Report: 'Nvidia's LHR Limiter Has Fallen, But Gamers Shouldn't Worry' (tomshardware.com) 46
Slashdot reader Hmmmmmm shared this report from Hot Hardware:
When Nvidia launched its Ampere Lite Hash Rate (LHR) graphics card with the feared Ethereum anti-mining limiter, the world knew it was only a matter of time before someone or a team cracked it. NiceHash, the company that designed the QuickMiner software and Excavator miner, has finally broken Nvidia's algorithm, restoring LHR graphics cards to their 100% Ethereum mining performance....
Graphics card pricing has been plummeting, and we're starting to see better availability at retailers, with some GPUs selling at or below Manufacturer Suggested Retail Price. So QuickMiner's arrival shouldn't influence the current state of the graphics market unless big corporations want to buy out everything in sight for the last push before Ethereum's transition to Proof-of-Stake (PoS), often referred to as "The Merge," is complete. We see that as unlikely, considering current profitability even on a 3080 Ti sits at around $3.50 per day and would still need nearly a year to break even at current rates. Initially scheduled for June, The Merge won't finalize until "the few months after," as Ethereum developer Tim Beiko has expressed on Twitter.
It will be interesting to see if Nvidia responds to this with updated drivers or implements LHRv3 in the remaining GPUs. However, it's perhaps not worth the effort at this point, and all existing LHRv2 and earlier cards can just stay on current drivers for optimized mining performance.
Graphics card pricing has been plummeting, and we're starting to see better availability at retailers, with some GPUs selling at or below Manufacturer Suggested Retail Price. So QuickMiner's arrival shouldn't influence the current state of the graphics market unless big corporations want to buy out everything in sight for the last push before Ethereum's transition to Proof-of-Stake (PoS), often referred to as "The Merge," is complete. We see that as unlikely, considering current profitability even on a 3080 Ti sits at around $3.50 per day and would still need nearly a year to break even at current rates. Initially scheduled for June, The Merge won't finalize until "the few months after," as Ethereum developer Tim Beiko has expressed on Twitter.
It will be interesting to see if Nvidia responds to this with updated drivers or implements LHRv3 in the remaining GPUs. However, it's perhaps not worth the effort at this point, and all existing LHRv2 and earlier cards can just stay on current drivers for optimized mining performance.
When the levee breaks... (Score:2)
Looking forward to the time when crypto craze is over, Bitcoin is treated as a curious art, bubble crashes and great video cards become reasonably priced.
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You know what I'm using as a monitor? It's a monstrous 4K video display that was intended as a TV. (The speakers aren't advertised but, they'll still work faintly behind the closed case.)
It has excellent resolution, and it was absurdly cheap BECAUSE IT WAS INTENDED AS A TELEVISION. Computer displays were going absolutely nowhere for years before some guy in marketing decided that people liked TVs. They do. Excellent monitors are now cheap as all hell. My previous $2,000 display, so disturbingly fine, became
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I see you point but would argue that video card development is already sufficiently subsidized by machine learning demand.
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TVs are crap. They all do chroma subsampling and various kinds of "enhancements". You're not getting the same quality display.
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And on top of that, all that "enhancement" tends to come with a significant cost in time. Input lag is horrible on TVs, which is why some of the higher priced models started including "console mode" or "gaming mode", which cuts off some of the prosessing.
It's still atrocious by monitor standards, but at least you won't be able to get people to throw up by giving them a bit of alcohol and then getting them to play fast paced games on it close enough that TV covers their entire screen, fooling their subconsci
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Even the cheapest of Vizio displays used to have a "game" mode that disabled most processing. There must be other TVs with this feature. It also makes processing faster, i.e. less lag.
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Until it happens again. Just look at penny stocks and MLMs. They fall out of favor for awhile but after some time, a new batch of suckers always appears.
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Yep. It's all a big cycle. The idiots figure out a scam, they move to the next one.
In about 15 years there's a whole new set of idiots so they start over again.
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I don't think the video card prices are being kept up by the crypto.
