• Competitor rules

    Please remember that any mention of competitors, hinting at competitors or offering to provide details of competitors will result in an account suspension. The full rules can be found under the 'Terms and Rules' link in the bottom right corner of your screen. Just don't mention competitors in any way, shape or form and you'll be OK.

Couldn't Microsoft/AMD/NV release a firmware update to disable mining on standard graphics cards?

g67575

g67575

g67575

Soldato
Joined
30 Jun 2019
Posts
8,159
So the firmware update would be a mandatory Windows 10 update, and would either disable Ethereum mining altogether or wreck the crypto hash rate of GPUs. It would be applied in the factory to new graphics cards.

It could also be applied to Linux distributions and Windows 7 if needed. In my view, this would be a fair restriction, because these graphics cards weren't intended or designed for GPU crypto mining.

It would be applied /checked whenever an internet connection if detected.

It would only be applied to ordinary graphics cards - Mining dedicated graphics cards would be unaffected, like the MSI Ampere mining GPUs.
 
Last edited:
Miners use specialised software, even specialised BIOS versions for mining.

Some random update will not stop them. It is just a minor annoyance at best.
 
If it discouraged miners from buying standard graphics, rather than cheaper mining GPUs, I think it could be quite helpful.

They would do this because they could easily meet demand from gamers anyway. If not, they could divert more resources towards producing mining GPUs.
 
I think at the moment you assume that they can meet the demand for both.

i think they can’t, so they might as well sell to whoever bid the highest between the two.
 
It’s probably only temporary until they can increase supply.

They might as well take the profits from miners for now.

When supplies can meet both markets, it would make sense to make a specialised card for one or the other but until then, it is a lot to ask them to invest money to make less money.
 
The manufacturers can produce cheaper specialised hardware (e.g. no display ports). Both typical consumers and the manufacturer wins. This appears to already be happening to a limited extent.
 
g67575 said:
The manufacturers can produce cheaper specialised hardware (e.g. no display ports). Both typical consumers and the manufacturer wins. This appears to already be happening to a limited extent.
Click to expand...
That’s correct ...

(like I said previously) when you can supply to both so fulfil the demand.

when supply is limited, you maximise your profit by putting buyers in competition and letting them bid.
 
Pretty much impossible short of a built in hardware micro-processor using heuristics to identify mining. An application level block would simply be worked around, you can't just disable certain instructions and/or ways they are used without impacting non-mining related uses and/or mining software would just work around.

Beside that absolutely shouldn't be the way Windows update works and many people have automatic updates disabled in anything other than 10 and the implementation in 10 is just pants on head.
 
g67575 said:
It would only be applied to ordinary graphics cards - Mining dedicated graphics cards would be unaffected, like the MSI Ampere mining GPUs.
Click to expand...

Miners don't buy mining cards as there is no resale value..


Personally I wouldn't want to see any artificial restrictions applied as to what I am allowed to do with my hardware.

Also was there really a need for you to create yet another thread with a not so stealth moan about how you can't buy a graphics card?
 
Last edited:
Like a broken pencil .....








Pointless

(C) Blackadder



Besides what possible reason would gfx card manufacturers have in restricting the market for their product? It's hardly a selling point
 
g67575 said:
Who agrees with this idea in principle though? The technical details could be addressed I'm reasonably sure.
Click to expand...

Not at all. GPUs are multi-purpose devices and outside-the-box use is what has led to emerging fields like machine learning and the development of neural nets. GPU role in cryptocurrency is another aspect of this and users must be free to use their hardware as they wish. If this creates new fields that in turn mean it's harder for us to source our gaming cards, so be it. And this is coming from someone who has bought every Nvidia Titan ever released (and mutiples of most of them) and used them for gaming. So it's as much a pain for me as anyone when new toys are hard to source.

Let people be creative with their tech - whether it be trying to help cancer research or founding new types of money or whatever else.

If you try and lock down GPUs too much to a specific purpose you risk stifling the next revolution and I don't think that's what Nvidia want to do. Of course, having dedicated mining cards or CAD-work cards, etc. helps meet demand in specific sector by creating purpose-built tools. But the fundamentals of a gpu should be kept multi-purpose.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom