Gigabyte CMP 30HX: A GeForce GTX 1660 Super Without The Display Outputs

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By Zhiye Liu
published

Turing goes cryptomining

Gigabyte CMP 30HX
Gigabyte CMP 30HX (Image credit: VideoCardz)

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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Gigabyte CMP 30HX
(Image credit: VideoCardz)

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.

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
  • BX4096
    Cryptomining is probably the worst waste of energy in human history. It's like a virus, a worldwide epidemic that's worse than COVID, and all it does is show once again how dumb humanity can be.

    Executing a single Bitcoin transaction requires the same amount of energy that the average American home consumes over a three-week period and has a carbon footprint equivalent to watching more than 50,000 hours of YouTube.

    According to researchers, in 2018 "every $1 of Bitcoin value created was responsible for $.49 in health and climate damages in the US" from the pollutants generated from the burning of fossil fuels used to produce extra energy for the "miners".

    Environmental cost of cryptocurrency mineshttps://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/11/191113092600.htm
    Reply
  • JarredWaltonGPU
    BX4096 said:
    Cryptomining is probably the worst waste of energy in human history. It's like a virus, a worldwide epidemic that's worse than COVID, and all it does is show once again how dumb humanity can be.

    Executing a single Bitcoin transaction requires the same amount of energy that the average American home consumes over a three-week period and has a carbon footprint equivalent to watching more than 50,000 hours of YouTube.

    According to researchers, in 2018 "every $1 of Bitcoin value created was responsible for $.49 in health and climate damages in the US" from the pollutants generated from the burning of fossil fuels used to produce extra energy for the "miners".

    Environmental cost of cryptocurrency mineshttps://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/11/191113092600.htm
    I don't know about "worst" -- look at any large city at 2am. What do you see? I see millions of lights still on in a lot of empty buildings. If you add up all of the power use by all of the empty businesses -- most empty for at least half the day -- I have to wonder what it would be. Humanity in general wastes a ton of energy and resources every day.

    I'd bet that we could cut easlity global energy use in half if everyone, everywhere, shut off unnecessary power draws. I'm not talking about things like keeping a base level of heating, but lights in empty rooms, emergency lighting in empty buildings, plugged in computers and home entertainment devices, appliances, etc. It will never happen, but if it could we would see a dramatic drop in power and resource use.
    Reply
  • hotaru.hino
    We could argue that this very forum is a waste of energy. But rather than try to figure out the numbers and see what utilitarian purpose it serves, I look at it from a point of view of "who's this really benefiting?"

    So let's ask, who's crypto really benefiting? I see arguments that crypto is going to revolutionize the way currency works by democratizing it. Cool, but it also doesn't solve the problem of wealth disparity between people. I'd argue it makes it just as bad as I feel it favors people who have the initial capital to spend on the hardware to mine crypto.

    Anyway, I don't want to get into a debate about this so I'll just leave it at that.
    Reply
  • JarredWaltonGPU
    hotaru.hino said:
    We could argue that this very forum is a waste of energy. But rather than try to figure out the numbers and see what utilitarian purpose it serves, I look at it from a point of view of "who's this really benefiting?"

    So let's ask, who's crypto really benefiting? I see arguments that crypto is going to revolutionize the way currency works by democratizing it. Cool, but it also doesn't solve the problem of wealth disparity between people. I'd argue it makes it just as bad as I feel it favors people who have the initial capital to spend on the hardware to mine crypto.

    Anyway, I don't want to get into a debate about this so I'll just leave it at that.
    Very true. For all the talk of cryptocurrency revolutionizing the world, it feels like another take on the same old garbage that's currently going around. The haves get more, the have nots get less. I just think pointing at the power use and saying, "Look how bad it is! Crypto is the worst!" is disingenuous. It's an easy scapegoat. Yes, crypto uses and wastes a lot of power, but so does every corporation in existence. And let's be clear that 'governments' are basically synonymous with 'corporations' in this discussion -- governments are simply the biggest corporations with the ability to enact laws and exert more direct control over the population. It's often done "to help society," but you don't have to look far for examples of horribly wasteful government programs. And ultimately, the people using/benefitting are often to blame.
    Reply
  • escksu
    JarredWaltonGPU said:
    I don't know about "worst" -- look at any large city at 2am. What do you see? I see millions of lights still on in a lot of empty buildings. If you add up all of the power use by all of the empty businesses -- most empty for at least half the day -- I have to wonder what it would be. Humanity in general wastes a ton of energy and resources every day.

