Nvidia cracks their own bios crypto lock

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For the last 6 months, Nvidia cards have been nearly impossible to get. This is mainly the result of Covid and the impact it has had on the supply chain. The fact that the 3000 RTX series is a significant improvement over the 2000 RTX series has had a massive impact on demand.

There is a third factor that has had major impact on the supply of 3000 RTX cards, the crypto bull run. With crypto prices raising 3 digit percentage points has created a frenzy for modern GPUS.

NVidia's response to this is to enforce a bios limiter to reduce the effectiveness of 3000 RTX series GPUs for crypto mining. Selling customers a gimped product for the same price. On top of this, they are now splitting their production line to product Crypto GPUs and Gamer GPUs.

These "Crypto" GPUs have zero resale value as will never find their way in the hands of gamers looking for 2nd hand cards. A market that is a godsent to most gamers with limited budget. The reason for this is Crypto GPUs do not have outputs for monitors and are useless for gaming.

The first Nvidia card that was released with a bios limiter is the Nvidia 3060. This bios lock is considered "unhackable" according to Nvidia. The bios lock pairs hardware and software protection to make it unremovable by most people.

There is no doubt someone will find a way around it, but they don't have to. With the official release of 470.05 driver, the Crypto limiter was accidentally disabled in the driver set by Nvidia. It was quickly removed and Nvidia confirms it was an accident.

While this drive will unlock your card to the full potential you paid for, it only works for the first card in your system, all other 3060 RTX cards will be artificially limited.


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19 comments
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Splitting the production line and artificially limiting the capabilities of mining and normal GPUs will make the situation on the secondary market even worse, because mining GPUs (CMP) cannot be reused anymore as gaming gpus. A shot in the knee so to speak.

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Yeah, I think so too. That's a very bad move, arrogance has taken over in the management. They might have Peter Pan Syndrom since the last year was such a blast for the industry.

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I saw this news story the other day. Is there a decent alternative to the 3060 that will allow me to do both? I am looking at upgrading my GTX 1080 Ti. It is long overdue. I'd even be open to considering an AMD card if I had to.

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I'm not an expert in that field, but that really seems to be a bad move. Why not just double production and let their bull market flourish as well. Moreover together with ETH2 a lot of that Market will disappear anyway. Makes me wonder if they know ALL THE IMPORTANT things that I don't, or they just missed the shot 10years ago and also now.

Whatever, cool post, thumbsup!

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I saw this news. But what you said is more clear than what I read from the news. 😉

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So does this impact any other compute functionality? If not, how are they specifically limiting "mining"? I don't care much about mining specifically but I do care about BOINC performance.

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Constraint in mining cryptos have also positive effects. the supply - demand ratio. Crypto prices will get much higher as weeks go by.

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Guys microchip scarcity might drive mining costs up higher. Nvidia isn't the only one struggling, Asia is hoarding. So are other major powers.
If you can't get a Nintendo Switch or a modest phone upgrade, be ready for high prices on transactions, perhaps on everything crypto.

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sounds retarded to do it. What they think is the come-out?

I expect people will look for alternative buys or crack the one.

The crypto one, if this is not super cheap, I expect not much success on it.

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