Leaked tests show Nvidia's CMP 40HX mining card performing close to an RTX 3060

[nanoguy]

The big picture: At least one cryptocurrency mining company is interested in Nvidia's CMP cards -- Hut 8 Mining Corp. recently placed a $30 million order that will start shipping in May. In particular, the Nvidia CMP 40HX performance might whet the appetite of miners who currently have to jump through additional hoops to make use of something like the Nvidia RTX 3060.

When Nvidia revealed that it would once again launch a CMP line of silicon explicitly made for mining purposes, the listed specifications were a little underwhelming, as are the three months of warranty offered with some AIB cards based on the Nvidia CMP 30HX chip. However, the die shot accompanying the announcement seemed to suggest the company had created custom silicon this time around, rather than taking subpar consumer chips from the production lines to turn them into cryptocurrency mining processors.

According to an Asus photo of internal testing on one of these cards (spotted by Videocardz), Nvidia's AIB partners might be able to squeeze more performance out of them. In the case of the CMP 40HX, the listed hash rate for Ethereum mining algorithms is 36 MH per second, but Asus got that to over 43 MH per second, which is a healthy 20 percent increase over the advertised performance.

Asus likely achieved this speed by optimizing the memory clock and timings since Ethereum mining algorithms are sensitive to memory bandwidth and latency while benefitting little from a higher core clock. In fact, lowering the clock can improve power efficiency to a certain degree, which is why the Asus CMP 40HX cards you see in the screenshot above can achieve a power consumption of 134-135, which is lower than the TDP of 185 watts.

One reason to be excited by these results is that they roughly match the hash rates obtained with an Nvidia RTX 3060 when using a leaked driver that can bypass the company's mining limiter. Hopefully, this will lead to miners purchasing more CMP 40HX cards instead, which are said to retail at around $699, while the CMP 30HX will retail for $599. Either way, Nvidia says it will make at least $150 million on orders of CMP cards placed during the first quarter of this year.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/89449-leaked-tests-show-nvidia-cmp-40hx-mining-card.html

 

[QuantumPhysics]

Shipping cards direct to households would help.

Just because you beat miners doesn’t deal with the regular scalpers.

 

[Dimitriid]

Shipping cards direct to households would help.

Just because you beat miners doesn’t deal with the regular scalpers.

That's the nastiest secret: Nvidia doesn't wants to sell direct (Anymore) even though everything seems to indicate that AIB partners but specially distributors are walking away with truckloads of cash while Nvidia yes moves cards fast, but seemingly at their normal profit rate?

I found that as the kid say today, very sus: I just don't think we're ever going to find out why Nvidia isn't just using the channels and stuff they already had to sell direct to consumers but my guess would make the most sense: money. So there's got to be something on Nvidia's financials that would show they're getting kickback money from both AIB partners and distributors, otherwise they would have cut out a lot of them and made far more profits selling direct: direct to miners and/or direct to consumers.

 

[pcnthuziast]

'Hopefully this means more RTX 3060 cards end up in the hands of gamers'

It doesn't and means just the opposite.

 

[Bl00dyMinded]

'Hopefully this means more RTX 3060 cards end up in the hands of gamers'

It doesn't and means just the opposite.

Yep... As a miner I rather still buy GPU cards over these. I will have a resell value in my hands in the future over these "mining cards".

 

[psycros]

As long as there are regular GPUs that provide more performance per PCI slot nothing will change. Until we see mining-only variants of the fastest cards available gamers will still be the last served. Scalpers know this and that's why they don't touch mining cards.

 

[Geralt]

Yep... As a miner I rather still buy GPU cards over these. I will have a resell value in my hands in the future over these "mining cards".

That's the nastiest secret: Nvidia doesn't wants to sell direct (Anymore) even though everything seems to indicate that AIB partners but specially distributors are walking away with truckloads of cash while Nvidia yes moves cards fast, but seemingly at their normal profit rate?

I found that as the kid say today, very sus: I just don't think we're ever going to find out why Nvidia isn't just using the channels and stuff they already had to sell direct to consumers but my guess would make the most sense: money. So there's got to be something on Nvidia's financials that would show they're getting kickback money from both AIB partners and distributors, otherwise they would have cut out a lot of them and made far more profits selling direct: direct to miners and/or direct to consumers.

3dfx did that and went on bankruptcy.

 

[godrilla]

On a positive note I've seen tens of articles stating regulations incoming will cause crypto currencies to go gown probably in a form of market correction(s) to find new levels of support.
Also has anyone tried the new Free dlc for vermitide 2 it is definitely a challenging one.

 

[Dimitriid]

3dfx did that and went on bankruptcy.

Nvidia wouldn't be starting the market almost from scratch like 3DFX was back in the late 90s (You actually had to convince PC gamers they even needed a Graphical Processing Unit at all, 3D acceleration was a nice option, mostly for Quake and it's derivates) and is actually a strong enough company to just completely retire from gaming and live off the compute stuff if they wanted to at this point.

So, apples and oranges comparison imho.

 

[Irata]

So wait, a $ 699 mining only card with little to no resale value that performs around the 3060 mark (perf/W I assume) will mean that miners don‘t go for a 3060 ? The latter has a supposed msrp of $329 and good resale value.

The CMP 40 HX actually performs about where a Vega 56 would be, almost four years later and $300 more expensive. Just shows how bad the GPU market is right now.

 

[Kosmoz]

So wait, a $ 699 mining only card with little to no resale value that performs around the 3060 mark (perf/W I assume) will mean that miners don‘t go for a 3060 ? The latter has a supposed msrp of $329 and good resale value.

