NVIDIA 90HX Crypto Mining Processor Based on Ampere GA102-100 GPU

[Uskompuf]

We recently reported that the NVIDIA 30HX and 40HX CMP cards will be based on the Turing TU116 and TU106 processors. This was good news to those hoping for improved graphics card supplies however, according to a recent report the top-end 90HX CMP card will be based on the Ampere GA102-100 GPU also found in the RTX 3080. The report also claims that the 50HX will feature the Turing TU102 GPU found in the RTX 2080 Ti making the 90HX the only card in the series to feature an Ampere design. The 50HX and 90HX cards are expected to launch later this year and will likely restrict GPU supply if the cryptocurrency boom continues.



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[watzupken]

I think this simply suggests that if the mining boom continues, there will be little to no RTX 3080 for sale. Considering the GA102 is already in very tight supply given that its a big and complex chip, carving another mining SKU out from the limited pie is going to make sure that most gamers won't be able to get it.

 

[nguyen]

is Nvidia gonna nerf hashrate of every 3060Ti, 3070, 3080 and 3090 made from March onward though ?

 

[HD64G]

is Nvidia gonna nerf hashrate of every 3060Ti, 3070, 3080 and 3090 made in March onward though ?

Maybe on a driver-bios level which isn't any big problem for the mining farms, just for simple customers.

 

[Gmr_Chick]

is Nvidia gonna nerf hashrate of every 3060Ti, 3070, 3080 and 3090 made in March onward though ?

I doubt they would. If they did, expect a nice class-action lawsuit to follow.

 

[watzupken]

is Nvidia gonna nerf hashrate of every 3060Ti, 3070, 3080 and 3090 made in March onward though ?

While they did not explicitly confirm any dates, I think there were articles that mentioned that Nvidia may be looking at same approach for other cards. Considering that there is a GA102 based mining card, it makes sense for them to enforce this mining gimp on RTX 3080 going forward.

 

[Legacy-ZA]

I doubt they would. If they did, expect a nice class-action lawsuit to follow.

Nah; it can only happen if nVidia did something to the current GPU's that they have already sold before the announcement. As it stands now, nVidia announced that they will implement the mining nerf on gaming SKU's going forward and have clarified, that they will have a specific line-up, especially for mining. One product serving their gamers and the other miners.

 

[watzupken]

I doubt they would. If they did, expect a nice class-action lawsuit to follow.

In my opinion, a class action against a corporate this big is at most like a slap on their wrist. They compensate you pittance for the amount of money they can make by selling the same card to miners at a higher price. Not to mention that if they continue to sell normal gaming cards for mining purpose, they will end up with an over supply at some point when crypto goes bust, due to a flood of used mining cards on the resale market.

 

[Vya Domus]

I'd actually get one for compute, I write OpenCL/CUDA and I don't really game these days so one of these would be fine. Of course, they'll likely cost a trillion billion, so I wont.

 

[ZoneDymo]

still completely about supporting gamers though, fo sho!

I doubt they would. If they did, expect a nice class-action lawsuit to follow.

Would that have a leg to stand on though?

 

[Dammeron]

nV said, that the will use defective GPUs, that couldn't work as a full-fledged graphics card.

Let's just believe for a moment in that statement and the minig cards really will be made with those drop-outs. But what happens, when the demand is too high? They'll start using normal GPUs, just to keep up with the orders - such things already happened in the CPU market a few years ago (selling working high-end CPUs with soft-blocked cores as low-end ones, cause there weren't enough defective ones to use).

 

[VrOtk]

is Nvidia gonna nerf hashrate of every 3060Ti, 3070, 3080 and 3090 made in March onward though ?

Nvidia introduced a 3060 handicap only for ETH-like algorithms. So that means that all the other hundreds of algos and thousands of coins can still be mined. Mining CFX on 3060 is only a bit less profitable than ETH, if there was no handicap, but it's still profitable.

And that's until the handicap gets removed for ETH, which will happen sooner or later. Plus such policy form Nvidia makes AMD cards a safer bet to build a rig with. So don't expect any availability for 6700, 6700XT and 6800 in a year or two.

 

[Gmr_Chick]

still completely about supporting gamers though, fo sho!



Would that have a leg to stand on though?

Nah, probably not. @Legacy-ZA explained it pretty well, and I agree

 

[Wirko]

still completely about supporting gamers though, fo sho!



Would that have a leg to stand on though?

No specific hashrate has ever been advertised by Nvidia, which means that the cards will still perform as advertised.

 

[JalleR]

Now we know why the 3080TI was delayed.

 

[silentbogo]

is Nvidia gonna nerf hashrate of every 3060Ti, 3070, 3080 and 3090 made in March onward though ?

