Nvidia CMP is the new idea that team green has to counter explosions in demand due to Ethereium mining and other cryptocurrency. The new mining-focused GPUs don’t just not have a video output, but they have software alterations that disallow video output. This new setup will allow folks to get their hands on GPUs for gaming, instead of losing them to miners.
Nvidia also announced a batch of drivers for 30-series cards, including the 3060 due this month, that would cut hash rates. The idea is to make sure that players are the ones getting these cards instead of scalpers and miners. That would make sense, as the loss in efficiency and thus profit should push miners to other platforms. COmbine those drivers with the Nvidia CMP chips and you have a winning formula. And when it comes to the new RTX 3060 cards there needs to be something that changes.
Some users were concerned that the new GPU drivers would impact other SKUs, but worry not. The driver alterations are so far only announced for the RTX 3060, due out at the end of the month. The drivers are a targeted entry that right now only applies to one SKU. And if you’re worried about losing mining output, you probably will have items to compete for.
Certain Turing and Ampere GPUs are still viable for mining. So far, Nvidia has only confirmed four SKUs of CMP offerings, with one looking to be the baseline 3080 or an equivalent card. The baseline models are aimed at gamers, not miners. Instead, users looking to mine are encouraged to aim for the Cryptocurrency Mining Processor, or Nvidia CMP.
As much as some users might enjoy sticking it to miners, there’s no reason for Nvidia to do so. It would be bad form for Nvidia to cut mining output on gaming cards already sold. Nvidia says it is “not limiting the performance of GPUs already sold.”
The older 12nm GPUs that Nvidia offers outside the 30-series are a potential backstop that Nvidia to deploy the CMP chips for. Nvidia has announced four of these CMP chips, although details are not yet available. We can see the four CMP chips will have coverage for both certain Turing and Ampere GPUs.