    I'd bet that we could cut easlity global energy use in half if everyone, everywhere, shut off unnecessary power draws. I'm not talking about things like keeping a base level of heating, but lights in empty rooms, emergency lighting in empty buildings, plugged in computers and home entertainment devices, appliances, etc. It will never happen, but if it could we would see a dramatic drop in power and resource use.

    There is another even worse... Fuel guzzling vehicles.. USA is the worst....
    Reply
  • spongiemaster
    escksu said:
    There is another even worse... Fuel guzzling vehicles.. USA is the worst....
    China has been the largest new car market in the world for over a decade.
    Reply
  • daworstplaya
    Let's face it, Crypto is a fancy complicated ponzi scheme with a lot of buzz words. And to compare energy being used by humans to benefit the things they do vs energy being wasted to stand up monopoly money is disingenuous at best. Let's hope all the computers running Crypto on China get shut down, the sooner the better.
    Reply
  • JarredWaltonGPU
    daworstplaya said:
    Let's face it, Crypto is a fancy complicated ponzi scheme with a lot of buzz words. And to compare energy being used by humans to benefit the things they do vs energy being wasted to stand up monopoly money is disingenuous at best. Let's hope all the computers running Crypto on China get shut down, the sooner the better.
    So let me get this straight:

    Mining = "energy being wasted to stand up monopoly money"
    Empty buildings with lights on = "energy being used by humans to benefit the things they do"

    Disingenuous: not candid or sincere, typically by pretending that one knows less about something than one really does. As in, ignoring all the other waste to point the finger of shame at miners.

    I'm not trying to say crypto mining is good, but it's a very skewed perspective to suggest it's the "worst waste of energy in human history" while turning a blind eye to pretty much every other waste of energy out there.

    I'm saying that we, as humans, waste a TON of power, every single day. I suggested above that we probably waste at least half of all power consumed in the world in various ways. I'd actually say if we really wanted to, we could probalby cut global power use to about 25% of what it currently is -- I have no hard data to back that up, it's just a guesstimate based on my own power use. Like, I don't need TV, I don't need several PCs running at all hours, I don't need lights on in rooms that are empty, I don't need 72F house temperatures year round (they're just nice), etc. I could cut my monthly power costs to around $65 while still having a refrigerator, modest heating/cooling, lights, and the PC I'm actually using. That's less than a fourth of my normal power use.

    Anyway, crypto mining is a chunk of the global power use, but it's currently something like 122 TWh for Bitcoin, let's call it 200 TWh for all cryptocurrencies. According to this page, global energy consumption is 113,009 TWh per year in 2017 -- that means crypto mining is 0.2% of the total global power consumed. Not only electricity, but all power, so the percentage is higher if you want to limit it to just electricity. (Somewhere around 25,000 TWh of electricity is used worldwide it seems, so crypto is nearly 1% of that.)

    But again, considering all the ways we waste power as humans -- near-empty trains, buses, planes, cars, buildings, etc. are all great examples -- I think attacking those problems would be of more benefit than throwing up crypto mining as a red herring. There was an advertisement I saw once about "vampire power use" -- all those unused cell phone chargers and such left plugged in 24/7. If everyone in the world never left an unused power adapter sitting there sucking 0.2W of power, the global savings would be measurable! But if everyone in the world simply did a better job turning off lights when they're not needed (I tell my kids to do this ALL THE TIME!), we'd likely save 100 times as much power. Because a single light uses 10W for an LED, give or take, so that's the same as 50 vampire cell phone chargers -- and most light switches control anywhere from three to ten lights. Which means people focusing on vampire power use are distracted from the bigger issue.
    Reply
  • escksu
    spongiemaster said:
    China has been the largest new car market in the world for over a decade.

    China may have more cars, but their cars consume way less gasoline. Go google world gasoline consumption (not crude oil).

    In 2017, USA uses over 9 million barrels of gasoline everyday. China is just around 1/3 of USA despite having more cars and way more people!! USA uses more gasoline than china + rank 3 to rank 10 combined... Madness...

    https://www.theglobaleconomy.com/rankings/gasoline_consumption/
    Reply
  • Nemesia
    escksu said:
    China may have more cars, but their cars consume way less gasoline. Go google world gasoline consumption (not crude oil).

    In 2017, USA uses over 9 million barrels of gasoline everyday. China is just around 1/3 of USA despite having more cars and way more people!! USA uses more gasoline than china + rank 3 to rank 10 combined... Madness...

    https://www.theglobaleconomy.com/rankings/gasoline_consumption/

    We all are guilty.

    ipVxxxqwBQwView: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipVxxxqwBQw
    Reply