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Cryptocurrency miners found a way to sidestep Nvidia's anti-mining protections for its RTX 3060 graphics card, and craft coins to their hearts' content.
A day before its 3060 went on sale, Nvidia announced the GPU would require a GeForce driver designed to detect whether the hardware was running proof-of-work algorithms used to mine Ethereum. If this code was observed, the driver would force the chipset to slash its mining efficiency, or hash rate, crippling its ability to produce digital currency.
It was hoped that these measures would deter crypto-miners from snapping up all of these relatively cheap cards at launch, and leave a few more for gamers. It was a little bit obvious that miners would just buy the RTX 3060s anyway in hope that the driver-level protection would be defeated eventually.
And not only did the miners get their hands on the gear, they discovered a way, in some circumstances, to subvert the driver to successfully mine Ethereum. The trick is surprisingly trivial: use another driver. Nvidia recently released a technology preview driver, compatible with the RTX 3060, that included CUDA support for the latest Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL 2), allowing applications to tap into the graphics processor to accelerate things like machine-learning algorithms.
This driver also doesn't impose the Ethereum hashing limitations, and so switching to this software evades Nvidia's crackdown, depending on how you've set up your rig. "A developer driver inadvertently included code used for internal development which removes the hash rate limiter on RTX 3060 in some configurations," an Nvidia spokesperson confirmed to The Register on Tuesday. "The driver has been removed."
Previously:
Nvidia Says It Won't Nerf the Ethereum Mining Performance of Existing GPUs
Nvidia Cripples Ethereum Mining Capability for Upcoming RTX 3060, Announces Dedicated Mining Cards
Nvidia GeForce RTX 30 Series Laptop Shortages Likely as Ethereum Hunters Turn to Mobile Mining
(Score: 2) by KilroySmith on Tuesday March 23 2021, @07:47PM (1 child)
>>> The dedicated CMP HX mining cards are entirely anti-consumer.
And, from NVidia's perspective, what would you call a Miner who wanted to buy your product?
Perhaps "Consumer" would be appropriate, along with perhaps "customer".
In a supply-constrained market, a Producer (say, NVidia) may have to choose which markets ("Consumers") to serve. As a business, they will likely choose the markets where they make the most money - which appears to be the mining market where the customers are buying dozens or more boards at a time, and likely require little to no support.
At best, I'd call their approach "pro-miner", not even "anti-gamer", and certainly not "anti-consumer".
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday March 23 2021, @08:32PM
Call it whatever you like, as long as you understand that it's bad for most people who want to buy a GPU for their desktop computer, and there will be less of a rebound since resold mining cards will not be useful for most people.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]