Hardware support: GN video: PS5 Aftermarket Cooling Fans Blow the Wrong Way

Why are other companies like AMD and Apple able to use a smaller nanometer process (even though I know that 7nm AMD does not equal 7nm intel) but still a much smaller company with less resources like AMD is able to have much better multi core processors that don't run NEARLY as hot.

How can such a big ass company fall so behind? No way the engineers aren't better at AMD with intels resources?

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MacBook Pro M1X benchmarks just leaked — and Intel should be scared

Posted: 19 Feb 2021 02:51 PM PST

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Dave Lee - Asus Zephyrus G15 Review

Posted: 19 Feb 2021 05:01 AM PST

submitted by /u/humaid786
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Power Converter Chip Research Booms

Posted: 19 Feb 2021 10:25 AM PST

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[VideoCardz.com] - AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT to be available in two variants

Posted: 19 Feb 2021 01:38 PM PST

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Crypto-mining is a dangerous practice, restrictions on Crypto-mining will be a net positive.

Posted: 19 Feb 2021 01:57 PM PST

Now that it's been 24-ish hours since Nvidia announced their new approach to crypto-currency mining, I've seen arguments from ~~miners~~ concerned customers rapidly evolve from "this will not actually do anything" to a very obvious form of the slippery slope fallacy.

So let's discuss the realities of crypto-mining, what it achieves, and what it's real world effects are.

Power Consumption and Climate Change

Climate Change is real, the space and time for debate is over.

California, Oregon, and Australia were ravaged by massive wildfires last year, nearly 500 people have been killed by these combined wildfires. And Australia now has a new batch of wildfires that have only just begun.

Texas is still in the middle of a winter storm that delivered it's lowest recorded temperatures in 60 years, causing widespread blackouts, and resulting in 47 deaths and counting.

These extreme weather events are the result of climate change, and one of the biggest contributors to climate change is fossil fuel burning for energy production.

Fossil Fuels currently deliver the vast majority of power around the world, with renewable energy sources being introduced at a rate lower than the increase in energy demand.

All of this means that increases in energy consumption will largely be met by increased burning of fossil fuels.

How does cryptocurrency factor into this?

For the basic reason that crypto-currency mining consumes a lot of power.

The Ethereum network alone consumes 7.75 Terawatt-Hours per year, enough power to supply over 700,000 US households with power for that same period of time. With each transaction requiring 34KWh of energy, enough power to run an average single US home for an entire day.

And Ethereum is not the biggest energy hog in the crypto currency space.

The Bitcoin network consumes over 121 Terawatt-Hours per year, more than 15 times the power consumption outlined in the Ethereum network as stated above. So take all of those values and multiply them by 15.

This is such an enormous amount of power that it is affecting the national power grid of countries like Iran. And cause additional pollution to be generated as fossil fuel based power plants struggle to keep up.

The Economic Question

How valuable is Crypto-currency in reality? I'm not asking how much crypto currencies trade for, I'm asking how much value does it add to society?

From what I've seen, crypto-currencies continued relevance has been driven by two primary groups;

those wishing to manipulate an unregulated market with pump and dump, pyramid, and other such get rich schemes.
those wishing to use an untraceable currency to perform illegal transactions, namely in drugs or weapons trades.

As a society, neither of these groups have a positive impact.

Taxation

One thing that I hear frequently as a "positive" of crypto currency is that it's not taxable.

Which is completely incorrect, The IRS does tax the sale, exchange, or gains of or from Crypto-currencies, and the US is not the only government to tax Crypto-currency. In fact it is now a shorter list to list the countries that don't tax Crypto-Currencies.

So congratulations; if you still think that Crypto-currencies are not taxed, you're committing tax fraud.

Viability as a common currency

This goes back to the previous subject on Power Consumption, but at it's core, no current Crypto Currency is widely viable as a mass-use currency, due to the high power consumption of individual transactions, and the delay that certain networks have in processing transactions.

The Visa Network is one of the most used payments and transaction system in the world, with a peak capacity of 65 thousand transactions per second

Bitcoins transactions per second is rated at 7. not 7 thousand, not 7 hundred, just 7.

Ethereums transactions per second is at just 15 transactions per second, still not impressive. And while it's creator recognizes that this is a problem, his proposal to improve it is continually delayed, just like his Proof-of-Stake proposal.

But Ethereum/SpecificCoinILike is going to go Proof-of-Stake

Ethereum was widely introduced in 2015, since 2015 all I've heard is that Ethereum is going to move to Proof-of-Stake "soon". At a certain point, it's all hot air. Not to mention that there are still debates in the crypto space about the inherent value of Proof-of-Stake coins versus Proof-of-Work coins. With many pointing to the principle that in a Proof-of-Stake model, the more coins you hold, the higher probability you have to win new blocks. Thereby concentrating the ownership of coins with those who already hold a larger number of coins.

