When buying an NVIDIA GPU, don’t we have such hardware?

We may not have thought about it, we may not be aware of it, but indirectly NVIDIA has set an industry precedent which can be very dangerous for the user. This article is more of an opinion, thoughtful and with a clear objective: to wonder for a moment if what just happened with the new RTX 3060 (and those to come) is really a restriction on the freedom of the consumer who purchases an NVIDIA GPU.

Are we on the verge of losing ownership of our hardware by purchasing an NVIDIA GPU?

As we assume you are aware, NVIDIA has limited the performance of its new RTX 3060 for mining use, so the performance will drop by 50% in this area when the driver detects the software’s algorithm to mine the cryptocurrency. Ethereum.

This is something totally new in the industry and the company masks it with the slogan “GeForce is made for gaming” and while they are right, it is the company that dictates what we can do with our. GPU and what is not. Let’s not limit ourselves to mining, as this is not an argument or an attack on the company or against the will to launch a new line of GPUs exclusively for mining.

The problem is, you are limiting the buyer’s freedom to a specific segment to use their proprietary material. Now let’s think about video editing software, what if NVIDIA limits its use to us, like performance in SONY Vegas? In exchange for this performance restriction, he offers us GPUs that do a worse, slower, but cheaper and more efficient job, but also limited and with exclusive use for this purpose, so he encourages us to buy these new models. .

But, by sheer logic, it indirectly limits the use of our proprietary hardware, it would take away a range of possibilities just because it doesn’t fit their sales strategy and they have an inventory issue that they can’t. solve by themselves (current case of RTX 3000).

Will paying to fully own something be a thing of the past?

If we look at any other industry or company, we will see that the tendency is to reduce the uses of a product that has been paid for, with the excuse that some features must be unlocked by paying extra. Call it forcing repair at official stores like Apple, call it in-car upgrades to offer more equipment, or directly the opposite as we’ve seen with NVIDIA: if you want the best efficiency and the best performance, you have a specific product, but the rest of my reach, although better, I limit it to get you through the hoop.

Finally, NVIDIA has locked its next GPUs, which we know of, only for Ethereum, why not BitCoin or any other cryptocurrency? Do you think that even though Hash’s performance is worse, no one is using your GPUs to mine anything other than Ethereum?

Go ahead, product segmentation is something that has been around for a lifetime, but what NVIDIA has done is totally different from that. We are talking here about overlaying the performance of a specific task on a product that does a great job so that you buy another one, with the detail that the product you already have or are going to buy did not have this restriction of. departure.

Therefore and in a way, whether we like it or not, we are at the mercy of every company and it is that company that determines what can and cannot be done, whether the product is ours as a company. ‘buyers, the limitation comes from above. and the cap could be so comprehensive that just thinking about it is scary … is it legally and morally legal to do so?