Something to look forward to: Computex looks set to be the battleground where Nvidia and AMD reveal their mainstream GPUs from the latest generation. Nvidia’s quiet unveiling of the RTX 5060 Ti and 5060 has sparked suspicion that it wants to downplay the 8GB VRAM on both cards.

Nvidia told board partners it will launch the RTX 5060 on May 19, anonymous sources told VideoCardz. Reviews will go live the same day, likely giving customers little time to weigh third-party benchmarks before buying what may become the most popular card in the Blackwell lineup.

The company revealed full specifications earlier this month but withheld launch and review embargo dates. With 3,840 CUDA cores, a 2.5GHz boost clock, and a $300 price tag, the RTX 5060 offers slightly better value than the 4060 and a meaningful upgrade over the 3060 – aside from its limited VRAM.

Marketing for the RTX 5060 Ti and standard 5060 has focused primarily on the 16GB Ti variant. Our reviews show the $430 GPU brings decent 4K gaming within reach for mainstream consumers, but cutting its memory pool to 8GB completely changes the story.

Nvidia likely delayed reviews of the 8GB variant to obscure severe performance limitations. Our results show that this amount of VRAM already bottlenecks many high-end games – and the gap will likely widen as new titles demand more memory.

This story will repeat with the RTX 5060, which only offers an 8GB configuration. Steam survey data consistently ranks 60-class cards among the most popular, making the 5060 a key release for Nvidia. However, the release-day embargo suggests the company may be setting a trap for many of its customers.

Meanwhile, the release date of the RTX 5060 falls one day after AMD’s response to the 16GB RTX 5060 Ti – the Radeon RX 9060 XT. While details on AMD’s latest mainstream cards remain scarce, including the release window for the standard 9060, the company is likely to follow Nvidia’s VRAM configuration pattern, frustrating users who can’t afford to spend over $300 on a GPU.

Supply chain disruptions from inflation and tariffs have impacted Nvidia and AMD, each unwilling to sacrifice their margins on memory modules. This reluctance will likely hinder progress in GPU development, limiting meaningful improvements at the mainstream price tier.

Something to look forward to: Nvidia has spent years showcasing how its ray tracing technology can enhance classic games like Quake 2 and Portal. As development continues on a fan-made Half-Life 2 remaster, the company has released a free demo along with its ray-traced modding toolkit to highlight DLSS 4 and other new features.

Nvidia’s complete RTX Remix modding suite is now available through the Nvidia app and website. To demonstrate the technology, a free demo of the upcoming fully path-traced version of Half-Life 2 will launch on March 18.

Nvidia’s RTX Remix allows modders to add ray tracing, DLSS, new art assets, and other advanced features to PC games that utilize DirectX 8 and 9. The GPU giant previously used the toolset to create an ambitious remaster of Portal. Meanwhile, independent tinkerers have used early versions of the company’s code on early 2000s classics like Max Payne, Dark Messiah: Might and Magic, SWAT 4, and Need for Speed Underground 2.

A drag-and-drop interface makes it easy for users to add physical properties to old textures so they respond to new ray-traced lighting correctly. Modders can also create new textures or use machine learning to upscale the originals. The tool replaces a game’s original renderer with Vulkan to facilitate the insertion of new assets in real-time.

The full release adds new features to simplify modding and showcase Nvidia’s latest neural rendering techniques. The transformer ray reconstruction model for DLSS 4 and multi-frame generation are key highlights, but the Half-Life 2 RTX demo will also introduce additional tools.

Previous versions of RTX Remix enabled replacing textures and lights, but modders can now swap upgraded character models and quickly match them to their original animations. For example, characters in Half-Life 2 RTX will feature 30 times as many polygons as the original.

A new tool called RTX Skin combines ray tracing and subsurface scattering, allowing ray-traced light to penetrate semi-transparent materials like skin, wax, marble, or jade. Neural Radiance Cache trains a neural network on gameplay content to enhance indirect lighting detail while improving performance by up to 15 percent. The new RTX IO feature dynamically manages texture settings to maintain maximum texture detail without exceeding the GPU’s VRAM limit. Additionally, RTX volumetrics uses ray tracing to enhance fog and god rays more efficiently than traditional rasterization.

