In a blogpost, NVIDIA has announced that it will be halving the mining hash-rate of the budget Ampere GPU, the RTX 3060 to deter cryptominers from clearing out supplies meant for gamers. The RTX 3060 slated to launch on the 25th of Feb will come with drivers that severely restrict the mining performance of the card with Ether, cutting the profitability in half.
Halving Hash Rate
The RTX 3060 drivers will be able to detect specific attributes of the Ethereum cryptocurrency mining algorithm, and limit the hash rate, or cryptocurrency mining efficiency, by around 50 percent. It’s unclear whether miners and mining companies will be able to find a workaround to this restriction or not. Only time will time but I have a feeling they’ll figure something out.
To address the specific needs of Ethereum mining, the company has announced the NVIDIA CMP, or, Cryptocurrency Mining Processor, product line for professional mining.
30X | 40X | 50X | 90X | |
---|---|---|---|---|
Ethereum Hash Rate(1) | 26 MH/s | 36 MH/s | 45 MH/s | 86 MH/s |
Rated Power(2) | 125 W | 185 W | 250 W | 320 W |
Power Connectors(2) | 1x 8-pin | 1x 8-pin | 2x 8-pin | 2x 8-pin |
Memory Size | 6GB | 8GB | 10GB | 10GB |
Starting Availability | Q1 | Q1 | Q2 | Q2 |
CMP products — which don’t do graphics — are sold through authorized partners and optimized for the best mining performance and efficiency. They don’t meet the specifications required of a GeForce GPU and, thus, don’t impact the availability of GeForce GPUs to gamers.
For instance, CMP lacks display outputs, enabling improved airflow while mining so they can be more densely packed. CMPs also have a lower peak core voltage and frequency, which improves mining power efficiency.
However, it looks like the CMP lineup is less profitable at mining than the consumer GeForce graphics cards. For example, the 90X which is the top-end product is a fair bit slower than the RTX 3080 which manages a hash rate of over 100MH/s while the 50X is slower than the RTX 3070 which has a hash rate of 55MH/s. The 40X which is supposed to be the RTX 3060 replacement manages just 36MH/s while the 3060 is reportedly capable of close to 50MH/s. Update: It looks like the 30X, 40X, and 50X are based on Turing rather than Ampere. The 90X are likely made from discarded GA102 dies.