NVIDIA has made big announcements to contain the cryptocurrency mining boom and the subsequent disruptions in supply that are affecting its GeForce graphics card line. The company not only announced a dedicated line of GPUs under the CMP (Crypto Mining Processor) banner, but also revealed that for the next GeForce graphics cards, they will reduce their hash rate by a huge margin to prevent miners from stealing the inventory. The company has already given more information on how it will all work.
NVIDIA sheds light on GeForce Cryptocurrency Mining Nerf GPUs, all upcoming game cards may be damaged for miners
According to NVIDIA’s Bryan Del Rizzo, it appears that the cryptocurrency mining nerf is more than just a driver limit. Many people assumed this from yesterday’s announcement, where it was stated that the software drivers were designed to detect specific attributes of the Etereum mining algorithm, as it is the most popular algorithm with the highest efficiency and profit rates at the moment, and limits the hash rate at about 50 percent.
Hi Ryan. It is not just a driver thing. There is a secure handshake between the driver, the silicon RTX 3060 and the BIOS (firmware) that prevents removal of the hash rate limiter.
– Bryan Del Rizzo (@bdelrizzo) February 19, 2021
Considering that NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 is aimed at the mainstream segment and the first reports showing that it would offer mining performance at the same level as an RTX 3070 (after tuning), it would undoubtedly be a sales success for mining, but that would be it means that many players who were saving to get the card at launch would not be able to do so. However, with the new limit, NVIDIA can divert miners from game cards and purchase its dedicated CMP line.
So, back to the drivers, the BDR claims that the driver is only part of the limit. The entire process takes place through a secure handshake between GPU, Driver and BIOS (Firmware). All three avoid removing the hash limiter. Now NVIDIA is quite confident that this would be enough to deal with miners running GeForce GPUs, but at the same time, we cannot be sure about the overall effectiveness of this, as VBIOS and driver mods can allow miners to overtake limit one more time.
What I said.
The old game card device specs and ids will be EOL.🤣 https://t.co/hSjEmifanh– kopite7kimi (@ kopite7kimi) February 18, 2021
Thank you, I must explain this. 🤔
We may not see new specs, but each old spec will have a new SKU. It is possible.– kopite7kimi (@ kopite7kimi) February 19, 2021
On top of that, it is rumored that the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 is just the beginning. More Ampere video cards and future GeForce Gaming may be added to the list soon. This does not mean that using a new driver on an existing video card will limit your hash rate, but a new SKU or existing video card with a new device ID may offer a similar limit.
So, to make things clear, your existing RTX 30 series card running on your PC will not be affected by this (even if you install new drivers), but let’s say you leave a new one that has received an ID or SKU update , now that it could probably be limited. This means that all GPUs, whether new or produced after yesterday’s update, need to be tested and evaluated again.
This was seen with the GeForce RTX 3060 by users who already have the practical board. YouTuber and retailer CryptoLeo demonstrate how the GeForce RTX 3060 gets damaged in seconds. The mining rate for the card goes from 41.5 MH / s in Ethereum to just 24 MH / s in a few minutes. Note that no new drivers for the card have been released yet, but this shows that there is more than just software in action, which can detect mining algorithms very quickly.
The user was also running an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 1080 Ti on the same mining platform and this was not affected. This is definitely a step in the right direction for NVIDIA, as it would allow more players to get their hands on GeForce graphics cards made for them, and not for large-scale GPU mining operations.
News source: Videocardz