Friday, February 19th 2021
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NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Anti-Mining Feature Goes Beyond Driver Version, Could Expand to More SKUs
Yesterday NVIDIA announced the company's first Crypto Mining Processor (CPM) that serves the purpose of having a dedicated processor only for mining with no video outputs. Alongside the new processors, the company has also announced that in the next driver update the GeForce RTX 3060 GPU will get Etherium mining performance halved, limiting the use of this GPU SKU by miners. However, up until now, we have thought that NVIDIA is limiting the mining performance of this card by simply having a driver detect if crypto mining algorithms are in place and limit the performance. However, that doesn't seem to be the case. According to Bryan Del Rizzo, director of global PR for GeForce, more things are working behind the driver.
According to Mr. Del Rizzo: "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." This means that essentially, NVIDIA can find any way to cripple the mining hash rate even if you didn't update your driver version. At the same time, according to Kopite7Kimi, we are possibly expecting to see NVIDIA relaunch its existing SKUs under a different ID, which would feature a built-in anti-crypto mining algorithm. What the company does remains to be seen.
Sources:
Bryan Del Rizzo (Twitter), @kopite7kimi (Twitter) #1, @kopite7kimi (Twitter) #2, via VideoCardz
According to Mr. Del Rizzo: "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." This means that essentially, NVIDIA can find any way to cripple the mining hash rate even if you didn't update your driver version. At the same time, according to Kopite7Kimi, we are possibly expecting to see NVIDIA relaunch its existing SKUs under a different ID, which would feature a built-in anti-crypto mining algorithm. What the company does remains to be seen.
104 Comments on NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Anti-Mining Feature Goes Beyond Driver Version, Could Expand to More SKUs
As far as tanking performance - not going to happen. A gaming product is benched by countless reviewers. Those benchmarks would be all too easy to use in court to prove such misdeeds. Nvidia isn't that naive. Besides, what a lot of people seem to forget is people like to upgrade cards. Nvidia don't need to gimp performance to make that happen.
See, it's that simple.
Also, while we're at it, go create a successful multi-billion GPU company as having just two players on the market reeks of a collusion. I remember NVIDIA and AMD used to fiercely compete with each other - nowadays, their performance/price ratios are too effing similar as if they've agreed to it behind closed doors.
Also, product segmentation is not necessarily a bad thing as most AMD fans believe. You've got a choice of super expensive professional products and consumer products which are a lot cheaper while moving to a single product stack would mean everyone would have to pay more because the capex and opex remain the same.
As for "bricking" you've gone over the top - 99.99% of people never attempt to upgrade their VBIOS and most eschew upgrading their BIOS because they simple don't know it can be upgraded. And those who do that willingly to unlock features or circumvent OEM limits? Well, some people choose to drive at speeds above 80 miles per hour - you can give them that.
The rest of your post is just pure nonsense. Also, I know of no drivers that can force a firmware update without user interaction.
Nor is 50% mining restriction sufficient to be honest, it needs to be 1/3rd to 1/4th to really dissuade miners AND APPLY TO OTHER COINS! Ethereum is not the only game in town, there are a dozen new coins introduced daily so they'll just switch to mining other coins at full power without having to do any bios/hardware/driver modifications.
Someone know if this will work backwards or will be only for new cards?
I just want to know if NVIDIA made me throw my money in trash?