The joy over NVIDIA’s move to limit the capabilities of GeForce RTX 3060 graphics cards for cryptocurrency mining was short-lived. A measure that was accompanied by the presentation of specific GPUs for cryptocurrency. With this measure, NVIDIA aimed to reduce the huge demand for RTX 30 family graphics cards by this sector, thus deflating the bubble that has been generated with their prices, and facilitating access to them by end consumers, the main victims of this situation.
The plan, in theory, was quite good, because by substantially reducing the mining capacity of the GeForce RTX 3060 they would no longer be attractive to miners who, in addition, would have the alternative of the CMP (Cryptocurrency Mining Processor), specialized graphics cores and that, therefore, would improve the performance offered by the graphics cards, the GeForce RTX 3060 in the first instance, but perhaps the rest of its series companions in the future.
And is that the data point out that the RTX 3060 offers particularly advantageous characteristics for this purpose, its price / performance ratio is very high, and we are also talking about a component, graphics cards, which have good resale options in the second-hand market, if at some point the mining installation is going to be dismantled or the cards are going to be upgraded for more advanced ones.
Chinese miners cracked the hash limiter of RTX 3060
The bad news is that, China-based cryptocurrency miners have found a way around this by using a custom mod. It is true, and this is important to note, that this modification allows the GeForce RTX 3060 to be used to mine octopus, not bitcoin or ethereum, which leaves us wondering if this was possible because NVIDIA has not taken into account some cybercurrencies or, on the contrary, because circumventing the limitation is easier for some currencies than for others.
If the former is the case, there is still room for confidence that this limitation will reduce the demand for GeForce RTX 3060… at least until miners become interested in other cybercurrencies that can be mined with the RTX 30 at full capacity, and this in a market as fluctuating as the one for these new digital currencies may sound strange today and be a very present reality in a few days. NVIDIA could be updating the blockchain system to accommodate new cybercurrencies, but it would be a reactive measure, not a proactive one.
But it will be the situation if the miners finally do find some system to circumvent the limitation of the GeForce RTX 3060, because in this case we would be facing a very perverse situation, since miners could take advantage of the full potential of these cards, but individual users who acquire one for home use could not take advantage of the free time of their PC to try to get an ethereum. It is not that the righteous pay for the sinners, it is that only the righteous would pay, leaving the sinners free from punishment.
So, at least for the time being, and while waiting for China to start taking serious action against mining, it seems that the only solution that could work to alleviate the pressure on the graphics market is for NVIDIA (and other manufacturers, if they join in) to step on the gas with CMPs, and these become a cheaper and better performing alternative for miners than the GeForce RTX 3060. Otherwise, it looks like the graphics card market will remain in the current situation for quite some time, with end users frustrated and without cards, or paying double their value on the resale market.
