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Monday, March 22nd 2021
by AleksandarKDiscuss (76 Comments)
When NVIDIA introduced its GeForce RTX 3060 graphics card, the company also introduced a new feature to go along with it. As the card is priced well, it is positioning itself as a very good value offer for mining. Given that NVIDIA has now separate products for mining, it naturally would like to limit the number of gaming cards sold to miners. To achieve that, the company introduced an anti-mining algorithm that is essentially a handshake between the driver, RTX 3060 silicon, and the GPU VBIOS. This handshake checks those three components to detect if mining is going on, so it can limit the performance of the card.
However, even such a thing can be bypassed. Usually, miners put their GPUs in rigs where most of the GPUs don't use their video outputs. And the GPU can detect if it is connected to the monitor or not, triggering the anti-mining algorithm. A user from Quasar Zone forums has managed to bypass the restriction by simply installing a dummy HDMI plug. By using the dummy plug, the card thinks that it is connected to a monitor and thus runs normally. Using this workaround, the user was able to set-up a four-way GeForce RTX 3060 mining rig with 48 MH/s hashing power per GPU, for the total 192 MH/s hash rate. You can buy HDMI dummy plugs for as low as $5.99 on Amazon or at any other store.
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- Tags:
- BIOS
- GeForce
- GPU
- HDMI
- Mining
- NVIDIA
- RTX
- RTX 3060
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ZoneDymoOK now that I can get behind and it is something that TPU does every now and then with the header then having an UPDATED next to it.
Bingo! You noticed that, but the OP apparently didn't.
ZoneDymoBut I do feel your reaction was a bit too strong.
I know it can feel like that, but I wasn't reacted just to this article, I was reacting to most OP's articles.
I mean, take an extra 30 minutes, look things up (and proof-read while you're at it) and you could be in line with all the other editors on TPU. It shouldn't be that hard, should it?
XaledStop mis-using terms such as "low quality", "quality journalism" or "fact-checking" to defend Nvidias at-best unethical business practices which has no quality at all and are all lies.If you really cared about fact-checking, ethics and high-quality journalism your only objection should have been against this part;
"Given that NVIDIA has now separate products for mining, it naturally would like to limit the number of gaming cards sold to miners."
which is not true at all. Nvidia doesn't want to limit the number of gaming cards sold to miners at all. All it wants is simply just "making more profit".
I wasn't going to dignify that with an answer, but since when is "making more profit" unethical?
bugBingo! You noticed that, but the OP apparently didn't.I know it can feel like that, but I wasn't reacted just to this article, I was reacting to most OP's articles.
I mean, take an extra 30 minutes, look things up (and proof-read while you're at it) and you could be in line with all the other editors on TPU. It shouldn't be that hard, should it?I wasn't going to dignify that with an answer, but since when is "making more profit" unethical?
You read what you want into it , you want me to throw some of the pr Nvidia released pre mining cards release or about the 3060 hash limiter..
A lot of that now seems unethical.
bugI wasn't going to dignify that with an answer, but since when is "making more profit" unethical?
*facepalm*
making more profit is not unethical, but using unethical ways, such as lying, making fake statements, announcements, lying about prices and MSRP, about availability, making fake technologies, such as DLSS which is simply lowering resolution but claiming you are using higher one! and many other lies just for making more profit is definitely unethical
this is another ethical move from nvidia; threatening press
Caring148MH/s still seems low to me, or maybe I'm comparing with the 3080 which has a much higher rate.
3080 is a beast at mining.
48mh isn't too shabby. Gets almost 5 dollars a day so if you found it at msrp you'd have this card paid off in about 3 months.
nguyenWell my sarcasm detection meter didn't go off and my confusion meter is sky high, what is RX6000 and RX5000 performance has got to do with anything?
I'm just saying AMD is prioritising console, 80% of AMD's capacitygo into making console chips while the remaining 20% go into making CPU and GPU (3-4% capacity go into Big Navi), that is just sad.
I don't think its a priority as much as they are probably contractually obligated to supply X amount of chips. If they had a choice, AMD would be manufacturing 1k GPUs all day. Profit margin is one of the reasons Nvidia didn't fight that hard for those console contracts.
XaledStop mis-using terms such as "low quality", "quality journalism" or "fact-checking" to defend Nvidias at-best unethical business practices which has no quality at all and are all lies.If you really cared about fact-checking, ethics and high-quality journalism your only objection should have been against this part;
"Given that NVIDIA has now separate products for mining, it naturally would like to limit the number of gaming cards sold to miners."
which is not true at all. Nvidia doesn't want to limit the number of gaming cards sold to miners at all. All it wants is simply just "making more profit".
I think you missed the point that bug is trying to make. The article seems to imply that all you need to bypass the "anti-mining" feature is to use an HDMI Dummy Plug, while it's not true. The HDMI Dummy plug is just a way to bypass one of the limitation of the "accidentally" (or not) released driver without ETH hash rate limiter. So the news is indeed quite misleading.
TheoneandonlyMrKYou read what you want into it , you want me to throw some of the pr Nvidia released pre mining cards release or about the 3060 hash limiter..A lot of that now seems unethical.
PR is unethical by default (because it's almost always dishonest).
Whether what Nvidia did here is also unethical comes down to whether you're willing to consider all the circ*mstances that need to be met so you can use the leaked driver to unlock the full 3060 potential or you're just reading the press titles and just conclude Nvidia planned to do this to somehow sabotage their own plans. And to do this, you also have to disregard that even with 3060 off-limits, miners still had unfettered access to 3060Ti, 3070, 3080 and 3090.
bugPR is unethical by default (because it's almost always dishonest).Whether what Nvidia did here is also unethical comes down to whether you're willing to consider all the circ*mstances that need to be met so you can use the leaked driver to unlock the full 3060 potential or you're just reading the press titles and just conclude Nvidia planned to do this to somehow sabotage their own plans. And to do this, you also have to disregard that even with 3060 off-limits, miners still had unfettered access to 3060Ti, 3070, 3080 and 3090.
