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

[g67575]

There are specific mining algorithms - they do nothing else but mine crypto. Just restricting / disabling the Ethereum (Ethash) algorithm alone in consumer graphics cards could make a huge difference. No need to restrict anything else.

 

[Jerry64]

There are specific mining algorithms - they do nothing else but mine crypto. Just restricting / disabling the Ethereum (Ethash) algorithm alone in consumer graphics cards could make a huge difference. No need to restrict anything else.

Never going to happen

 

[keyser]

As Steve at GamersNexus recently pointed out, miners are customers too its like saying stop using this car to rally drive in... I say unleash the miners, the sooner it comes crashing down the better.

 

[r22snapper]

Exactly, they've paid for a card and it is none of Nvidia/AMDs business what they do with it. It seems pretty entitled to suggest it to be honest.

 

[Maldoror]

There are specific mining algorithms - they do nothing else but mine crypto. Just restricting / disabling the Ethereum (Ethash) algorithm alone in consumer graphics cards could make a huge difference. No need to restrict anything else.

But what makes your purpose for the card more important than someone whose purpose is to mine Ethereum with it?

 

[g67575]

But what makes your purpose for the card more important than someone whose purpose is to mine Ethereum with it?

I think the best compromise is for gamers / professionals to buy standard graphics cards, and for crypto miners to use dedicated mining GPUs or ASICs. Hopefully, there will be sufficient supply to meet the requirements of both types of customer.

 

[Armageus]

I think the best compromise is for gamers / professionals to buy standard graphics cards, and for crypto miners to use dedicated mining GPUs or ASICs.

And again you've ignored the fact there is no resale value in mining GPUs, therefore no serious mining outfit would consider them

 

[Maldoror]

I think the best compromise is for gamers / professionals to buy standard graphics cards, and for crypto miners to use dedicated mining GPUs or ASICs. Hopefully, there will be sufficient supply to meet the requirements of both types of customer.

That's fine but it's not too different to what we have now: AIBS do make mining cards without display outputs that are sold to dedicated mining outfits and they do this in enormous volume.

However, that's a different thing to locking out normal cards from running 'mining pathways' (much harder to do than it sounds, anyway). Making a specialised card for a purpose is one thing - completely locking out functionality on another card is something different entirely. The 'freedom' of GPU-compute is what's created so many industries, many of which are as important to Nvidia as gaming.

 

[hyperseven]

deleted

 

[r22snapper]

But what makes your purpose for the card more important than someone whose purpose is to mine Ethereum with it?

Both use cases are equally unimportant. This whole thread is daft.

 

[g67575]

Both use cases are equally unimportant. This whole thread is daft.

And yet, here we are, discussing something that is apparently unimportant

 

[D.P.]

So, greed and profit are Nvidia's and AMD's only long term considerations?

Welcome to capitalism 101

 

[varkanoid]

And yet, here we are, discussing something that is apparently unimportant

Welcome to the OCUK forum its full of it

 

[mid_gen]

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.

This. Rasterising graphics, protein-folding, training neural networks, crypto hashing. It's all just doing lots and lots of floating point math very very quickly. The G in GPU is a misnomer these days.

 

[BlueInf]

And again you've ignored the fact there is no resale value in mining GPUs, therefore no serious mining outfit would consider them

Is that how it works?

They roll from one model to another and resell their old cards instead of running them to the ground?

 

[KillBoY_UK]

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.

You would basically have to disable compute, at that point you be little better off than display adaptor doing everything on the CPU.

 

[BlueInf]

I have an easy solution.

Just buy a ******** of cards and mine until the complexity is too high to make it profitable.

 

[Puppetmaster]

Stopping miners from buying cards won't fix the shortage. Go shout at amd and nvidia instead.

 

[g67575]

Stopping miners from buying cards won't fix the shortage. Go shout at amd and nvidia instead.

Recent web articles suggest NVIDIA is monitoring the scale of the Crypto mining phenomenon quite closely. Direct quote from CFO Colette Kress "we can also use that opportunity to restart the CMP product line to address ongoing mining demand". Admittedly, the language used does hint at some reluctance to change the status quo, if the problem is considered too small.
Link here:
https://www.theverge.com/2021/1/12/...hortage-rtx-3080-3070-3060-ti-3090-rx-6800-xt

 

[BlueInf]

Nvidia should just stop selling cards and just mine all the remaining coins lol