That's what I understood from their press-release. Theoretically even for existing cards sold before March. Some "magic" driver-card negotiations will only work if a "mining" variant responds to driver request, which means the ones that won't will be gimped (though, not on the older driver versions).

I doubt they would. If they did, expect a nice class-action lawsuit to follow.

That's some idealistic thinking. Past examples show the opposite. Just look at "consumer" and "workstation" segmentation in both camps.
Only recently AMD pushed for "PRO" drivers for consumers, while NVidia followed with their "Studio" driver. It makes little to no difference in most cases, but it keeps consumers feeling worm, fuzzy and "not left-out" on the professional side of things, while at the same time not interfering with Quadro/Tesla and Radeon Pro/Instinct sales.

 

[ratirt]

NV is not going to lower hash rate on the graphics cards via driver. 3060 will have some bios mods for that hopefully (at least that would be reasonable). Other cards already released will not either via driver or Bios. If NV limits hash-rate of the currently released cards like 3080, 3070 etc. that would've been anti consumer action. The company have sold huge number of graphics card to miners (for mining purposes) and NV knew what they were doing. If the company started gimping the cards now (via driver especially), lawsuits will follow from all those mining companies who have purchased millions of these cards for mining, spending a lot of money, to find themselves screwed by the company who sold them these reassuring performance.

 

[watzupken]

That's what I understood from their press-release. Theoretically even for existing cards sold before March. Some "magic" driver-card negotiations will only work if a "mining" variant responds to driver request, which means the ones that won't will be gimped (though, not on the older driver versions).

I don't believe they can do much to gimp mining performance without pulling a BIOS level limitation. Nvidia have introduced a lot of driver updates since the release of RTX 3080, 3070 and 3060 Ti, which people can avoid updating to circumvent this issue. Miners don't really need new drivers as often as gamers in my opinion. In fact even implementing this limitation at the BIOS level may not be effective since people can share older BIOS from cards without these limitations and flash these new cards with it.

 

[DeathtoGnomes]

Sounds like Nv is pulling an intel here, the old nanometer shuffle..

 

[watzupken]

NV is not going to lower hash rate on the graphics cards via driver. 3060 will have some bios mods for that hopefully (at least that would be reasonable). Other cards already released will not either via driver or Bios. If NV limits hash-rate of the currently released cards like 3080, 3070 etc. that would've been anti consumer action. The company have sold huge number of graphics card to miners (for mining purposes) and NV knew what they were doing. If the company started gimping the cards now (via driver especially), lawsuits will follow from all those mining companies who have purchased millions of these cards for mining, spending a lot of money, to find themselves screwed by the company who sold them these reassuring performance.

If Nvidia sold them the cards, it is not going to be difficult for Nvidia to provide a way out for them, that is not available to "public". So that would have been taken care of easily.

 

[stimpy88]

My RTX2070 has an Ethereum hashrate of +-43MH/s @126W, so it will be interesting to see how much nGreedia wants for the 50HX, I don't think it's going to be $350 LOL...

 

[TheUn4seen]

Cards with no resale value would have to be dirt cheap to make sense for miners. nVidia tries to force people to buy them by restricting usability of consumer products, which is corporate greed at it's finest. I know several people who bought the 3080/3090 and do some single-GPU mining just to offset the horrendous cost of building a computer nowadays.

Also, this is a nice example of corporate hypocrisy. After GPU mining becomes unprofitable, the GPUs themselves might have a lot of life left in them, as shown by the 980/1080Ti which many people bought from mining operations and use to this day. The "mining cards" will immediately end up as waste.

 

[silentbogo]

I don't believe they can do much to gimp mining performance without pulling a BIOS level limitation.

That's exactly what they did, though. You are just thinking about it backwards.
Instead of "blocking non-mining cards" they are "blocking everything until proven you are a mining card".
As far as I understand the sequence is as follows:
1) Driver sends a request to GPU
2) If you have a new HX mining GPU, it'll respond. If you have any other GPU, it'll not respond
3) If the response is received and it is valid - allow mining. Otherwise - gimp.
That's why Nvidia said in their recent press release that it'll work for all 30-series cards.

But this approach won't hold if mining enthusiasts make older GeForce drivers work with new cards (which will eventually happen).

 

[stimpy88]

is Nvidia gonna nerf hashrate of every 3060Ti, 3070, 3080 and 3090 made from March onward though ?

Yes, but maybe not the 3090, as that's a cash cow already.

 

[Max(IT)]

I don't believe they can do much to gimp mining performance without pulling a BIOS level limitation.

even in that case, customized bios won't really be an issue...