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Is software throttling on GeForce and a new range of dedicated mining cards really a good thing for gamers, though?
Nvidia throttles crypto hash rate on RTX 3060s to address GPU shortage
Next generation GPUs have been difficult to get a hold of since launching in 2020. Whether it’s the global shortage of silicon, improved generational performance of the latest cards, the increased demand and supply chain complications from COVID-19, or the recent resurgence of the crypto bull market that is driving the card shortage – gamers are are missing out on next-gen gaming experiences because supply is just not able to keep up with demand.
So it’s perhaps a little surprising that despite this ongoing shortage, Nvidia managed to turn over US$3.2 billion in revenue on gaming products in the quarter running to January 31st. This represented a 67 percent year-onyear increase in turnover for the GeForce branding, which was roughly 50 percent of the company’s total revenue during that last quarter.
Gaming is Nvidia’s bread and butter, but the gaming GPU story is complicated by the ebbs and flows of the cryptocurrency market. While last year crypto was still in the shadow of the enormous 2017/2018 run, the market began hitting all time highs again in December 2020 and there hasn’t really been much in the way of a correction by March 2021. When the price of crypto is inflated it becomes more profitable to mine cryptocurrencies and it just so happens that gaming GPUs offer one of the best bang-for-buck propositions for startup miners.
The unpredictable cycles of digital currencies have a big impact on GPU availability as we saw clearly during the last run, but GPU manufacturers still haven’t found a way to capitalise on crypto opportunities without snubbing its more reliable user-base of gamers.
Nvidia has given it another crack, by deliberately crippling the GeForce RTX 3060 GPU’s crypto performance with software that halves the hash rate when mining Ethereum, and introducing a new range of dedicated cryptocurrency mining cards called Nvidia CMP.
According to APC’s friends at Tom’s Hardware, three of the four new CMP HX cards (the 30HX, 40HX and 50HX) would be based on the earlier Turing silicon architecture of the GTX 1660, the RTX 2070 and the RTX 2080 Ti, respectively. By using older silicon, the company can introduce more cards to the market without using the same machinery for this year’s Ampere-based GPUs. One CMP card however, the 90HX, does seem to be based on the same silicon as the RTX 3080 GPUs, but because it won’t be released until the next quarter, it’s hypothesised that Nvidia will be using recycled defective dies that don’t meet the GeForce gaming standard.
While these moves seem good on the surface, Nvidia’s crypto throttle will only be turned on for Ethereum-based blockchains, which means Bitcoin, or any of the other altcoins that are based off it (there are many), can continue to mine unimpeded on the 3060 cards.
Linus Tech Tips was also keen to point out that driver software throttling has been circumvented pretty easily in the past, and that the global silicon shortage will mean production of new CMP HX graphics cards will impede supply of the new 30-series gaming cards, whether it’s on the same architecture or not.
Linus also argued that the CMP XH GPUs won’t ever work as gaming GPUs, so gamers will be stripped of the potential to wait for the next crypto bust to grab a bargain GPU if there’s too many CMP HX cards produced.
We’ll leave it to you to decide whether Nvidia’s looking out for gamers or if it’s just trying to placate them.
“When the price of crypto is inflated it becomes more profitable to mine cryptocurrencies and it just so happens that gaming GPUs offer one of the best bang-for-buck propositions for startup miners.”