Nvidia CMP 30HX Mining GPU Hits The Market For $723

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By Zhiye Liu
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Let the mining games begin

Palit Nvidia GeForce CMP 30HX
Palit Nvidia GeForce CMP 30HX (Image credit: Microless)

One of the first Nvidia CMP 30HX models (via momomo_us) has emerged at Microless, a retailer in Dubai, for $723.84. The graphics card is part of Nvidia's latest Cryptocurrency Mining Processor (CMP) lineup that's suppose to convince cryptocurrency miners to lay off GeForce gaming graphics cards.

The Palit Nvidia GeForce CMP 30HX (NE630HX017J9-1160X) arrives with a 1,530 MHz base clock and a 1,785 MHz boost clock. The clock speeds are identical to Palit's GeForce GTX 1660 Super GP gaming graphics card. Although Microless didn't reveal the core count, the CMP 30HX is expected to wield 1,408 CUDA cores since it's derived from TU116 (Turing) silicon, like the GeForce GTX 1660 Super.

Similar to its gaming counterpart, the Palit Nvidia GeForce CMP 30HX rocks 6GB of GDDR6 memory that clocks in at 14 Gbps. Leveraging a 192-bit memory interface, the graphics card supplies a memory bandwidth of up to 336 GBps. Built for mining Ethereum, the Palit Nvidia GeForce CMP 30HX doesn't come with any display outputs. 

Rated for 125W, the Palit Nvidia GeForce CMP 30HX only depends on a single 8-pin PCIe power connector. The graphics card delivers Ethereum mining performance up to 26 MH/s before optimizations.

The value added tax (VAT) rate in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) is 5%, so the Palit Nvidia GeForce CMP 30HX should cost around $689.37. Keep in mind that computer hardware is frequently more expensive outside of the U.S., though. Besides, we don't know how much of the price is due to the retailer's markup on the Palit Nvidia GeForce CMP 30HX.

Due to the graphics card shortage and cryptocurrency mining craze, graphics cards are obnoxiously expensive right now. Not so long ago, we saw custom GeForce GTX 1660 Super models selling between $599 and $899. A week later, the same graphics cards are starting from $699. It looks like the CMP 30HX isn't completely dead on arrival, but there are certainly cheaper and more effective options out there, such as the GeForce GTX 1060 6GB or Radeon RX 590.

Zhiye Liu
Zhiye Liu
RAM Reviewer and News Editor

Zhiye Liu is a Freelance News Writer at Tom’s Hardware US. Although he loves everything that’s hardware, he has a soft spot for CPUs, GPUs, and RAM.

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12 Comments Comment from the forums
  • WarWolverineWarrior
    So just get a 3070 msrp for $650 with 50 MH/s+ @ 200W and higher resell value.
    Reply
  • Phaaze88
    Needless e-waste... or is it?

    To the big scale miners out there: Is this really useless? You folks will keep mining even with a crash, but for the small scale miners, these cards aren't all that great.
    Reply
  • ezst036
    Introducing mining specific cards is a much better solution than using your closed source driver to sabotage your customer's purchases.

    Hopefully AMD follows and also introduces mining specific products.

    Thank you Nvidia, and good job.
    Reply
  • Giroro
    ezst036 said:
    Introducing mining specific cards is a much better solution than using your closed source driver to sabotage your customer's purchases.

    Hopefully AMD follows and also introduces mining specific products.

    Thank you Nvidia, and good job.
    Well, the point of sabotaging the hash rates of gaming cards was mostly because Nvidia wants to sell cheap obsolete cards for more money than the new high-end ones. It rubs me the wrong way when a monopolistic company like Nvidia actively spends time and effort for the sole purpose of making a good product worse. It's regressive and a misuse of engineering.
    It would be one thing if they had put that effort into making a superior mining card using their old architecture, but they didn't. They didn't even bother to put a smaller PCIe connector on these, so I don't think they even redesigned the circuit board. The only thing this offers miners over an RTX card is availability. Miners are still going to buy up all the gaming cards whenever possible because even a locked RTX 3060 is more efficient and a better value.

    This card is a greedy cash grab in the clothing of a PR stunt. It's clear their goal is simply to squeeze cash out of miners, not to improve the gaming market. If Nvidia cared about gamers than they would either price the CMP 30HX as the no-brainer best-value card for mining operations, or they would have just brought back the full1660 Super. Gamers might as well have something old to use while miners continue to snap up everything better.
    If they cared about gamers they would build out a bot-resistant site that would let us backorder small quantities of cards, and just ship them out as they come available. Why not let people get in the system; let us get in line? Why frustrate potential customers by making them mash F5 in a futile attempt to mash F5 faster and more often than a million F5 mashing robots? Oh, right, because they learned from Nike and Beanie Babies that you can make way more money when you trick people into panic buying the first "drop" they see, regardless of price or quality. get. hyped.
    Instead all Nvidia is offering here is a mining "overflow" card, so they can continue to sell a trickle of juicy high-margin cards to miners between the gaps of selling full RTX shipments to miners. Meanwhile we all sit frothing on the sidelines, driving the irrational demand that lets them cynically overcharge on their CMP mining cards, or their RTX mining cards, or their GTX mining cards. They aren't even trying to appease gamers anymore, we are just a marketing tool to boost their mining business.
    Reply
  • dalek1234
    "Capping hash rate on gaming cards" and "releasing crypto-mining-only cards" is just another way for Nvidia to screw over the gamers in the long term.

