Nvidia kills cryptocurrency mining on Geforce RTX 3060

Mining of cryptocurrency, or mining, has once again ended up in the firing line after the winter rush of digital currencies. The average consumer who wants a card of the latest cut has been completely sonic without, then both scalpers and crypto enthusiasts have effectively vacuumed the market for graphics cards – which has resulted in an asset problem that Nvidia itself is now announcing.

In a press release, the company announces that they are launching another graphics card series in addition to consumer-focused Geforce and the data center card A100 – named CMP, Cryptocurrency Mining Processor. The cards under the CMP flag are equipped with graphics circuits from the “Ampere” family just like its relatives, but have no image outputs and will, according to Nvidia, only be sold through authorized resellers.

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.

RTX 3060 software drivers are designed to detect specific attributes of the Ethereum cryptocurrency mining algorithm, and limit the hash rate, or cryptocurrency mining efficiency, by around 50 percent.

Furthermore, Nvidia believes that the Geforce cards are “for gamers”, which is why the company with next week’s launch of the Geforce RTX 3060 will halve the performance when breaking cryptocurrency at the driver level to make it less attractive. At the same time, the company believes that the circuits that the upcoming CMP cards are built of “do not meet the requirements to become Geforce cards”, which is why “they will not affect the availability” of the same.

Exact specifications for the cards in the CMP series are also not stated. Although four models are named, complete with hash rate, power consumption and amount of memory, Nvidia omits details such as memory type. The lack of working GA102 circuits for the Geforce RTX 3080 and 3090 series has so far been in short supply in addition to GDDR6 memory – possibly the 50HX and 90HX cards are expected to reach cryptocurrencies during the second quarter of the year for that very reason.

In other words, Nvidia seems to have found a way to strike a balance between wanting to provide cryptocurrencies with processing power and offering access to gaming consumers. Whether the RTX 3060’s siblings in the Geforce series receive the same treatment remains to be seen – although nothing would stop users from using older drivers to access the full performance of the cards when breaking cryptocurrency.

What do you think of Nvidia’s attempt to segment cryptocurrencies and gaming?