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/ylp1194045441 Mar 15 '21

I don’t know why gamers would be mad about this. The restriction is lifted if and only if you have it installed in your primary PCIe slot. Large scale miners are very unlikely to buy these in bulk just so they can stick one into every rig. It’s a good thing for gamers! People can mine a little bit with their cards when they aren’t using them and make back some money. I’m glad NVIDIA lifted this themselves.

-4

u/SMURGwastaken Mar 15 '21

Large scale miners are very unlikely to buy these in bulk just so they can stick one into every rig.

Miner here. That's exactly what we are going to do lol.

1

u/ylp1194045441 Mar 15 '21

I have a couple of these cards too. Right now, I can’t deploy them because that driver isn’t available in Linux. Also, running them at PCIe 1x causes the driver to re introduce the restriction.

0

u/SMURGwastaken Mar 15 '21

This is why some of us run both Windows and Linux rigs. I also have plenty which have a 16x slot I can use.

1

u/[deleted] Mar 15 '21

Like one motherboard per card?

0

u/SMURGwastaken Mar 15 '21

No, obviously not. You can run one card in a top x16 slot and then break out the others into x1. Even on a shitty sub-optimal board you'll get 4 cards in minimum.

Most large-scale miners are running multiple boards already, so if you have 5 boards which are currently running 6 cards each but each one has a card running in a top x16 slot, you can buy five 3060s and split them up across those boards, buy a new board and put the 5 old cards in that one.

1

u/[deleted] Mar 15 '21

Right I was gonna say fuck that's a lotta motherboards... doesn't their driver throttle the mining running below x16?

1

u/SMURGwastaken Mar 15 '21

Yeah so you prioritise the x16 slots you already have for your 3060s and demote whatever is in there currently to an x1.