Another day and another news from NVIDIA’s home. With the growing demands of GPUs, most of which are being dug up by cryptocurrency miners, the GPU manufacturer has now announced a new product range that will only cater for the exploitation of Ethereum and other cryptocurrencies. The company is also limiting the capability of the upcoming RTX 3060 by lowering the hash rate or mining efficiency by about 50%.
“With the launch of GeForce RTX 3060 on February 25, we are taking an important step to ensure that GeForce GPUs end up in the hands of gamers,” said NVIDIA in a report. In essence, the company has designed the software drivers for the RTX 3060 so that it can detect whether the card is being used for mining, which limits the overall capability. This seems to be a necessary step as gamers around the world are dealing with limited stocks or extraordinarily high prices quoted by retailers and scalpers online.
Hi Ryan. It’s not just a driver. There is a secure handshake between the driver, the RTX 3060 silicone and the BIOS (firmware) that prevents the removal of the hash restriction.
Bryan Del Rizzo (@bdelrizzo) 19 February 2021
CMP or Cryptocurrency Mining Processor is the latest product that NVIDIA offers to specifically meet the needs of Ethereum mining. CMPs will be sold through authorized partners, including Asus, Colorful, EVGA, Gigabyte, MSI, Palit, and more. It is optimized to deliver the best mining performance with a completely different range of specifications. For example, the CMP cards will not contain display outputs, so they can be more densely packed and have a lower peak core voltage and frequency. Its manufacture therefore does not affect the availability of GeForce GPUs for gamers, although crypto-miners can only devour the shares of both.
There are a variety of models in the range, including the NVIDIA CMP 30HX processor, which is available with 26MHps Ethereum hash rate, 125W nominal power, an 8-pin power connector and 6GB RAM. The NVIDIA CMP 40HX processor offers 36MHps Ethereum hash rate, nominal 185W power, an 8-pin power connector and 8GB RAM. The NVIDIA CMP 50HX processor has 45MHps Ethereum hash rate, 250W power, 2 × 8-pin power plugs and 10GB of RAM. And lastly, the NVIDIA CMP 90HX processor with 86MHps Ethereum hash rate, 320W power, 2 × 8-pin power plugs and 10GB of RAM will be available. The CMP 30HX and CMP 40HX will be available in the first quarter of 2021, while the CMP 50HX and NVIDIA CMP 90HX will be available sometime in the second quarter of this year.
NVIDIA is primarily taking this step as an attempt to salvage the GeForce RTX 3060 which will hit stores on February 25th. The company has faced monumental claims for its current range of RTX 30 series cards, including the RTX 3070, RTX 3080 and the RTX 3090. We have heard that scalpers use bots to automatically buy GPUs in bulk to sell them extremely high prices on eBay.
While the company suggests that the drivers of the RTX 3060 would downgrade the mining capability of the GPU, Bryan Del Rizzo, Global Director, Public Relations at NVIDIA, provided more information. According to Mr. Rizz there will be a secure handshake between the driver, the RTX 3060 chip and the BIOS (firmware) that prevents you from removing the hash speed limit. This means that it will not be possible to use an older version of the driver to restore the originally intended hash rate. We still need to get confirmation from NVIDIA whether it will bring a similar update to the existing RTX cards to bring a balance in the supply and demand of GPUs around the world.
A few days ago, NVIDIA announced its plans to release the stock of its older GPUs – the GTX 1050 Ti and the mid-sized RTX 2060 as another measure to control the growing demands of the GPU market. Certain retailers in Europe have recently been spotted offering the upcoming GeForce RTX 3060 at more than double the original $ 329 cost. .