Nvidia announced its Cryptocurrency Mining Processor (CMP) just three weeks ago. Today, VideoCardz shared what appear to be renders of the first custom CMP 30HX, which originates from Gigabyte’s camp.
Although Nvidia hasn’t admitted it, there is enough evidence to suggest that most of its CMP graphics cards are based on the Turing arechitecture. The chipmaker advertises the 30HX with an Ethereum hash rate of up to 26 MH/s, and the graphics card comes with 6GB of memory, a 125W TDP, and requires only one 8-pin PCIe power connector. The 30HX’s performance and partial specifications basically describe Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 1660 Super, and the latest Gigabyte CMP 30HX helps confirm the early suspicions.
It’s not hard to see that the Gigabyte CMP 30HX is a close copy of the brand’s GeForce GTX 1660 Super OC 6G. The only apparent difference is that Gigabyte removed the display outputs. The graphics card uses the exact WindForce 2X cooler with the same pair of 90mm semi-passive cooling fans as its gaming counterpart. It also retains the single 8-pin PCIe power connector.
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The CMP 30HX is in all likelihood based on the TU116 silicon. The jury is still out on whether the 30HX will come with the same 1,408 CUDA cores as the GeForce GTX 1660 Super. Mining Ethereum requires a certain level of compute performance after which memory bandwidth becomes the main factor.
According to VideoCardz’s report, Nvidia’s AIBs have already started mass-producing the CMP 30HX and 40HX. The 30HX and 40HX are scheduled to debut in the first quarter of this year, so these cryptomining devices are right around the corner. However, Nvidia left something very important out of its CMP announcement: the pricing.
With the existing graphics card shortage, pricing is crazy right now. For reference, the GeForce GTX 1660 Super launched two years ago for $229. Presently, custom GeForce GTX 1660 Super models start at $599 and scale up to $899. For the CMP 30HX to succeed, Nvidia will have to price the graphics card very attractively. If not, cryptocurrency miners would just stick to the GeForce GTX 1660 Super since it offers the same level of Ethereum as the CMP 30HX. The GeForce RTX 3060 was also a very convincing graphics for mining Ethereum too before Nvidia’s nerf.