Galax launches RTX 3080 and RTX 3070 GPUs with crippled Ethereum mining performance

Nvidia's giving Ethereum mining a nerf with their latest RTX series GPUs.



Read more about Galax's RTX 3080 and RTX 3070 LHR GPUs.

Would be interesting to see how they are lowering the mining perf and if it at all lowers gaming perf.

surely they wouldnt ,,,would they

Dicehunter said:

Would be interesting to see how they are lowering the mining perf and if it at all lowers gaming perf.

Click to expand...

Cryptocurrency mining has a specific hardware utilisation profile and that can be tracked by Nvidia so that their BIOS and Drivers can then work to limit performance.

Ethereum mining is a workload that is limited by very specific factors, like memory bandwidth. I bet that Nvidia is just lowering the memory clock speeds of their GPUs when Ethereum mining is detected. Hash rates scale fairly linearly with memory bandwidth, and that is why mining "optimisation" involves cranking memory clocks and lowering core clock speeds/power use.

Nvidia won't reveal the exact mechanism behind this, as it would help people circumvent the lock. Gaming-wise, nothing should change. Mining has very specific performance characteristics, and no game would work similarly to that.

Alternatively they could use their AI/ML prowess and train their cards to detect mining workloads miners use and then in firmware tell the cards when detected to artificially stop running the GPU. Would be harder to crack firmware than a driver.

Take a step further and make it cause screen flickering and by turning off display ports too. Make it an inconvenience to mine.