Here’s Why Nvidia Won’t Let You Mine Cryptocurrency On RTX 3060 GPUs
The graphics giant Nvidia has announced that it will limit the cryptocurrency mining efficiency of its RTX 3060 GPUs. At the same time, the company has also announced Nvidia CMP HX, a series of dedicated cryptocurrency mining processors for professional mining.
The cryptocurrency boom is on the rise and recently we have seen the meme-inspired Dogecoin scoring big on the popularity charts. More and more people are using powerful graphics cards to churn out as much crypto juice as they can.
With that said, the question that needs to be answered is why Nvidia chose to limit the cryptomining powers of its GPU. The company has announced that RTX 3060 software drivers will detect traces of the Etherum crypto mining algorithm and reduce hashing rate by 50%. For reference, Etherum is currently one of the most mined crypto coins on the market.
Graphics Cards are running out of stock
As mentioned above, more people are mining crypto, which means they’re buying more GPUs. This is one big reason Nvidia took the decision because the shortage of GPUs is leaving gamers empty handed who are the company’s target customers.
“With the launch of GeForce RTX 3060 on Feb. 25, we’re taking an important step to help ensure GeForce GPUs end up in the hands of gamers,” Nvidia said in a blog post.
And that makes sense because GeForce GPUs are fitted with technologies designed for games, ray tracing, AI-assisted image upscaling, to name a few. However, these programmable graphics chips can be used for various other applications like weather simulation, robotics, gene sequencing, etc.
This brings us to reason number two.
Nvidia has announced a dedicated cryptominer
Nvidia has announced a new cryptocurrency mining hardware called CMP HX. The shortage of GPUs in the market couldn’t be the sole reason the company would make such a move. GPU shortages due to cryptomining have been there in the past, so it isn’t a coincidence that the graphics giant chose to throttle its GPUs right now.
In other words, how would you convince people to buy your new cryptocurrency miner when they already have an easy way out!
But Nvidia explains the new CMP miners have considerable changes that make them a better fit for cryptocurrency mining.
For example, CMP doesn’t pack display outputs which improve the airflow and allows it to be more densely packed. Also, to boost mining power efficiency, Nividia has toned down the peak core voltage and frequency on CMP GPUs.
“With CMP, we can help miners build the most efficient data centers while preserving GeForce RTX GPUs for gamers.”
The new CMP HX GPUs are available from authorized partners, including ASUS, Colorful, EVGA, Gigabyte, MSI, Palit, etc.
