Wednesday, April 28th 2021
NVIDIA Silently Relaunching RTX 30-series with "Lite Hash Rate" Silicon Edition
Remember that story regarding NVIDIA relaunching a new RTX 3060 SKU that actually does limit the hash rate for Ethereum mining workloads? Well, not only has it been cemented, but it also has been expanded. Reports are coming in that all but confirm that NVIDIA is on its way to provide its partners with updated silicon that should put mining performance of their RTX 30-series cards into a less palatable price-performance territory for would-be miners. That, in turn, should bring them closer to NVIDIA's CMP (Crypto Mining Processor) cards instead - and as wanted by both the company and consumers.
According to the sources, the new graphics cards will be indistinguishable from those that are still in transit or in stock (all two of them worldwide, of course). NVIDIA is internally describing the revised silicon as "Lite Hash Rate", and that is the message they communicate with AIBs. Apparently, the new "Lite Hash Rate" graphics cards will range throughout the entirety of NVIDIA's already-released RTX 30-series portfolio, from the ill-fated RTX 3060 up to the RTX 3080 Ti - the only absent graphics card is the RTX 3090, apparently, which could mean that NVIDIA is confident enough on that graphics card's cost being too high to be attractive to miners - especially when you consider how much more they are going for above the MSRP that was half-heartedly slapped on it. The new chips carry an update to their SKU identification - the GA102-200 chip that powers the RTX 3080 is being revised to GA102-202, as will all other chips made "lite" in this way. Expect the new cards to start hitting retail come June.
Source:
Videocardz
According to the sources, the new graphics cards will be indistinguishable from those that are still in transit or in stock (all two of them worldwide, of course). NVIDIA is internally describing the revised silicon as "Lite Hash Rate", and that is the message they communicate with AIBs. Apparently, the new "Lite Hash Rate" graphics cards will range throughout the entirety of NVIDIA's already-released RTX 30-series portfolio, from the ill-fated RTX 3060 up to the RTX 3080 Ti - the only absent graphics card is the RTX 3090, apparently, which could mean that NVIDIA is confident enough on that graphics card's cost being too high to be attractive to miners - especially when you consider how much more they are going for above the MSRP that was half-heartedly slapped on it. The new chips carry an update to their SKU identification - the GA102-200 chip that powers the RTX 3080 is being revised to GA102-202, as will all other chips made "lite" in this way. Expect the new cards to start hitting retail come June.
85 Comments on NVIDIA Silently Relaunching RTX 30-series with "Lite Hash Rate" Silicon Edition
Nvidia should cash in, like everyone else... which they clearly are. Good on them!
Miners see easy money so they jump on the bandwagon, "influential" dickheads adding to the overhype on social media, ass grabbery in the supply chain... Sounds like a mixed bag of nuts.
It just doesn't make any sense to me, hence one of the reasons I frown upon crypto since the sole purpose behind it all is to generate money via mining by burning electricity to solve a blockchain puzzle... Now if this were tied into something like Folding@Home or similar scientific purpose, it would make sense.
Maybe I just have a warped perception vs others, but it seems to me that despite the increase in knowledge & technology, there's an apparent noticeable decline in wisdom with an influx of stupidity.
It's a joke coin much like DOGE; I applaud their efforts in making it folding@home, solving real-world issues, it's the only Proof-of-Work crypto I can't hate as its PoW system actually contributes to society in a positive way. There are far better cryptos than BTC and ETH; they are antiquated and wasteful.
I mean..... in general after the next big change in Ether it might be not viable to mine anyway, which might come even sooner than those cards.... so I'm really..... not sure what to think of it. Still.... happy if I get the card I ordered (and payed) more than 3 months ago (when it was listed as available.....)
Really curious if this limiter really ONLY limits mining performance or also affects other areas - hope our @W1zzard takes a look at this. Besides being a perfect fellow German with incredible attention to detail with the new testsuite and redo of so many benchmarks he has the perfect dataset as point of reference to see if/what changed with those "lite has rate" cards besides ether-limitations :)
Every company in the game really stacking up these days...do you really think Intel is gonna come and care for a gamers' a** ? They may be at 2010 AMD driver level, otherwise we already had that overpriced (ofc!!) piece of crap, supposedly saving the market. They (nvidia/amd/intel) are having a coalition and there's nothing consumers could do except buying brand new GPUs. But where's the unity in this little crowded world ?...
So it will still be profitable to mine. Others may switch some of their systems to other coins, etc. I've already been doing Conflux and I make money from it. Not as much as ether mind you.
And when the cards release, the 3080 may be used to mine other cryptos and we are all back at square one.
If you're not a miner then think about that next time you get paid and look at the taxes you pay.
NVIDIA_DEV.220D = "NVIDIA Graphics Device" ; ???
NVIDIA_DEV.2503 = "NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060" ; old
NVIDIA_DEV.2504 = "NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060" ; new