Clearly, Nvidia has packed a lot of power into this toolkit. The Half-Life 2 RTX demo should thoroughly showcase RTX Remix’s abilities in the Ravenholm and Nova Prospect chapters. The completed HL2 conversion still needs work and has no launch date yet. However, it will be free to Half-Life 2 owners upon its eventual release.

GPU mining might finally be back. Nvidia announced the release of the RTX 3000 series that feature a massive 50-80% performance over their RTX 2000 counterparts. Best part is, the price point is the same – the card is available on September 17, starting at $699 for the Founders Edition.

Mining Performance

Nvidia leaked some hashrates for Ethereum (DaggerHashimoto) mining. The RTX series are based on the new Nvidia Ampere graphics architecture that features better raw performance and power efficiency.

Compared to the RTX 2080 Ti (54 MH/s top), the RTX 3080 outputs 75 MH/s with factory settings and up to 93 Mh/s when overclocked. My only concern is power consumption, with the 3080 having a 28% higher TDP than the 2080 on default settings, and up to 60% higher when overclocked.

GTX RTX 3080 Specs

(*) For reference only

From what we know so far, the RTX 3080 features higher hashrate, same price point, and roughly the same power efficiency as the 2080.

As usual, the Founder’s Edition is probably not the best model for mining. It features only two coolers. Personally, I will wait until MSI or Gigabyte release a version with three coolers.

I will be testing my RTX 3080 on all the popular GPU minable coins and posting the results here soon, so stay tuned!

Thank you for reading. As always, your comments, suggestions and questions are welcome.

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The RTX 3080 is widely praised as one of the best gaming GPU’s to the date. Not only it’s more powerful than the RTX 2080, it’s also cheaper, making it undeniable a better bang for the buck.

Since the card is only a few months old, little is known about its mining performance. Luckily for me, one of my friends happened to assemble a monster gaming rig with an Gigabyte RTX 3080 VISION OC 10G, and a new gen Ryzen 5 5600x. That beast of a PC can run Call of Duty Warzone at 240 fps average.

The man was nice enough to let me test his GPU on several mining algos.

Note: I will be getting my hands on the RTX 3090 soon to benchmark it and test it in my rigs.

Gigabyte RTX 3080 VISION OC 10G Specs

Gigabyte RTX 3080 VISION OC 10G Unboxed

Gigabyte RTX 3080 VISION OC 10G Mining Hashrate

As you will be able to see below, my first tests with the 3080 did not give the most breathtaking results. There are two reasons for that:

The Asus RTX 3080 10G, on the other hand, is reported to hash up to 97 Mh/s, though it’s not a card I had the chance to test yet. I have also not experienced any cooling issues with the 2080 and 2080Ti Gigabyte cards, so that’s a new. I will be looking further into this issue these days, and I will keep you updated.

The power consumption on the GeForce RTX 3080 Vision OC is quite high, with up to 350W on standard clocks, and around 250W at 70% power limit. I obviously run it on the lower power consumption settings, which give me 85 Mh/s on average for Ethash. Here’s a full list of algos and their respective hashrates:

Best Hardware for 6x RTX 3080 Mining Rig

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Gigabyte RTX 3080 Vision 3Dmark Benchmark

Gigabyte RTX 3080 Mining Hashrate Performance

Ethereum Hashrate Stock Clocks (Micron)

RTX 3080 Ethereum Hashrate (ethash)

RTX 3080 Ethereum Classic Hashrate (etchash)

RTX 3080 Ravencoin Hashrate (kawpow)

RTX 3080 Grin Hashrate (cuckatoo29)

RTX 3080 Grin Hashrate (cuckatoo32)

RTX 3080 Nexus Hashrate (nexushash)

