I wonder how this will impact mining? Will GPUs suddenly flood the market as it becomes much less profitable to mine? God I hope so the GPU shortages have been crazy.
I've be lurking heavily in the crypto-mining communities for a few weeks now. Most are saying they'll just "move to a new coin" which is basically all they CAN do, unless they cash out early and sell their hardware. Nvidia is releasing* "LHR" (low hash rate) cards to give gamers some relief (assuming they can't be jailbroken).
That driver was just for the 3060 LHR. The 3080, 3070 and 3060 Ti LHR will require newer drivers. It's still possible for NVIDIA to mess up and release a newer driver without those limitations again, though.
Its difficult to calculate exactly the % of GPU miners that are mining Ethereum, amongst all possible choices. My estimate is 50% - 90%. (Maybe someone can reply with better data?)
When Ethereum can no longer be mined, the returns on mining the remaining 'altcoins' will fall equal to the level of new mining power that enters.
Which might very well make GPU mining uneconomical across the board.
All of the people currently mining Ethereum will switch to mining other coins.
But, the mining rewards for those other coins are typically static.
So you'll have a dramatically increased number of GPUs chasing the same number of coins - which is going to result in increased mining difficulty and reduced profits, potentially dramatically reduced.
Some of these earlier cards already have been jailbroken. Ultimately, it's a question of whether it makes sense for miners to sponsor a cracking effort vs the cost of buying the more expensive cards outright.
Unfortunately mining is only a small part of why GPUs have been so expensive, but hopefully this will contribute to making them cheaper in the long term. If they don't mess up again.
I get that (chip shortage, covid demand surge etc.), but there's a clear distinction of availability between GPUs that are suitable/unsuitable for mining.
