NVIDIA is purposely crippling the Ethereum mining power of their upcoming GeForce RTX 3060 GPU by 50% to increase inventory for gamers.
Today, NVIDIA announced the upcoming launch of the GeForce RTX 3060 on February 25th for $329, and has made a drastic step to make sure miners do not steal all of the released inventory.
Instead of allowing the GPU to be used for any purpose, the RTX 3060 drivers will purposely reduce performance by 50% when it detects the card used for Ethereum cryptocurrency mining.
"With the launch of GeForce RTX 3060 on Feb. 25, we’re taking an important step to help ensure GeForce GPUs end up in the hands of gamers."
"RTX 3060 software drivers are designed to detect specific attributes of the Ethereum cryptocurrency mining algorithm, and limit the hash rate, or cryptocurrency mining efficiency, by around 50 percent."
"That only makes sense. Our GeForce RTX GPUs introduce cutting-edge technologies — such as RTX real-time ray-tracing, DLSS AI-accelerated image upscaling technology, Reflex super-fast response rendering for the best system latency, and many more — tailored to meet the needs of gamers and those who create digital experiences," Nvidia announced today.
By purposely reducing the new RTX 3060's performance, NVIDIA is hoping to push cryptocurrency miners towards its new line of CMP dedicated mining GPUs.
The new CMP GPUs do not include a display port and come in varying hash rates ranging from 26 MH/s to 86 MH/s.
| 30HX | 40HX | 50HX | 90HX | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ethereum Hash Rate(1) | 26 MH/s | 36 MH/s | 45 MH/s | 86 MH/s |
| Rated Power(2) | 125 W | 185 W | 250 W | 320 W |
| Power Connectors(2) | 1x 8-pin | 1x 8-pin | 2x 8-pin | 2x 8-pin |
| Memory Size | 6GB | 8GB | 10GB | 10GB |
| Starting Availability | Q1 | Q1 | Q2 | Q2 |
As NVIDIA states that the software drivers will cripple the RTC 3060, it is not clear if it can be bypassed using third-party drivers or software.
Comments
Some-Other-Guy - 3 years ago
Try In Store pickup only!
One card per household until inventory stabilizes
Then we would all have at least one card
Demonslay335 - 3 years ago
Sounds like a dangerous "game" to play, trying to detect what your hardware is being used for. Good intentions behind it I guess, but bet it false-positives at some point. Next up, Intel underclocks the CPU when it thinks you're running enterprise-level software not on a Xeon?
ctigga - 3 years ago
Agreed @Demonslay335.
NVIDIA just went down in my book. ANY vendor that tries to force/restrict me into using their offering in a particular way (*cough* Windows 10 *cough* Nvidia) will not have my support.
I'm always astounded when tech companies take these dictatorial approaches; I would expect the same from those who believe in security through obscurity.