RTX 3080 Lux Hashrate (phi2)

RTX 3080 Veil Hashrate (progpow-veil)

RTX 3080 Beam Hashrate (beam hash III)

RTX 3080 AE Hashrate (aeternity)

RTX 3080 Aion (equihash 210_9)

RTX 3080 Bitcoin Gold (Equihash 144,5 BgoldPoW)

RTX 3080 Conflux (octopus)

RTX 3080 Cortex (cortex)

RTX 3080 MoneroV (cuckarood29v)

RTX 3080 MimbleWimbleCoin (cuckarood29v)

RTX 3080 Sero (sero)

RTX 3080 Swap (cuckaroo29s)

RTX 3080 Veriblock (VProgPoW)

RTX 3080 YCash (Equihash 192,7 ZcashPoW)

RTX 3080 Zano (ProgPowZ)

RTX 3080 ZCoin (mtp)

RTX 3080 Zelcash (equihash 125,4 zelproof)

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RTX 3080 vs. RTX 2080 vs. GTX 1080Ti Mining Hashrate

(*) Values based on the best prices I was able to find at the moment. The GPU market is known for being volatile, so these numbers should be taken as reference only.

So far, the Gigabyte 3080 is not offering the best power efficiency even with its power consumption reduced by 30%. Another thing to keep in mind is that powerful PSUs cost a lot, at the point it might be more profitable to assemble a rig that produces less but also consumes less, and thus doesn’t require a huge PSU to operate.

Now, if power efficiency isn’t as much of a concern for you, then the 3080 does offer way better hashrate per dollar invested.

RTX 3080 vs. RTX 2080 vs. GTX 1080Ti Specs

In Conclusion

As for now, it’s hard to have a conclusive opinion on the RTX 3080. It’s a new card, so it’s very probable that we haven’t unlocked its full mining potential yet. It does look like a better investment than the previous models but only because of how overpriced 1080’s and 2080’s currently are.

I will keep you updated on this, and I am also getting the RTX 3090 soon to benchmark it. Have a good one!

Thank you for reading. As always, your comments, suggestions and questions are welcome.

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Recently, NVidia announced in their blog that the company is implementing a new “feature” to their RTX 3060 and future cards. This new implementation will detect mining-related operations and limit the GPU resources, thus reducing mining speed.

What’s going on?

So far, the only affected cryptocurrency is Ethereum. The hashrate reduction is a solid 50%. According to NVidia, the reason for this ‘nerf’ is to decrease the demand for new-gen GPUs in the mining community, and fight the current gaming GPU shortage.

NVidia however still wants to support the mining community. In order to do that, the company announced the NVidia CMP – a GPU-like card without any output ports designed specifically for mining GPU-minable coins.

We have already seen something similar with the Nvidia P102-100 GPUs , though never before NVidia has forced miners away from using gaming GPUs so openly.

The Downsides

As a gamer myself, I would love to see the gaming GPU shortage issue solved. In fact, the only reason I’ve got into mining a few years ago was so I could game on a high-end GPU and have it pay for itself over time.

Having gaming gear that pays for itself is any gamer’s dream. Now, do these actions by NVidia get us any closer to that dream?

The answer is probably no. Here’s why:

#1. Big Mining Facilities Will Still Deplete Gaming GPU Stocks

Some people zealously defend NVidia for its decision. What they don’t understand is that mining is a GPU sink. Big mining facilities will keep buying GPUs in bulk as long as mining is somewhat profitable.

And here’s the thing – NVidia is more than happy to supply miners with gaming GPUs.

Some of you already noticed that NVidia is using the term ‘Mining community’ a bit too vaguely, which makes some of their public statements misleading. Let me explain.

We need to understand that the mining community is comprised of two groups of people. The first group are the home miners, most of which are gamers, the ones NVidia is supposed to be defending.

The second group are the big mining facilities. They are the ones that buy most of the GPU’s and cause the gaming GPU shortage to begin with. I am talking about the multimillion companies, most of which are located in China, Iceland and other countries with free electricity. Those companies can afford to buy a big share of the available GPU stock for their farms.