After considering all the circ*mstances I obviously witnessed what with being a tech enthusiast , you're going to find my well considered opinion to be that yes Nvidia acted unethically.
With almost every Pr release regarding anything to do with mining or being the gamer's friend and saviour to be massively unethical.
And no I would argue Pr releases need to be ethical Or they need to be called out on the bullsh*t they peddle.
Lies shouldn't be tolerated OR spread.
HD64GGood to know how much BS was nVidia spreading the PC community with their "mining limitations"...
For the gamers! Haha.
bugPR is unethical by default (because it's almost always dishonest).Whether what Nvidia did here is also unethical comes down to whether you're willing to consider all the circ*mstances that need to be met so you can use the leaked driver to unlock the full 3060 potential or you're just reading the press titles and just conclude Nvidia planned to do this to somehow sabotage their own plans. And to do this, you also have to disregard that even with 3060 off-limits, miners still had unfettered access to 3060Ti, 3070, 3080 and 3090.
Please just stop playing with meanings and manipulating words. Beautifying, Exaggerating and not telling something, as in generally being done in PR is completely different from direct lying or intentionally misleading
you cannot "accidently" leak a driver that unlocks a card that was supposed to be locked from the begining!
HD64GGood to know how much BS was nVidia spreading the PC community with their "mining limitations"...
And people will still suck Nvidia ASS just to get one of their products.... f*cking sad!
I really don't get these surprised people here fighting about who is right. NV is right. Mining is the way to get piles of money not gaming. As soon as people realize this the better. Accidentally released unlocked driver? Yeah right. It wasn't supposed to happen as people thought it would and yet it still happened. I'm sure the centerpiece is still to be revealed so stay tuned :)
XaledPlease just stop playing with meanings and manipulating words. Beautifying, Exaggerating and not telling something, as in generally being done in PR is completely different from direct lying or intentionally misleading
Do you have any proof of that? Or am I supposed to go for that hook, line and sinker just because you said so?
Xaledyou cannot "accidently" leak a driver that unlocks a card that was supposed to be locked from the begining!
Why not? It's a beta driver that barely works anyway.
Colddecked3080 is a beast at mining.48mh isn't too shabby. Gets almost 5 dollars a day so if you found it at msrp you'd have this card paid off in about 3 months.
I don't think its a priority as much as they are probably contractually obligated to supply X amount of chips. If they had a choice, AMD would be manufacturing 1k GPUs all day. Profit margin is one of the reasons Nvidia didn't fight that hard for those console contracts.
That US$ and is that before factoring electrical costs or after?
Freshwater Moderator
Honestly this is my favourite security fail of all time
MusselsHonestly this is my favourite security fail of all time
Why so?
TheoneandonlyMrKWhy so?
Well, it's funny because it's self inflicted, at least.
Freshwater Moderator
TheoneandonlyMrKWhy so?
they hyped it up so much to be miner proof, and a cheap ass dongle from wish bypasses it
Musselsthey hyped it up so much to be miner proof, and a cheap ass dongle from wish bypasses it
Once again, the cheap dongle bypasses nothing by itself.
The leaked driver enables full speed mining on some cards as long as the cards are connected directly to the motherboard (miners usually connect cards using risers, because otherwise you can only fit 3 of them in a system) and are also connected to an external monitor. Instead of using a real monitor, you can stick that dongle in the HDMI port.
But just getting a 3060 and inserting the HDMI dongle, achieves nothing.
Freshwater Moderator
the driver requires a monitor on each GPU or they wont mine
the dongle bypasses that
i find that funny that these smart people implementing the locks never thought that would happen
Musselsthe driver requires a monitor on each GPU or they wont mine
the dongle bypasses thati find that funny that these smart people implementing the locks never thought that would happen
It's a freaking beta driver, it has all sorts of oddities in there. It's not even a regular beta, it's a driver meant for testing OpenCL under WSL. Which makes the requirement for a connected monitor even more awkward, but who knows what they were testing at the time?
mechtechThat US$ and is that before factoring electrical costs or after?
US dollars and after electric. It looks basically the same as my 5700, that does 50s on average and gets me about 4 to 5 dollars a day after electric.
@AleksandarK I agree with bug, this article need to be corrected. In particular, it needs to make it clear you also need that beta driver, not just the dummy plug, to disable the anti-mining feature. And it wouldn't hurt to mention it won't work if you use a riser to connect the card. Or it might not work at all, depending on the card.
ppnAll they have to do is lock it to 16X slot only. try to bypass that with a dummy slot.
Just buy a TRX40 board.
MikeSnow@AleksandarK I agree with bug, this article need to be corrected. In particular, it needs to make it clear you also need that beta driver, not just the dummy plug, to disable the anti-mining feature. And it wouldn't hurt to mention it won't work if you use a riser to connect the card. Or it might not work at all, depending on the card.
So you are saying that TPU should just make a complete how-to tutorial and an intensive research instead ?!
XaledSo you are saying that TPU should just make a complete how-to tutorial and an intensive research instead ?!
I'm saying that they should correct articles that contain false information. In particular, the "by simply" part of the article is outright false.
Later edit: What's even worse is that the original article from Tom's Hardware, listed as a source, makes it very clear it's not "by simply", because you also need that beta driver. So there is really no excuse for the author to publish this misleading article. The "intensive research" required to publish the correct information was reading more than the title of the quoted source.
