7 Jun 2021
The same as the more recently released Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 that came with mining hashrate limiter enforced by Nvidia, the new GeForce RTX 3080 Ti came out „using a reduced Ethereum hash rate“ making them less desirable for miners. The just released Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 Ti is almost equivalent concerning specifications to a RTX 3090 GPU, but with half the video memory, so only 12GB GDDR6X instead of the entire 24GB.
For the new RTX 3080 Ti in relation to CUDA cores there is a very slight decrease and memory clocks too, but the memory bus stays 384-bit, so in concept performance wise it should be quite much like a RTX 3090 and that goes not only for mining, but for gambling too. There’s the Ethereum hashrate limiter however that messes things up a bit for miners, but not for gamers and the low in half video memory must also be making it cheaper and more accessible to gamers compared to RTX 3080… in concept.
Trying to mine Ethereum (ETH) at stock settings for the RTX 3080 Ti shows a starting hashrate at about 100 MH/s that drops down to approximately 53-55 MH/s with the default setting as a result of enforced hashrate limiter for mining ETH from Nvidia. The default settings for the RTX 3080 Ti out of Palit/Gainward we have tried give us 325W of electricity usage as reported from the miner.
And though Nvidia talks about restricting Ethereum mining hahsrate other memory intensive mining calculations may also be changed too as we have seen already with the RTX 3060 GPUs that were the very first to introduce the hashrate limiting alternative by Nvidia.
Going for optimized settings to reduce energy intake for 265W and have greater hashrate (when there was no hashrate limiter in drama ) provide us slightly lower starting hashrate a bit below 100 MH/s, but it drops down to about 60 MH/s rather than under that enjoy with stock settings.
So, performance wise mining Ethereum (when there was no artificial hashrate limiter) the RTX 3080 Ti should’ve been normally effective at delivering the exact same hashrate as an RTX 3090 does currently. Something about 100 MH/s with stock settings and about 120 MH/s with clocked memory and decreased power use could’ve been possible, but rather we’re getting just around half of that in fact.
Currently, Nvidia is talking about Ethereum mining hashrate limiter, though some other memory intensive crypto mining algorithms could also be changed as we already know, but there continue to be other algorithms that will be delivering the entire hashrate with no artificial limiters in drama. Here’s an example with RavenCoin (RVN) mining on the RTX 3080 Ti in which the hashrate isn’t being artificially reduced, you’ll be getting about 48 MH/s hashrate for KawPoW using the stock settings.
And although this is likely to make mining RVN more rewarding than ETH with this particular GPU, if the artificial ETH hashrate limiter was not current mining ETH would’ve been more rewarding. So, the new Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 Ti isn’t going to become an attractive solution for Ethereum miners, though some other crypto miners not to ETH might be interested, but we’re visiting starting prices for the Ti as for its non-Ti version where available. And unlike miners, gamers won’t be very pleased to purchase at these inflated rates, remember however that gamers will be getting performance very near to that of the far more costly (for the moment) RTX 3090 GPUs.
The New Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 Ti that should also be hitting the market in a day or two from now is also going to supply a wonderful upgrade concerning hardware specs within the elderly RTX 3070 GPU, however just like the RTX 3080 Ti it’ll also arrive with synthetic Ethereum hashrate limiter. The most notable upgrade for its new RTX3 070 Ti within the old non-Ti model is the new quicker GDDR6X memory that should in theory increase the mining performance for memory intensive algorithm, but because of its Nvidia hashrate limiter Ethereum mining won’t be gaining much and actually we expect to see lower hashrate than on RTX 3070 thanks to its limiter in drama.
Again, some other memory intensive calculations besides Ethash might be impacted too, though not all, and GPU intensive mining will probably not suffer along with the performance there should be marginally better than on RTX 3070.
Related: NVidia is Nerfing the RTX 30xx GPU’s for Ethereum Mining