If you wonder how big they are, we are talking about several companies that are worth billions of dollars that operate huge mining facilities with millions of gaming GPU’s in them.

#2 Big Mining Facilities Will Bypass the Hashrate Restrictions

NVidia stated that this hashrate limitation is implemented in the “RTX 3060 software drivers”. Thing is, custom drivers are a thing, and so are custom BIOS flashes.

Big mining companies have their own teams of IT engineers who make their own drivers for optimized mining. Only amateur miners (most of who are gamers) mine under Windows using official NVidia drivers.

This point begs a question: who will get affected by the hashrate nerf, then?

#3 Gamers Are the Only Ones Getting ‘Nerfed’ Here

Think about this: as a gamer who bought the new RTX 30xx card, you will no longer be able to mine in your spare time to make some extra money with your GPU. Not as efficiently as before anyway.

A lot of gamers are getting into mining to make up for the insanely high costs of graphic cards. Now, this alternative will become less viable.

Also, if the mining craze calms down, you might no longer have the option to go to eBay and buy a used new-gen GPU for a fraction of the price as you could back in 2019. Instead, you will have a million offers of used CMP cards you cannot use for gaming.

#4 Is Ethereum Really the Issue Here?

Another thing to consider is that NVidia is nerfing the mining hashrate of only one algorithm, which is ethash. This again rises questions on who’s going to get affected by the nerf the most. Ethereum is one of the most known coins, and it’s one of the easiest ones to mine, too. There are a lot of user-friendly miner software for the coin like CudoMiner, which makes it easier for amateurs (i.e. gamers) to get into mining.

With Ethereum mining no longer being profitable on the newest GPU’s, more experienced users will still find ways around this issue. We can always switch to non-ethash altcoins that are just a bit less profitable to mine, or use custom drivers under Linux to bypass the hashrate limitation.

The average joe however might think that GPU mining is straightforward over.

#5. NVidia’s Decision Might Affect Ethereum Decentralization

 The sole idea of GPU-minable cryptocurrencies is that anyone with a gaming GPU at home can contribute to the safety of the blockchain. This is called decentralization, and it’s is what makes cryptocurrencies so appealing. 

Obviously, the more experienced users will find their way around this issue. However, the fewer average gamers are mining the currency, the less decentralized it becomes.

On the bright side, this might open new possibilities for AMD and maybe even Intel. Besides, the GPUs we have right now will not be affected by these limitations, and they might still be profitable to mine with for a few years from now.

Will We Have Less GPU’s Now?

We are currently experiencing a global semiconductor shortage. This leads us to a question: what chips will NVidia use on their CMP’s?

First of all, developing a new chip costs hundreds of millions of dollars, so there’s little chance that NVidia will actually do that for a mining GPU. The mining scene is very unpredictable, and the insane demand in mining gear might end abruptly any day.

According to the company, they will use dice that weren’t good enough for gaming GPU’s, but that will do just fine for mining.

As The Verge pointed out though, the official shot of a CMP chip looks nothing similar to that of an Ampere-based RTX 3080/3090, or the GA104 used in the RTX 3060Ti/3070. Maybe NVidia is putting old Pascal architecture chips to use.

I’m not going to speculate on whether those sub-performing dice could still be used for gaming GPU’s. I know there are a lot of talk regarding how NVidia and other companies managed to give bad dice a second life in the past. All I’m going to say is that the new CMP will not mine as fast as the RTX 30xx cards. They might however be more power-efficient.  That we will know once third-party testing becomes possible.

In Conclusion

I’m not here to bash on NVidia for their marketing decisions. The only takeaway here is that I would personally not expect this decision by NVidia to solve any issues with gaming GPU supply.

The new CMP cards might be interesting if they get sold for cheap. Just keep in mind that they have zero resale value so they still might not be the best option for home miners.

Thank you for reading. As always, your comments, suggestions and questions are welcome.

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