One of the most important points during this period of great demand for graphics cards is that part of it is bought by professional users who want to exploit cryptocurrencies. The recent launch of new charts coupled with record highs in the cryptocurrency market has led to a rebirth of the mining community, which could recently earn ~ $ 15 per RTX 3090 graphics card. These professional miners buy graphics card per pallet load, sometimes bypassing retailers and going directly to distributors as they can guarantee a complete delivery at once. There are fewer cards available for gamers who want to build new systems, leading to empty shelves and rising prices for the handful of cards it will ever make to retailers.
To offer gamers at least one fig leaf, certain graphics board partners have in the past only started producing graphics cards for mining. It had no graphical outputs, making it nearly impossible to use games, but it filtered part of the mining market to buy it, rather than taking stock for the gamers. It was a weak patch, and now NVIDIA has gone one step further to separate mining and gaming.
NVIDIA’s announcement today is twofold: first, the upcoming launch of the RTX 3060 graphics on February 25de, and secondly, the announcement of a new range of dedicated mining hardware.
RTX 3060: mining speed halved
One of the main drivers why the new graphics cards are sold is because they do the mining operations for different cryptocurrencies (namely for Ethereum and other derivatives) so well and the users earn a semblance of return on their purchase. Mining requires hardware and software, and this is the software side that NVIDIA is tackling with this first announcement.
For the upcoming RTX 3060, the software drivers for this graphics card will automatically halve the cryptocoin hash rates, meaning that the amount they can specifically earn will be halved. The software drivers will do this by detecting the math coming through the pipeline and restricting access to the hardware for these operations. At this point we are not sure if it is a reduction in the frequency that the drivers will cause the operations or simply limit to half the hardware, but whatever it is, NVIDIA hopes it will break down professional miners to buy these cards if the proceeds are on it. is halved.
No plans are announced for cards currently on the market, perhaps because the card drivers already allow a complete tariff calculator solution, and older drivers can easily install.
NVIDIA CMP: Dedicated mine silicone for Ethereum
In the same way that ‘crypto’ cards without video outputs start to drive the market for balance, NVIDIA goes a step further and removes the video outputs completely from the silicon. There are other possible optimizations that can be done for power and performance, but at this point NVIDIA simply calls graphics silicon. It can be a mixture of custom new silicone, or simply already manufactured silicone with defects in the video output pipeline.
The new NVIDIA CMP HX Dedicated Mining Cards will be available in four variants up to 320 W, and from authorized partners including ASUS, Colorful, EVGA, Gigabyte, MSI, Palit and PC Partner. These cards (along with drivers) are also designed so that more of these cards can be activated in one system.
| NVIDIA CMP HX Mining Hardware | ||||
| AnandTech | 30HX | 40HX | 50HX | 90HX |
| Eth Hash Rate * | 26 MH / s | 36 MH / s | 45 MH / s | 86 MH / s |
| Rated power | 125 W | 185 W | 250 W | 320 W |
| Reference Connectors | 8-pen | 8-pen | 2 x 8-pin | 2 x 8-pin |
| Memory Size | 6 GB | 8 GB | 10 GB | 10 GB |
| Availability | V1 | V1 | V2 | V2 |
| * NVIDIA Measured by DAY and Epoch 394 | ||||
What’s interesting here is that these states are not so wonderful. Here’s an outline of what NVIDIA’s cards do today, and you can see why:
| NVIDIA hardware rates | |||
| AnandTech | Hash rate | Force | Efficiency MH / s / W |
| RTX 3090 | 121 MH / s | 290 W | 0.42 |
| RTX 3080 | 98 MH / s | 224 W | 0.44 |
| 90HX | 86 MH / s | 320 W | 0.27 |
| RTX 3070 | 62 MH / s | 117 W | 0.53 |
| RTX 3060 Ti | 60 MH / s | 120 W | 0.50 |
| RTX 2080 Ti | 49 MH / s | 240 W | 0.20 |
| 50HX | 45 MH / s | 250 W | 0.18 |
| 40HX | 36 MH / s | 185 W | 0.19 |
| 30HX | 26 MH / s | 125 W | 0.21 |
| NVIDIA HX data Minerstat RTX data |
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The only way this new CMP HX mining add-on card makes financial sense is if it’s cheap, about $ 600 for the 90HX, otherwise the retail GPUs will look much more efficient.
NVIDIA gives no further details on when these mining add-on cards will be made available, except Q1 for the slower and Q2 for the faster. No word on pricing or distribution methods – here is a chance that these cards will only be sold by distributors directly to professional mining shops. At the palette. Note that this does not stop the huge demand for power sources. The market is also feeling the effects.