If this works (spoiler: it won't, it will be cracked within a month), it will create more e-Waste as miners will toss their no-video-output-mining-only cards after they're no longer the latest tech, instead of being able to resell them to gamers, thinning the used graphics card market, forcing more gamers to buy new from nVidia instead of rebuying old cards online.
That makes me angry, it should make you angry too.
This can be just as easier, and probably more truthfully, read as "miners can no longer make the used market a minefield by selling overtaxed consumer cards without disclosing their provenance." Because, yeah, having ex-miner cards burn out is a pretty common thing on the used market. Great!
Cryptocurrencies are not inherently good or valuable and cryptocurrency people aren't special and their world-burning habits and desires need not be privileged.
The core clock is undervolted while mining - but the memory clock is absolutely cranked to the maximum it will support.
I've been idly mining on an RTX3080 for 6 months now, and the hashrate has slowly gone down about 20% since new. I suspect the thermal pads on the memory chips are slowly cooking. I replaced them once already and restored a bit of hashrate.
? My CPU actually underclocks itself if I am running a heavy AVX-512 workload. Actually, back when I had it in a cheaper motherboard, my system would crash because the MB couldn't deliver enough power to the CPU.
But I agree with the first sentence. Lots of miner cards are undervolted because what matters is performance per watt, just like many server cpus.
It underclocks, but generates more heat in the AVX-512 case (that’s the whole reason for the underclocking). If miners are undervolting to reduce power consumption, heat generation is going to lower by necessity.
It's not a myth. These things get racked in stacks of GPUs in what may or may not be actually-cooled data centers. Undervolted or not, when you couple that with constant load you're stressing devices manufactured to consumer specs.
Actually, miners optimise for computation/kWh of electricity (versus computation/16ms of time for gamers), which leads to running mining GPUs at significantly lower wear and tear level (lower voltage scaling, lower clock rate, etc) than gaming GPUs.
> having ex-miner cards burn out is a pretty common thing on the used market.
Having used GPUs in general burn out is somewhat common, but it's less common for ex-miner cards than for ex-gamer cards.
They are clearly marking the new models with a new suffix on the model number. As someone who has been trying for months to buy a 3080 and has zero interest in crypto, this is fantastic news... IFF it means I can actually purchase a card.
This doesn't make me angry, and I don't think it should make you angry either.
I'm personally angry that this whole crypto ponzi scheme has gotten so big. That miners are producing e-Waste is the least of its environmental impact.
The amount of e-waste seems like worrying about the trash created from discarded plastic bottles of windshield washer fluid as the environmental impact of cars.
Has anybody written about the opportunity cost to society of technological resources going to crypto mining instead of to consumers, creators, and scientists? I'd be interested in reading such an analysis of cost/benefit of crypto vs. creation with the limited supply of hardware and electricity.
randomhodler84, have you heard the phrase "last man holding the bag?" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bagholder This crypt ponzi scheme turned the natural progression of itself into a meme that reinforces itself. But GME is at $180, so you could be right. Stupidity could yet win and our future could be doomed to feed an ever increasing amount of resources into accounting. I hope it's just mania and we can go back to regular low energy databases to keep track of funds.
Yes, and also yes, it is a meme. Money itself is just a meme, we just don’t all agree to its definition. Bitcoin as a meme is self reinforcing, incentivizing meme, with so many self defense mechanisms — it’s crazy. Highly contagious too! Groundbreaking and game changing in its very existence. What I wonder about constantly “is it the greatest meme”? Bitcoin consumes the lives and speech patterns of its advocates far stronger than any religion. It’s easy from the outside to say “that’s not rational”. Can we ever go back to less?
Argument: money is a meme. Bitcoin could be the strongest meme ever, as demonstrated by its consumption of energy, a proxy for human perceived value. Arguing over energy is just arguing over human preference.
Today, a half-megawatt mine, Miehe says, “is nothing.” The commercial miners now pouring into the valley are building sites with tens of thousands of servers and electrical loads of as much as 30 megawatts, or enough to power a neighborhood of 13,000 homes. And in the arms race that cryptocurrency mining has become, even these operations will soon be considered small-scale.
For people clamoring for renewable energy, this is an obscene amount of energy needed to do a single task - mine bitcoin. Which should make it even more obscene that all of that energy is being used for what? The benefit of a few people. Staggering to think how common this is and the article even states a 30 megawatt system is small compared to some of the other sites that are out there.
What about the electricity cost for powering the card. Doesn’t that outweigh the e-waste part by a significant margin?
Just because a card can’t be used by gamers doesn’t mean the card must be tossed, there are plenty of non-gaming uses such as AI. You’ll probably see an aftermarket for both types of cards.
Also, like regular graphics cards, newer versions are highly prized so one might say that graphics cards as an industry is already all about e-waste. Unless you’d like to buy my Radeon 9800 or my GTX 1070? They’re still perfectly good for gaming… except everybody wants the new RTX ray tracing etc.
> Also, like regular graphics cards, newer versions are highly prized so one might say that graphics cards as an industry is already all about e-waste. Unless you’d like to buy my Radeon 9800 or my GTX 1070? They’re still perfectly good for gaming… except everybody wants the new RTX ray tracing etc.
This is highly inaccurate, particularly on the used market. People want cards that can handle whatever games they play within their budget. A lot of older cards run tons of games quite well still, especially if you accept lower framerates / resolutions.
RTX in particular isn't actually that coveted by gamers from what I've seen. It's seen as a nice-to-have at best.
there's no such thing as a "mining-only" card, they are still good for compute tasks like grid compute.
what you are looking at is a future that is very, very bright for BOINC and folding@home scores.
the cards will never be worthless, if nothing else someone will buy them up for 25 bucks and store them until the (inevitable) next mining crisis, and any reasonable miner is going to chose 25 bucks versus having to pay to dispose of them properly (ahahah, sorry, we all know if it comes to that they're going in the nearest creek).
anyway you get the point though, the value is never going to actual zero, people will buy them for development work, for grid compute, or just as a bet on the next mining crisis. A hundred bucks for a card is better than nothing.
Being angry / outraged / upset is somewhat newer on HN.
Not discounting it, but I tend to be more interested in the . well . interesting conversations and questions then to go down the angry / upset / outraged path.
The no video out cards used in mining are already out of gamers hands. If they throw them away (they won't - existing product is working fine) they would no need to buy non-gaming product. Finally, I think you underestimate the value of the existing product, if they did want to resell into gaming market they would probably find success.
I don't like Nvidia's approach for other reasons (mostly 'cause market segmentation raises prices in the end imo). But I'm pretty sure miners very price oriented. They'd sell rather than trash whatever cards they have. And it seems unlikely they'd be using any unsellable cards since those are energy inefficient.
There's a shortage of Nvidia card/chips after all.
Edit: Now I read the article, this is literally only being added to new cards and with a warning.
...Why would you toss a perfectly working piece of equipment that brings you profit?
If anything, there is a second hand market for mining cards for those who want to set up a mining farm for cheaper with a bit more risk.
That makes me angry, it should make you angry too.