Monday, March 1st 2021
NVIDIA 90HX Crypto Mining Processor Based on Ampere GA102-100 GPU
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.
Source:
VideoCardz
41 Comments on NVIDIA 90HX Crypto Mining Processor Based on Ampere GA102-100 GPU
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).
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.
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.
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.
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).