NVIDIA continues its war against miners on GeForce RTX cards
Citing an unspecified Taiwanese graphics card manufacturer as the source, HKEPC claims that NVIDIA has discontinued the production of the GA106-300 GPU, the chip on which the GeForce RTX 3060 is based. Therefore, the next GeForce RTX 3060 will be equipped with the new GA106-302 chip, which should make it impossible to use the GeForce 470.05 driver. Beta leaked in recent weeks, which allowed to bypass the block for mining. Also, it appears that NVIDIA has implemented additional protection mechanisms, so removing the throttling won't be as easy as before.
Barring any delays, NVIDIA is expected to ship GA106-302 GPUs in May, which means subsequent cards GeForce RTX 3060 graphics will be equipped with the new chip. In this way, miners will have to be very careful which GeForce RTX 3060 to buy, as it will be possible to come across a variant equipped with the new “locked” chip. Furthermore, this move could drive up the price of cards still based on the original GPU, further discouraging their purchase.
Although HKEPC only talks about the GeForce RTX 3060, famous leaker @ kopite7kimi thinks NVIDIA could replicate the same operation also with the GA102 and GA104 GPUs, used for the GeForce RTX 3090, GeForce RTX 3080 and GeForce RTX 3070. Therefore, it seems that the manufacturer has decided to continue to fight miners in a massive way in the market for consumer video cards dedicated to gamers.
After all, NVIDIA recently launched the CMP line with excellent results, so the ultimate goal is certainly to push miners towards these products. For example, Hut 8 Mining Corp. has already placed orders worth $ 30 million and NVIDIA itself already expects an estimated revenue of up to $ 150 million from CMP sales during the first quarter, tripling previous forecasts.
Looking for a new PSU to power your next GPU? Corsair RM750X, 750W modular power supply, is available on Amazon.
