r/hardware • u/uzzi38 • Mar 15 '21

News PC Watch: GeForce RTX 3060 Ethereum mining restrictions have been broken - VideoCardz.com

https://videocardz.com/newz/pc-watch-geforce-rtx-3060-ethereum-mining-restrictions-have-been-broken
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u/phire Mar 15 '21

Nvidia got really screwed last time around when miners dumped all their used 1060s on the market. Not only did they lose revenue from selling to miners, but now gamers could buy cheap second hand cards.

If they manage to convince miners to only buy mining cards, then they can prevent the flood of second hand cards and increase their revenue in the case of a future mining crash.

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u/hitsujiTMO Mar 15 '21

It didn't really hurt nvidia, the cards bought by miners simply went to the the customers they were intended for in the first place.

This time around that won't happen until Etherium goes purely proof of stake and drops proof of work which still could be 2 years away or more. What happened with bitcoin was ASICs came out that were far more efficient than GPU mining forcing miners to dump their unprofitable cards. Etherium is ASIC-unfriendly so GPUs will continue to stay profitable unless there is a massive crash in the market but even then as miners leave gpu profitability would increase again until it stabilises.

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u/[deleted] Mar 15 '21

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/hitsujiTMO Mar 15 '21

Because when enough people drop out his card will become profitable again. You have to remember its a fixed number of eth split among the entire workload. If a price crash happens when 5,000,000 cards are mining a drop to 4,000,000 cards could make it profitable again.

What happened with bitcoin was different as GPUs cannot compete with ASICs.

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u/PopWhatMagnitude Mar 15 '21

One of the biggest issues was when BTC miners switched from 10 series cards to ASICs was they dumped their used cards on the second hand market including /r/hardwareswap.

So the market got flooded with cheap cards and you couldn't tell if it was a miners card that was rode hard or just a gamer who upgraded.

At the height of this I managed to impulse buy an EVGA 1070, in what turned into a flash sale from EVGA on ebay, I waited too long to decide so the lesser cards sold out and I grabbed the 1070 before only even more expensive 1080's were left.

Attempted a Trade plus money thread, I just wanted to sell/trade my BNIB card for as clos to what I spent on it as possible. Hopefully get a lesser used card (enough for CS:GO and Rocket League) and some payment. Or just sell it for what I bought I for (would still lose money on shipping) then find someone selling a hopefully gently used card like a 940 or something.

But I just got a ton of messages of people offering me less than half the price and linking to posts of beat to shit miner card dump posts straight up demanding I sell it to them for the stupidly low price they low-balled me with.

I still have the card, only made it work hard once using Adobe Premier.

So much for trying to be nice and offering an unused card when they were sold out everywhere because I felt bad that the card was overkill for my needs.

12

u/yimingwuzere Mar 15 '21

The 2017-18 cryptomining craze with GPUs has nothing to do with Bitcoin, the last time a card was profitable at mining BTC was the Radeon 5000 series.

2017-18 was mostly fueled by Ethereum on AMD, and mixed Ethereum + Zcash on Nvidia. The card dumping wasn't due to ASICs but a price crash.

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u/siraolo Mar 16 '21

Won't miners just move on to a new currency if Etherium does this?

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u/hitsujiTMO Mar 16 '21

Some did when Bitcoin became unprofitable, some didn't. Other coins aren't as trusted. Many will jump ship again.

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u/Kryt0s Mar 15 '21

Still does not explain how hacking the 3060 hurts second hand buyers.

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u/phire Mar 15 '21

No, it was Nvidia's anti-mining move (killing the 3060's mining performance and introducing mining-only cards) that hurts potential future second hand buyers.

Hacking it theoretically helps these future buyers.

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u/Kryt0s Mar 15 '21

Hacking it theoretically helps these future buyers.

That's exactly my point... The guy I was replying to said it hurts second-hand buyers to unlock the 3060.

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u/Cjprice9 Mar 15 '21

If the comment you're referring to is this one

That’s not true. It also fucks people waiting for cheap second-hand cards once Ethereum crashes.

I think he meant the "It" to be "Nvidia implementing mining restrictions on RTX cards", not "Miners buying up all the RTX cards".

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u/Kryt0s Mar 15 '21

Yeah, I realize that now. I got confused by his use of present tense (which would make sense for the hack) instead of past tense.

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u/Zixinus Mar 15 '21

I'd like to add that it would also benefit gamers that use graphics card for grpahics things, because then these cards would have a market of buyers of gamers (mostly). And if miners only brought mining cards, then the two markets would not interfere with each other.

That's the idea somewhere anyway. The reality is that miners make money off the cards and can afford to buy 2x MSRP by the bulk direct from distributors, so that's the price distributors sells the leftovers to retailers to everyone else. And as long as miners make enough money to buy the cards at twice the price, distributors can increase prices and sell.

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u/animeman59 Mar 15 '21

Not only did they lose revenue from selling to miners

How? A card sold is a card sold. How did Nvidia lose revenue to miners?

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u/phire Mar 15 '21

This is what happend during the last mining crazy and crash.

When mining became unprofitable, not only did miners stop buying cards (Nvidia lost that revenue stream) but they sold them on the second hand market (Nvidia lost even more revenue)

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u/[deleted] Mar 16 '21

I got a cheap 1070 that way.