The CMP 40 HX actually performs about where a Vega 56 would be, almost four years later and $300 more expensive. Just shows how bad the GPU market is right now.

Exactly, no one is outraged about this idiocy!

And nvidia wants us to believe they "care" about gamers.... Rolf, what a mockery! It's actually a continued mockery for years from nvidia, at this point... bleh.

 

[sTharsdan]

Don't ever buy a used mining card. Electronics do wear out from heat.

 

[Hardware Geek]

Exactly, no one is outraged about this idiocy!

And nvidia wants us to believe they "care" about gamers.... Rolf, what a mockery! It's actually a continued mockery for years from nvidia, at this point... bleh.

All they care about is the bottom line.

 

[pildorman321]

What really stopped me from getting ANY of this GPUs? simple: abysmal board consumption.

 

[Bl00dyMinded]

Don't ever buy a used mining card. Electronics do wear out from heat.

Replace thermal paste and it's brand new...

 

[Dimitriid]

Just an additional thought: Probably this didn't made the news here cause is Linux-specific but a few weeks ago Nvidia decided to just allow GPU pass-through. Previously it required some initialization tricks to avoid showing the GPU as inside a VM because Nvidia would just kill the driver but now they don't

I thought it was out of character for Nvidia stopping actively sabotaging Linux and actually implement a feature everybody wanted that was literally an on-off switch but now that I am circling back at this story I guess they might want this mining turds to be used as compute or even GPU for VMs later on.

But hey if they make those work ok with passthrough and looking glass (So you don't need a physical monitor plugged in) it's better than the retired mining cards just going into a landfield in 6 months.

 

[sTharsdan]

Replace thermal paste and it's brand new...

Not always the case I'm afraid. Better to just stay away from them.

 

[christiangeli]

Lol my amd 5700 do 53mh eth mining at 107 watt with minor tweaking. That POS for a new card

 

[christiangeli]

Don't ever buy a used mining card. Electronics do wear out from heat.

Electronic wear are superstition. The only proven wear on a video card are the fan bearing.
Mining card on a mining ring with proper cooling propably last longer than card on a gaming computer collecting dust and cat fur ... most gamer never monitor their card temperature and health.

 

[emmzo]

This is useless nVidia garbage. I only see two things solving the current crisis: ETH going PoS and laws and regulations targeting scalpers.

 

[JCX88]

Scalpers can only harm in case there isn't enough supply. Because nvidia can't increase supply nothing can really be done about scalpers. Even if by some miracle you're able to restrain them the only thing that will change is that instead of wealthy getting cards, everyone would have a tiny 0.001% chance of getting the card which I'm not so sure is a better scenario

 

[pcnthuziast]

There are those who believe this situation will eventually return to 'normal' and then there are the realists who understand that the game has changed and isn't going back. The only thing that may improve at some point is availability, but prices will be significantly higher and the window of availability won't be weeks or even days, but hours at best and minutes in most cases.

 

[sTharsdan]

Electronic wear are superstition. The only proven wear on a video card are the fan bearing.
Mining card on a mining ring with proper cooling propably last longer than card on a gaming computer collecting dust and cat fur ... most gamer never monitor their card temperature and health.

Says all the miners selling their old cards. Don't believe these guys. Worthless.

 

[Dimitriid]

Scalpers can only harm in case there isn't enough supply. Because nvidia can't increase supply nothing can really be done about scalpers. Even if by some miracle you're able to restrain them the only thing that will change is that instead of wealthy getting cards, everyone would have a tiny 0.001% chance of getting the card which I'm not so sure is a better scenario

That's only partially true. It's correct on the most basic level, however there's enough nuance to the situation that you need to consider.

For starters and this is the big one: Nvidia and all it's middlemen (AIB partners, distributors and retailers) do need a cut of the profits. They also need those margins to be sufficient. The way modern distribution for electronics work to cut costs and pass those savings as profit margin (To be had and to be shared with all middlemen) means that ideally you'd want "Just-in-time" model for distribution. This means that you only want to receive new inventory right after you move the one you have along to the next step (AIB > Distributor, Distributor > Retailer and Retailer > End user) This is because having large warehouses of products just sitting there waiting to be sold involves costs.

So while the more immediate solution to scalpers is just "Increase supply!" this is something nobody on the entire supply chain wants to do unless they're guaranteed not only sales, but a very predictable and steady amount of sales. Modern supply chain logistics it's just taking enormous databases, figuring out how they relate to each other, use lots of compute power to build statistic models and try to create an accurate forecast on how many sales you'll have so you can adjust the deliveries and contracts. At some parts of the process this is even done automatically but for finished products like GPUs it's probably going to involve a lot of people working to figure all this out.

So the more realistic solution to the problem of scalpers regrettably is nowhere near as simple: it requires Nvidia having far greater control of their supply chain, but this involves costs and incredibly heavy investment and this is why you only see this type of control with very large companies like Apple and Samsung and not even they have control of 100% of the supply chain themselves, simply because there's just too many moving pieces and Samsung is a massive corporation with thousands of factories and product lines but it's still not easy to control all distributors and partners so they don't make their own side deals with people like miners or scalpers and this is only considering if they're doing it maliciously: some of them just have no experience in dealing with scalpers

 

[Kosmoz]

Replace thermal paste and it's brand new...

And after thermal paste (+ thermal pads also) the fans will die soon, so replace those too...
None of those operations are convenient for the average gamer, only for enthusiasts.

I build my own PCs and I've modded my PS4 will liquid metal too, but if I can help it I would rather avoid all that hassle, so I prefer a normal market with normal prices, as in 2019 one.

But we will probably never come back to that...