NVIDIA 460.67 Linux Driver Brings A Few Fixes, 5.11 Kernel Compatibility

[jabl]

Exactly.
Why would I want a driver that gimps my hardware?

Because you'd rather have a piece of hardware even with a driver that gimps cryptomining, than having no hardware at all because the miners are hoovering up all the production?

[mppix]

Because you'd rather have a piece of hardware even with a driver that gimps cryptomining, than having no hardware at all because the miners are hoovering up all the production?

So what does "half the hash rate" mean?
(A) miners don't buy the card; Or
(B) miners want 2x the cards?

[coder]

So what does "half the hash rate" mean?
(A) miners don't buy the card; Or
(B) miners want 2x the cards?

Cute, but if they can make money off a card, then I think the reality is that they'll take every card they can get, house, power, and cool.

Since greater density -> lower overheads, I think it's generally the case that having more GPUs that are slower isn't ideal.

[mppix]

Cute, but if they can make money off a card, then I think the reality is that they'll take every card they can get, house, power, and cool.

Since greater density -> lower overheads, I think it's generally the case that having more GPUs that are slower isn't ideal.

Actually profitability is about energy efficiency and longevity; any miner worth something operates cards at reduced hash rates.
Also we are at the point, where miners build farms with notebooks.
So yeah, they will buy any card from the last generation... and that includes increasingly mobile where a cpu, hdd, screen, etc. happens to be attached.

[coder]

Actually profitability is about energy efficiency and longevity; any miner worth something operates cards at reduced hash rates.

Well, primarily they're going to maximize hashes/W. Is there a further benefit to longevity by going even lower? Maybe, but as long as you can get enough longevity from the card, perhaps they worry more about making $ while crypto prices are still strong. Ethereum has built-in inflation, for instance. And people using the Eth blockchain might move onto something with better ASIC support, for instance.

Also we are at the point, where miners build farms with notebooks.

Wow. I hadn't realized it was that bad. This crypto craze is really a scourge for the planet.

[mppix]

Wow. I hadn't realized it was that bad. This crypto craze is really a scourge for the planet.

unfortunately, it looks like a new gold rush...

anyhow, the nvidia hash limit is not to help gamers; afaik, they try to (a) sell cheaper (no display output etc) cards at the same/higher price to miners and (b) reduce the number of mining cards that show up on ebay in the future (and reduce their new gaming card sales)...

Anyhow, Nvidia always used to be 'greedy' and they could because they had limited competition. Some of their latest actions suggests that they may actually be 'evil'. Just my 2c.

[coder]

Some of their latest actions suggests that they may actually be 'evil'. Just my 2c.

Such as? Just curious.

[mppix]

Such as? Just curious.

Well, I said that mainly regarding their increased tendency to actively block stuff on their "gaming" cards
Example 1: reduced hashrates on some gaming cards; this could open the doors for reduced Cuda capabilities (and indirectly ensuring that mining cards are a separate tier that is worthless after their primary use through driver and lack of display output)
Example 2: vm detection that essentially disables nvidia gaming gpu if passed through to vm (workaround is masking the vm.. but why?). Also, we desperately need an approach to high performance gpu virtualization with 2d/3d acceleration (we can paravirtualize everything! else) ... but nvidia is making that a feature that requires high dollar licenses on high dollar data center cards (that is even locked to specific use cases)
Example 3 (the old story): signing drivers and/or not releasing necessary binaries and/or not supporting some apis: in short they don't want to support som apis and do everything to prevent anybody else from doing so..

Note that I'm typing this on a computer filled up with titan cards for Cuda compute. I'm at the stage where I run the DE in the integrated Intel gpu. This enables me to update the kernel and/or de without breaking my system every few months. Also, Wayland, va-api (for hw Firefox, vlc, etc accel.) just work now. Also, I sometimes pass through a card to a windows vm.. but I don't recommend that to beginners (there is a reason why every tutorial says 'if you have nvidia, you also need....')
Personally, I would not consider future Nvidia purchases if amd introduces rdna2 rocm support or Intel has a solution. i would even trade lower performance for stability (and I look forward to the day where my gpu is as boring as my cpu and 'just works')

[coder]

... Personally, I would not consider future Nvidia purchases if amd introduces rdna2 rocm support or Intel has a solution. i would even trade lower performance for stability (and I look forward to the day where my gpu is as boring as my cpu and 'just works')

Thanks for taking the time to explain that.

The trouble with that view is that GPU designers are always dreaming up new bits of specialized hardware to differentiate their offerings, which complicates matters involving APIs and drivers. And even CPU vendors are in the game of holding back certain capabilities from mainstream CPU.

My wish is that ROCm-support can be as drama-free as graphics acceleration. It used to be that achieving proper OpenGL acceleration, on a particular machine, was a project unto itself. If all the default AMD kernel drivers just worked for graphics and compute out-of-the-box, then they'd have an advantage over Nvidia, because nouveau sometimes causes issues for them (in my experience).

[Templar82]

Because you'd rather have a piece of hardware even with a driver that gimps cryptomining, than having no hardware at all because the miners are hoovering up all the production?

Trying to fix a supply problem with a driver is absolutely insane.