With the explosion of Bitcoin this year, many game-level graphics cards have been bought for mining, making it difficult for ordinary consumers to buy the graphics cards they want. In response to this situation, Nvidia presented its solution to the public last week to combat crypto mining. But these solutions may not be Nvidia's optimal options.
Nvidia graphics cards explode under "mining fever", new products will be cold after the heat
Cryptocurrency mining is very hot at the moment. Before that, cryptocurrency mining had a big fire at the end of 2017 and early 2018. At that time, Bitcoin reached a peak of $20,000. Since then, we have understood that the market was in a period of prosperity. How to find a graphics card.
At that time, the most popular was the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti with a suggested retail price of US$800. We soon saw the extremely high demand from miners, and the price of this graphics card doubled or even tripled.
Nvidia observed the development of the entire incident and was at a loss as to what to do. To its surprise, once the value of Bitcoin dropped, the entire graphics card market would be a mess. At that time, Nvidia planned to launch RTX 20 series cards, but these graphics cards were more expensive and not as high as the previous generation products. At that time, many people believed that 1080 Ti was the most versatile and best graphics card, while the 20 series cards were classified as a failure.
When the crypto boom is over, the mining industry wants to sell all its graphics cards for mining. A large number of second-hand 10 series cards have emerged in the second-hand market. For anyone building a system, 10 series cards are the first choice because they are on the second-hand market. The price of MSRP is lower than its price point, and the large number of 10 series has made the 20 series replaced by more favorable options.
Hash rate limiter is aimed at "Ethereum", CMP series or eliminates the second-hand market
As mentioned above, the crypto craze a few years ago provided everyone with another benchmark for the crypto craze, and Nvidia also witnessed this. The measures they took this year were to release mining cards and restrict the mining capabilities of consumer-grade cards, namely Update the CMP series of drivers and limit the hash rate.
Many people have affirmed this solution, but it is not praiseworthy. Perhaps Nvidia's real intention is not to help consumers fight the cryptocurrency boom, but to manage the market in a certain way, so as not to be similar to the RTX 20 series. Things.
The end of the encryption boom always led to the sale of a large number of cheap cards, which eventually led to the eclipse of Nvidia's new version. Nvidia did not want the market to be saturated before launching new products, so the CMP series was born.
A large number of second-hand GPUs to be resold
In addition, hash rate limiters, are invalid from a certain perspective. The hash rate limiter is only for "Ethereum mining", and it can still be profitable on many other cryptocurrencies. CryptoLeo tested the hash rate limiter on the 3060 and found that it only works on Ethereum, and the 3060 is still profitable in many other situations, earning $6.5 per day.
It is very difficult to develop a method to restrict all currencies, but we can try. But I (referring to the original author Alex Casas) really feel angry about the CMP series, because, in the end, they will not cause any positive impact, I can even say that Nvidia is not helping consumers.
The CMP series will reduce the inventory of consumer cards because they use very similar silicon, but the CMP series itself can only be used for mining. The number of silicon chips is sufficient, but its manufacturing method makes it possible to continue to manufacture consumer-grade graphics cards at the same speed. Difficult.
The current mining boom will end at some point in the future and what will happen when the CMP series is no longer useful? Game players and consumers cannot use CMP series cards for any purpose, so they will be recycled or thrown into the garbage dump, which may also cause environmental pollution, but this is beneficial to Nvidia itself.
Generally speaking, older cards will be passed to gamers with budget constraints, but now gamers do not have this option. If the market is not satisfied with the graphics card before the release, the product they release will be better. There used to be a second-hand market for consumers to choose from, but after the emergence of CMP cards, consumers did not have a second-hand market to choose from, and all cards would eventually become rubbish.
Therefore, perhaps the CMP series will eventually eliminate the second-hand market and promote consumers to purchase new Nvidia graphics cards when it is launched. This is a win-win economic strategy for Nvidia, rather than the optimal solution that many people think is beneficial to consumers.
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