![]() ![]() But maybe - hopefully! - it will be enough by the time Hopper rolls out in 2022/2023. Still, there's only a limited number of leading edge wafer starts available, and they're in high demand, so this isn't going to radically improve the situation with graphics card shortages any time soon. Maybe that's CMP, maybe it's AMD GPUs, or maybe it's custom ASICs. Nvidia probably can't implement the same restrictions on existing GPUs without facing a class action lawsuit (not to mention miners could just use older drivers), but making future GPUs less attractive to miners should help push them to other options. ![]() The driver limiting of mining performance for the upcoming RTX 3060 sounds far more interesting. If the CMP cards cost more than graphics cards using the same GPU, they're not going to sell well. Certainly, miners are paying exorbitant pricing on eBay right now. Or maybe it's a way to sell otherwise junk silicon to miners are reasonable prices (doubtful). Maybe this is just a way to more easily sell GPUs to miners at inflated prices. Of course, we don't have pricing information yet. Either way, who's going to want this? 40HX at 36MH/s and 185W and 30HX at 26MH/s and 125W are equally questionable options. Or maybe it's a TU102 that couldn't work with 11 memory channels, so it's been binned with 10 channels. It's also half the speed of an RTX 3080 while potentially still using the same GPU (10GB VRAM). 50HX only does 45MH/s at 250W - that basically matches the tuned performance of the RTX 2060 Super through RTX 2080 Super, with a TGP that's still twice as high as what we measured. It gets worse as you go down the line, though. It's why the data center and workstation lines are normally clocked far more conservatively than the consumer line. That's probably because Nvidia knows running GPUs at high fan speeds and temperatures for 24/7 use leads to component failures. After a bit of tuning, an RTX 3080 can usually do 94MH/s at 250W or less, so these cards (at least out of the box) aren't any better. Note that the 90HX lists an Ethereum hash rate of just 86MH/s and a 320W TGP. That brings us to the relative performance and specs. There's a big question: What specific GPUs are being used for CMP? That matches up almost perfectly with a GTX 1660 GDDR6 card. Look at the 30HX, with 6GB of memory and a 125W TGP. These CMP cards also shouldn't have any use for the RT cores or maybe even Tensor cores in Turing and Ampere, which would be a good way of selling off otherwise 'dud' chips. It could even be a "flavor of the month" approach where Nvidia uses a variety of GPUs that couldn't qualify for use in a GeForce card and sells them as a CMP. The rest, though, who knows? Turing TU104, TU106, and TU116 GPUs can easily reach those performance figures, and this could be a way to clear out a bunch of older GPUs at premium prices. Which brings up another big question: What specific GPUs are being used for CMP? The 90HX is almost certainly an Ampere GA102 chip, because it's probably the only one that can reach the 86MH/s target speed. Maybe not a reference 3060 Ti, 3070, 3080, or 3090, but we've seen TU104 chips in RTX 2060 cards, so anything is possible. Make no mistake: These are GPUs that could have gone into a graphics card. What does Nvidia do with a GPU that normally can't be sold as an RTX 3090? They bin it as a 3080, and GA102 chips that can't meet the 3080 requirements can end up in a future 3070 (or maybe a 3070 Ti). Nvidia does state that these GPUs "don't meet the specifications required of a GeForce GPU and, thus, don't impact the availability of GeForce GPUs to gamers." Frankly, that doesn't mean much. What's perhaps worse is that while miners can still use consumer cards for mining (maybe not the upcoming RTX 3060, depending on how well Nvidia's throttling works), gamers can't use these mining cards for gaming. But every single GPU sold as a CMP card means one less GPU sold as a graphics card. They don't have video outputs, cooling should be improved (for large-scale data center mining operations), and they're better tuned for efficiency. Is this really good news, or is this just Nvidia playing both sides? To be clear, these CMP cards are still the same exact silicon that goes into GeForce and Quadro graphics cards. ![]()
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