Nvidia today announced its new Cryptocurrency Mining Processor (CMP) line of GPUs to “address the specific needs of Ethereum mining” and, hopefully, improve the availability of the best graphics cards in the GeForce product line in the process. The company also limited the mining performance of the soon-to-be-launched RTX 3060 cards to roughly 50% of the normal performance. It sounds like a good move, but there’s a lot going on.
Cryptocurrency miners previously had to purchase graphics cards originally intended for PC gaming if they wanted to maximize their operation’s profitability. This can lead to or exacerbate GPU shortages whenever a particular coin’s value skyrockets. Right now that coin is Ethereum. CoinDesk’s figures put the cryptocurrency’s price at $281 in February 2020, but at time of writing it’s priced at $1,920. The scramble to join this digital gold rush has worsened the GPU shortage caused by COVID-19.
This probably won’t please miners who were looking forward to the RTX 3060’s February 25th debut with interest, and a similar hash restriction for other NVIDIA GPUs wouldn’t alleviate shortages for a while. Still, there might be a chance that you can buy a high-end GPU for your gaming PC without having to set up inventory alerts or pay a premium.
This probably won’t please miners who were looking forward to the RTX 3060’s February 25th debut with interest, and a similar hash restriction for other NVIDIA GPUs wouldn’t alleviate shortages for a while. Still, there might be a chance that you can buy a high-end GPU for your gaming PC without having to set up inventory alerts or pay a premium.