Why are you posting this on /r/Hardware?

The current crypto-rush, like the crypto-rush that preceded it, is having an enormous impact on the supply and availability of GPUs. The previous crypto-rush had the (in hindsight) fortunate timing to arrive many months after new GPUs were announced and shipped out to consumers. Meaning that while some were unable to buy the latest and greatest GPUs, many of the latest and greatest GPUs were in the hands of their intended customers.

This time around, the Crypto-rush started building before these new GPUs were even announced, and combined with a global pandemic, there fomented a perfect storm that almost completely wiped out any possibility of a gamer getting their hands on a GPU, without resorting to bots.

This has led to a lot debates over who has the better claim to such hardware, and my vote is for the gamers. For reasons that I've outlined here, Crypto currencies are a net negative for society;

Driving more pollution via fossil fuel burning, which in turn drives more extreme weather events.
Being an unregulated market where fraud and ponzi-esque schemes run rampant.
Funding terrorism, and illegal drugs and weapons trades.

it's hard to see where the benefits are.

And while gaming can't claim to make the world better, it doesn't actively make the world worse.

But what about Nvidia?

What about them?

They are not outright eliminating the capability to mine.

They aren't changing any hardware currently in peoples hands.

The news about the 3060s reduced mining capability has been widely discussed, so it's hard to see where someone would be uninformed on the subject of the 3060 and mining.

They have very clearly said that they do not intend to limit other CUDA applications, and other compute based uses of their GeForce GPUs, if they do they open themselves up to the biggest class action lawsuit in their history.

Nvidias CUDA advantage only exists because every GPU in their lineup can do CUDA work, they aren't going to throw away 14 years of work, and one of the most widely used parrallel computing platforms, just because of this mining craze.

You can't look at a situation like this one, where Nvidia has been dragged through the mud by people claiming they only do business with miners, where their global supply chain can't keep up with the demand of both insatiable miners and gamers, where every news story about Nvidia includes a blurb about how unsatisfied customers are with supply, and expect them not to do something about it.

For the first time, a major GPU vendor has taken direct action against miners using their GPUs, and frankly I think the GPU market will only be better for it.

If miners don't like this change, then they shouldn't have taxed the global supply chain to the point that this was the most logical decision for Nvidia to make.

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[AHOC] Rambling about the ASUS Z590 motherboard lineup (u/buildzoid)

Posted: 19 Feb 2021 11:39 AM PST

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Nvidia has set a precedence that you no longer actually own your computer hardware.

Posted: 19 Feb 2021 05:42 AM PST

First off, this is my opinion, and I understand it is likely quite a controversial one.

My Argument: Nvidia has set a precedence that you no longer actually own your computer hardware with the news that the RTX 3060 will be released with firmware/bios/drivers whatever that will be capable of detecting if the GPU is mining cryptocurrency and gimp its performance.

Why: Nvidia is dictating what you can and cannot run/use on the hardware you purchased to own. If a company still has control over how and when you use a product you purchase, thats no longer ownership. Nvidia is restricting the end user on how they can use their device.

Discussion: I'd argue that this is within the same line of large tech companies essentially leasing you hardware that you have to pay retail for, just like how apple is currently fighting right to repair, not allowing end users to be able to repair the devices they own, and with Tesla, selling you hardware inside of your car that you have to pay more money to be allowed to use. Id say if I pay for something to own it, i should actually own it.

The specific issue I have with this decision is that it is targeted. the end user is paying full retail price for a graphics card, but Nvidia has decided that the end user is not allowed to mine crypto on the card they thought they own, and can only use it for workloads Nvidia allows. thats a scary slippery slope if you ask me.

Just to put the current situation into a different scenario, I would liken this new move to the RTX 3060 limitations, to something like this:

Nvidia has announced that RTX / GTX Branded graphics cards are for Gaming only (quote from their blog post: "GeForce is Made for Gaming"). any use outside of their intended usecase, they will reduce their performance by 50% or greater. Adobe products, Autodesk products, and GPU based rendering software will all have full performance on our professional line of GPUs, the quadro graphics cards. Quote - "We are gamers, through and through."

this limitation to Crypto mining workloads on their GPUs has opened the doors to a possibility like that. I dont know about you but that scares me.

Let me know what you think, I'd love to hear some other opinions and discuss with y'all. thanks

EDIT: ok, so lets get a little bit tinfoil hat action going on here. take this specific part with a massive grain of salt, as this is all just opinion and theory. you have been warned.

also, just to preface this, I personally do not specifically mine Ethereum, nor do I hold or have any investments in Ethereum.

In Nvidia's blog post under the "halving hash rate" section, it says, " 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. "

why are they specifically only limiting performance on the Ethereum algorithm? wouldn't there goal be to completly nerf the card in all Crypto mining related workloads? why just Daggerhasimoto or whatever. just seems odd to me. think of it what you will.