I mean, we have a massive chip shortage caused by a sudden 50% spike on the demand for integrated circuits on an industry that was operating at 90% capacity and takes literally 3+ years to build new factories.
But the reason of this demand is going away with the end of the lockdowns etc.., so it is normalizing because the demand is waning.
Time to update that Step 3 Profit meme? (Score:2)
Does this mean it is time to update that Step 3 Profit meme?
1. Spend $20K+ on solar panels for free energy.
2. Navigate the 19,400+ shitcoins [coinmarketcap.com] to find the few worth mining.
3. Mine and HODL until your ROI is profitable!
=P
--
Cryptocurrency is speculative, not an investment. Sadly some conflate gambling with speculative "investing."
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There's a problem with your "3-steps profit" meme (I know, it's a "meme")...
In Spain, you have to pay for the solar electricity generated so... no such thing as "free energy" to feed your card.
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2.5 get on social media and convince everyone else burn their coins/tokens
Nvidia alienated gamers, good luck with prices (Score:2)
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To protect the gamers..... (Score:1)
Said nobody ever. The only reason Nvidia could get away with this restriction in the first place was because of their encrypted firmware blobs that run on the cards themselves. Just like the Winmodems of yesteryear. It's great that it's been defeated, partially, but it shouldn't have been possible in the first place. People bitch and complain when John Deere decides what your tractor will and won't do, but when Nvidia does it, the most any one gets is a few grumbles.
T
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but when Nvidia does it, the most any one gets is a few grumbles
I'm just going to say, I've been bitching about encrypted blobs and anti-right to repair for nearly as long as it's been a thing. The people that CAN change this do not want to change it. Nearly twenty years of screaming about it and ... It'll happen if it happens, but shit I'm tired of screaming about this shit. As much as consumers say they want this to happen, they keep buying the shit that's the most anti-their wishes as possible.
I mean literally, I'm starting to see people here on Slashdot yelling
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I'm just going to say, I've been bitching about encrypted blobs and anti-right to repair for nearly as long as it's been a thing. The people that CAN change this do not want to change it. [...] As much as consumers say they want this to happen, they keep buying the shit that's the most anti-their wishes as possible.
Show me a video card with no binary blobs and I'll show you a video card with shit performance.
Nobody is offering me anything that's not partially anti-my-wishes.
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As much as consumers say they want this to happen
Statement directed to world.
Nobody is offering me anything
Statement of the self.
Please direct your attention to number three in this list. [leany.com] Thank you.
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Wow, that was really dumb, because I'm representative of an entire class. Nobody is offering gamers a performant video card without binary blobs, period. Your suggestion is that people buy nothing. But most people don't even care about this issue at all, and the infinitesimal slice of the market which does care doesn't get to make decisions for the rest.
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Wow, that was really dumb, because I'm representative of an entire class
. . . Oh the irony of using this as an argument to what I said in my last comment. Tasty.
But most people don't even care about this issue at all, and the infinitesimal slice of the market which does care doesn't get to make decisions for the rest
I'm sorry, were we reading my first comment or were you just deciding to invent whatever you wanted my comment to say?
Show me a video card with no binary blobs and I'll show you a video card with shit performance
Ooo.. This is fun. Hold on let me reiterate what I said.
As much as consumers say they want this to happen, they keep buying the shit that's the most anti-their wishes as possible.
It's so fun when someone wanting to debate provides all the arguments for my point without requiring me to make them. I'll tell you what, how about you just shadowbox yourself. This way you don't have to do the whole middle man thing here by re
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You aren't willing to trade right now performance for a long term endeavor to fund the creation of a fully free video card.
I haven't bought a GPU in years, but nobody has offered me "a long term endeavor to fund the creation of a fully free video card" either.
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Won't someone think of the gamers?!?!?
I thought that was their intent.
The previous (RTX2xxx) generation of NVidia cards was gobbled up by bitcoin miners in such amounts that in many areas, gamers couldn't get their hands on them. Or if they did, those few cards / computers that had them, were ridiculously overpriced.
