Nvidia launches CMP production line for Ethereum mining cards. Will miners buy it?

From the beginning of January 2021 to the present, the price of Ethereum has risen by 170%, but the computing power of the entire network has only increased by about 35.7%.

You know, the last time Ethereum skyrocketed (late 2017-early 2018), the hashrate of the entire network increased by 83%! Why can’t it be increased this time? The answer is obvious: the production capacity of graphics cards cannot meet the needs of miners.

The graphics cards in Luo Yonghao's live broadcast room were sold out in an instant after they were put on the shelves

The surge in Ethereum's price has caused miners who want to take advantage of the opportunity to enter the market and expand their scale to rush to buy graphics cards and then gaming laptops.

Game players are suffering. For example, the RTX3080 graphics card, which was originally priced at 5,499 yuan, has risen to more than 10,000 yuan in the second-hand market, and it is still hard to get one. Who would still play this "game"?

Miners install gaming laptops for mining

In order to allow gamers to buy graphics cards, Nvidia announced on its official blog on February 18 that it has decided to start a production line for Ethereum mining cards - CMP HX. In addition, in order to reduce miners' interest in graphics cards, the mining rate of graphics cards released later will be halved.

Image from NVIDIA official website

This made gamers excited: Can we get the graphics card now?

But the miners looked at this matter with more caution:

Can CMP achieve the same mining performance as gaming cards? Is there a price advantage? Is it worth buying?

Let us find answers to these questions from the information officially released by NVIDIA!

First, let's take a look at the specifications of the CMP HX series products announced by NVIDIA:

Image from NVIDIA official website

From NVIDIA's specification design for the CMP series of products, we can see that it has fully taken the issue of DAG file size into consideration. The minimum video memory is 6GB, which is undoubtedly born for Ethereum.

According to the specifications of CMP HX, we can roughly calculate the revenue of each card:

*Note: The revenue per M computing power is calculated at 0.76 yuan (data source: okkong.com, PM on February 22) and the electricity fee is calculated at 0.34 yuan/kWh.

Comparing with the mainstream graphics cards currently used by miners, we can roughly foresee how popular CMP will be in the mining industry in the future.

In terms of power consumption ratio, the 90HX with the best CMP only surpasses the RTX2080Ti, and none of the other models can beat it;

In terms of profitability, the 90HX is okay, but the other models cannot catch up with the RTX2080Ti.

Unless CMP HX is very cheap, it may not impress miners.

Some netizens speculated that the 90HX with the highest mining speed would be around $600, which is similar to the official price of RTX3070. But who knows how much it will rise in the second-hand market.

Therefore, even if CMPs are produced for miners and the mining rate of graphics cards is limited, the situation of crazy buying of graphics cards may still not be resolved.

Here are the reasons:

①CMP cannot feed miners

As long as the price of Ethereum exceeds $1,000, the Ethereum mining market will continue to soar, and CMP will not be able to feed the miners at all.

So although Nvidia expressed in its official blog that "we have taken an important step (restarting the CMP production line) to ensure that GeForce GPUs end up in the hands of gamers", a beautiful vision.

However, the market trend may not be as he wishes, and the current market supply and demand situation cannot be fundamentally changed in the short term.

Don’t think that with CMP, miners can be confident and say: “Oh, I’m so annoyed, should I buy a graphics card or a CMP?”

If you hesitate for one more second, you will not be able to buy either.

Then someone may ask, the newly released graphics cards have limited mining speed, can I get my money back if I buy them?

This brings us to the second point:

②The driver that restricts mining can be cracked

Nvidia wrote in the announcement: "The RTX 3060 software driver is designed to detect specific properties of the Ethereum cryptocurrency mining algorithm and limit the hash rate or cryptocurrency mining efficiency to approximately 50%."

What does this announcement mean? I will translate it for you: Nvidia will reduce mining efficiency through graphics card drivers.

Mining friends who have done some research may know that graphics card drivers can be cracked.

The GTX1060 mining card released by NVIDIA a few years ago was cracked by a master, and the BIOS of a normal 1060 graphics card and a modified laptop graphics card driver were implanted, so that it can be used as a normal graphics card.

After all, the mining income can be doubled after cracking the code. Although it is very difficult, there will still be many great miners who will continue to do it!

Even if we can’t crack it, we can still wait until the price of the currency rises to a point where we can still make money with only half the computing power…

③ Mining cards are difficult to sell, so miners will be more cautious in choosing

The advantage of game cards is that they are very easy to sell. If a mining accident occurs, they can be sold to game players at the original price or even at a higher price in the second-hand market, and the money earned is like picking up something for free.

However, second-hand mining cards have narrower uses and are not that valuable.

Considering the problem of selling out in the future, miners will be more cautious when taking action.

Based on the above reasons, even if Nvidia opens a production line specifically for miners, it may not be able to satisfy the mining market in the short term, nor reduce miners' interest in gaming cards; but in the long run, they have indeed "taken an important step."

It is reported that CMP HX will be released in Q1 or Q2 of this year. The editor will continue to pay attention and bring you the latest progress reports.

Source: blogs.nvidia.com; Zhihu

Editor: Fan Shiliu

Produced by: OKKONG Content Team