    This is the long-term plan:

    Because of the two points above, miners buy mining cards instead of gaming ones.
    When miners have no need for those cards in the future, they can't sell them to gamers (who are looknig to buy used cards for gaming).
    Since there will be far less second-hand gaming cards available in the future, those gamers will have to buy a new card from Nvidia.
    Less used cards on the market, the more money Nvidia makes selling new ones.
    it's all about decreasing the amount of used cards that can be sold in the future

    So gamers get effed, unwanted mining cards end up in the landfill, even miners get the shaft since they can't resell their old cards, and Nvidia gets richer. So everbody lost, even the environment lost, and Nvidia profited from that loss.

    And people continue to support that company by buying their products. No wonder this world is so screwed up.
    Reply
  • ezst036
    dalek1234 said:
    It's all about decreasing the amount of used cards that can be sold in the future

    Most of your much larger post I tend to agree with. These are just more of the same of the reasons why many years ago I switched to Linux on every of my digital devices and now refuse to buy hardware unless it has an open source driver. Free at last, free at last......

    I once told a friend of mine who asked me "well what about this game X that doesnt work yet in the Steam Linux client?"

    I answered: "Then that's not a game I want to play."
    Reply
  • ezst036
    Giroro said:
    The only thing this offers miners over an RTX card is availability. Miners are still going to buy up all the gaming cards whenever possible because even a locked RTX 3060 is more efficient and a better value.

    I think this is accurate, but availability on the backend of mining-specific cards will start to erode demand for full-scale gamer cards on the front end and bring the availability crunch to an end much sooner. For a miner, a less efficient mining card that is available is better than a video card that isn't currently available, and a large portion of those who bought mining cards in the first instance won't be back in a second instance. That right there is what will resolve video card availability issues much sooner.

    Giroro said:
    This card is a greedy cash grab in the clothing of a PR stunt. It's clear their goal is simply to squeeze cash out of miners, not to improve the gaming market.

    Miners are paying customers, of course Nvidia will move to meet demand with new products. Even if its not intended to improve the gaming market, by resolving demand issues on part of miners it will have a positive effect on the gaming market by meeting demand sooner on the other side. It's a simple math equation ultimately.

    Giroro said:
    They aren't even trying to appease gamers anymore, we are just a marketing tool to boost their mining business.

    Agreed.
    Reply
  • spongiemaster
    dalek1234 said:
    When miners have no need for those cards in the future, they can't sell them to gamers (who are looknig to buy used cards for gaming).
    Since there will be far less second-hand gaming cards available in the future, those gamers will have to buy a new card from Nvidia.
    Less used cards on the market, the more money Nvidia makes selling new ones.it's all about decreasing the amount of used cards that can be sold in the future

    These mining card are going to be purchased by mining operations. They don't care about zero resale value because they don't sell the cards off. They're in it for the long haul, and don't bail even if the market crashes. This has nothing to do with reducing future used cards, because nothing these mining operations buy are ever going to end up on the used market, whether they're using gaming cards or not. That's how businesses operate. When we retire PC's in my company, we don't sell them on EBay even if they still have value, we either donate them or throw them out.
    Reply
  • Phaaze88
    spongiemaster said:
    These mining card are going to be purchased by mining operations. They don't care about zero resale value because they don't sell the cards off. They're in it for the long haul, and don't bail even if the market crashes. This has nothing to do with reducing future used cards, because nothing these mining operations buy are ever going to end up on the used market, whether they're using gaming cards or not. That's how businesses operate. When we retire PC's in my company, we don't sell them on EBay even if they still have value, we either donate them or throw them out.
    I get it - or at least I think I do:
    The large scale mining ops are going to purchase these in bulk.
    The small scale ops - like Bob hoarding a few-several in his basement, are still gonna buy gaming cards.
    Reply
  • roblittler77
    These cards are going to be a horrendous source of e-waste in a few years time.

    At least with a gaming card, when they are no longer profitable to use for mining they can be sold and used in a mid range PC, with these, especially as NVIDIA nerfed the drivers so you can't use them in a hybrid graphics setup, they are going to landfill.

    It's not about keeping gaming cards for gamers, its about destroying the seconhand market for mining cards.
    Reply