It's one thing to have a somehow limited/crippled product.
It's much worse to have nothing at all.
Of course, given time, you could probably find other solutions than hash limitations to address that issue.
As far as I know this didn't have any effect (Score:2)
I've said it before and I'll say it a
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Cryptominers never fully got around this. There were two "partial" solutions.
One was to train specific miner software on each individual system to find out exactly where limiter would turn on, and then mine just under that limit. That was usually in the realm of 65-70% of the nominal performance instead of LHR's advertised 50%, depending on each individual machine (this was actually specific to each GPU, not just configuration, hence the need to training).
Other was to split your mining effort between multip
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We do know this because if someone did break this, they'd sell the hack.
Reasoning is simple. Hardware was extremely limited in availability for the entire hardware cycle, and doubling your and only your processing power for any individual miner would be dwarfed by gains of selling and skimming even 1-2% off everyone running nvidia cards to mine. This is the case of getting rich selling shovels to the gold miners vs getting rich mining gold. Except that here you'd be selling shovels that would almost double
Look at the bright side (Score:2)
If crypto ever becomes unpopular to mine, there will a plethora of video cards that will come up for sale on the market
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Fuck Crypto (Score:1)
Fuck all of it. Fuck the Ethereum miners. Fuck the Ethereum creators. Fuck everyone who works at NiceHash. I hope their equipment catches on fire and burns down everything they own.
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Fuck all of it. Fuck the Ethereum miners. Fuck the Ethereum creators. Fuck everyone who works at NiceHash. I hope their equipment catches on fire and burns down everything they own.
So... not a fan of Ethereum?
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Anything and everything crypto/blockchain. Ethereum being one of the biggest, and the main subject matter of the article.
The good uses and possibilities of crypto/blockchain are gone now, because their concepts have been used for all this mining and NFT bullshit. There are absolutely no good uses for any of it now, and never will be.
Can NVidia put an anti-mining EULA on its cards? (Score:2)
Normally, hardware isn't sold with any sort of EULA, but could it be? Is there any reason that NVidia couldn't put a shrinkwrap license in place that forbids using the cards for mining? If not the hardware itself then the EULA on the firmware? They would then have legal leverage to go after anyone who used the card for mining. I'm not a fan of software licenses, but they exist, so I figure maybe they could be used for this purpose? What's the legality of this?
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Sovereigns have a right to set whatever laws they see fit on their sovereign territory. There are few if any nations where courts would enforce such a clause within their legal framework.
There are even fewer nations where courts can't just be bought even if such laws were in place. There are even fewer where enforcers of the court can't be bought in event court itself can't.
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NVidia doesn't have to sell in countries that refuse to enforce the laws. The first buyers would be subject to the enforcement.
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Then it would be the first company in the world in known history to be able to exert such a degree of control over consumer products.
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Plenty of companies operate with trade restrictions in place. Huge swaths of military industry limit buyers to only specifically regulated countries, and they vet their clients (by law) to ensure they are not proxies for other countries. Tons of companies right now are limiting sales that will end up in Russia until that country stops invading Ukraine. Trade limits on hardware goods are extremely common. Even consumer grade: PlayStations and XBoxes are combat grade CPUs and must be controlled for export.
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You didn't say a word about traditional trade restrictions. You claimed that restrictions would be made on buyers of the product, so they can't resell the consumer product.
In most places, this on its own is illegal. Additionally personal tracking required to even begin hoping to make this work is criminal, so both people behind the scheme to do it AND the people performing the same and signing papers would be prosecuted and in many countries jailed as this is a criminal activity that is punished by a prison
Result of the recent hack? (Score:2)
Nvidia got hacked by LAPSU$ in February (or at least that's when the leaks came). That included a lot of source code for drivers and such.
And now, a lot of things started happening with Nvidia, among them this defeat of LHR which held for about a year. In spite of this being a time when crypto has been in a rapid decline in value.
Going to be interesting to see what else comes out of it.
I better hurry up (Score:2)