethereum itself. What I do is simply mine with Nicehash. Sure, technically I'm mining Ethereum, but I'm not getting any ETH. I'm getting paid in BTC, and I think I prefer it that way. It might be fun to hold on to a few different altcoins, but BTC is like gold in the crypto world. It's the big daddy and it's not going anywhere, at least, I don't think. If Ethereum blows up, I'm not sure what all these GPUs are going to do. It can't be as simple as "mine the shit out of some other altcoin". They're out there, sure, but Ethereum is the largest and most popular one by far right now. I don't think you can take all those GPUs and throw them at Zcash or something and expect to get anywhere. The profitability on any other altcoin with that many miners on it would be terrible without some significant influx of fiat to back it up. If it can't be mined profitably anymore, they'd either have to pick another coin to be the chosen one, or maybe scatter into the various other coins.
That's the problem with GPU mining, though. GPUs are pretty versatile. They're not Ethereum ASICs. Ethereum just happens to be the best coin right now. That influence can be moved elsewhere to any other GPU mineable coin.
That's a depressing analysis. Could this be the beginning of the end of PC gaming we're seeing here? I certainly won't be paying out $1000 to upgrade my GPU every few years.
Like....go outside people. Unless you live in a communist utopia like australia or california, most things are open now. Go out and enjoy the spring weather, forget about GPUs for awhile.Holy red herring argument batman.We know exactly what would happen. We saw it after the first boom, where the price of the mighty 290x went from $750+ to $199 brand new in a matter of months, and stayed there for the rest of that GPU generation, somewhat bleeding into thenext generation.
On that note, I find it odd that on a tech forum that is quite focused on gaming, we have people coming in and calling out those of us who are upset we can't get a graphics card (without paying 3-4x the price) like we're a bunch of crybabies or something. You guys do realize that a lot of us are already here anyway because we like to game, right? Some of us even like high powered components and never play any games. Combine that with the pandemic, which is still going on by the way, which is giving a lot of people all over the world increased interest in gaming, because there's not much else to do, and the supply constraints... What do you want us to do? Play solitaire all day?
I mean, my GTX 1070 (and PS2/PS3) are doing just fine, but I get it. Maybe some of us aren't happy with the performance of even high end Pascal and want an upgrade. Maybe some of us have something even slower and passed up on Turing (affectionately dubbed "Turding" by some) because the price/performance was terrible. And now we're here. With nothing to do and nowhere to go with this stinking covid. I'd be pissed too if I had a lessor card and higher performance requirements. This is a PC enthusiast forum and many of us are gamers, I figured most of us would understand that. We're all in the same boat unless you're rich enough to not care or lucky enough to have gotten a decent card at a sane price, in which case, shove off and enjoy your goodies without spitting on the less fortunate from your high horse.
And, again, this is coming from someone who doesn't really give a rat's ass about video card prices right now. I'm happy with what I got, but I understand the frustrations of those who aren't. Take a good look around and you'll see people trying to make do with what they have. There's been a sharp increase lately in threads about "bought a fake graphics card" or "help me clock the dog shit out of my GT730". Some people aren't able or willing to pay these prices. And should we have to? Should it really cost $1000 just for a midrange graphics card to be able to play video games from this decade? I don't think that's a big ask.
This time the nerfing mechanism is built into the silicon themselves as flashing BIOS and using the 470.05 driver won't work
Igor's lab 3080 Ti anti-mining
Link me a crack that I can flash a 3060 with. It doesn't exist.
some of these cards may pass though the hands of retailers and even gamers on their way to ebay but ebay is where they will all end up..
will the coming 3080ti get nerfed.. somehow i doubt it but the msrp price will be much higher whatever happens..
trog
I had a EVGA GTX1070, but I sent it back for RMA when Metro Exodus released, my textures weren't displaying correctly. They found fault with the card apparently, but they wanted to replace it with an inferior product and didn't cover Dead on Arrival within the limited warranty time remaining, so I asked for a refund, I only got half my money back.
After that I got a RTX 2060, ironically, I still had that texture issue. Here I got my full refund back and bought a new monitor while waiting for the new RTX 3000 series which was just a couple of months away and at the same time also upgrade my other components as there is clearly something wrong with either the CPU or RAM. In the meantime I am using my very old GTX660Ti which keeps crashing my games.
So yeah, now I have corrupt textures with a card that keeps crashing games.
I refuse to pay scalper prices, so now I wait, for 5 more years if need be but I will not be coerced into buying at these price levels and no, I will never buy second hand again due to miners.
In any case, it's pointless to upgrade the CPU/Mobo and RAM if I can't buy a GPU. By the time I can snag a GPU, the new Ryzen and Intel platforms will launch. I am annoyed but I have a lot of patience.