Hardware & Technical Latest Nvidia Ampere Rumours

[[VR] optimal_909]

Any assumption of profit carries with it a degree of risk, especially if that profit needs to be realized on a schedule. Greater crypto valuations mean a spike in difficulty, and the prime avenue for mining profit with a 3080 is Ethereum, which is in the middle of a transition to proof-of-stake. The main reason I'm able to see the returns I am is because I can afford to hold crypto as an investment and only sell it when prices are elevated.

No it doesn't need to be realized on schedule, I have savings and usually my household runs a sufficit (with the excpetion of past few months as we had a number of big one-time items, so timing is not ideal). If it nets about $300-400 in the foreseeable future I will consider it successful as it would pay for the price premium over an FE - that's all I need for a peace of mind that I've paid that much for a computer part.

Apart of the crypto prices, I figured that semiconductor market imbalance is here to stay for quite some time (hence mining capacity probably won't meet demand). Actually the car industry is now being under severe constraint because major suppliers can't produce enough parts/modules containing electronics.
Hell, just take a look at commodity prices. Iron ore is up by 50% in two months, copper, cobalt rallied... actually this can cause serious issues in the Global economy down the line and may end the era of easy money with very bad knock-on effects.

 

[Morbad]

Apart of the crypto prices, I figured that semiconductor market imbalance is here to stay for quite some time (hence mining capacity probably won't meet demand).

As long as prices don't collapse, this is probably the case.

Still elements of uncertainty, but I'd expect any Ampere (or RDNA) part, unless the price was positively outlandish, to be able to recoup a fair fraction of it's cost via mining in any area with reasonable energy costs.

 

[[VR] optimal_909]

OK, so got the MSI 3080 Suprim X, and it is an absolute unit. It is so large that I had to dismount the SATA rack as it is almost as long as my entire case - heavy too, so great that it came with an anti-sagging strut.
Haven't actually tried gaming on it (finished the build and setup late in the evening, sort of busy with 3 kids), so it is only mining at the moment.

I haven't played around with the settings much either, but even so on the first try it holds 1870 Mhz plus 200Mhz memory overclock at a mere 0.870V - I wonder how much I could raise clocks at this voltage, seems to be a decent PCB.
It draws around 250W which is great for my 600W bronze PSU (yes I know, I should upgrade, but I will buy a new platform in a year anyway and otherwise the 7700k will bottleneck it in most applications) - I recon max system power draw must be around 370-420W.
At 100% load vents run at 50% and the card is pegged at 55C only. I'm impressed!

Can't wait to see how it handles the Flight Sim in VR.

 

[Morbad]

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oi8WpLMy3ZM


NVIDIA's CES presentation tomorrow.

Should make some mention of Ampere hardware supply and new SKUs, but looks like it will be mostly mobile related. Will also talk about new RTX games and the addition of the resizable BAR support to their drivers, providing functionality equivalent to AMD's SAM.

Ironcially enough, I think there will be a window where it's easier to get a RTX 3000 series laptop than an RTX 3000 series desktop GPU.

I haven't played around with the settings much either, but even so on the first try it holds 1870 Mhz plus 200Mhz memory overclock at a mere 0.870V - I wonder how much I could raise clocks at this voltage, seems to be a decent PCB.

Hard to say without testing it. Most seem to scale pretty well until some point beyond 1900MHz and then the good silicon really starts to separate from the bad.

It draws around 250W which is great for my 600W bronze PSU (yes I know, I should upgrade, but I will buy a new platform in a year anyway and otherwise the 7700k will bottleneck it in most applications) - I recon max system power draw must be around 370-420W.

The 80+ rating doesn't say much about PSU quality in and of itself. Specific model and age are most important.

 

[[VR] optimal_909]

Hard to say without testing it. Most seem to scale pretty well until some point beyond 1900MHz and then the good silicon really starts to separate from the bad.



The 80+ rating doesn't say much about PSU quality in and of itself. Specific model and age are most important.

At this point I have two profiles, one with more memory overclock for mining (91 MH/S at the moment at 255W), and another for gaming. These are stable and tested on Realbench for 30 mins. I had some instability issues at first while trying RDR2 including a watchdog timeout, but that could have been the memory as well (reverted back to 3000 Mhz from 3200) as I recon with a fair bit of GPU bottleneck removed, the rest is taking a beating.

The PSU is an FSP Hyper, as far as I know it is a pretty mediocre PSU, not bad, but not good either. I could probably go up to 300W with the GPU as the 4-core 7700k remains below 100W at all times, which means under no circumstance I would draw above 500W.
In general I'm trying to be on the safe side as I'm not that experienced...

BTW the system boots with 4 beeps - I found that it is pretty common with Ampere cards mated with 7700k and Z270 mobos, and it is probably associated with booting (UEFI?) with otherwise no issues reported, so I decided to ignore it... I don't often turn off my PC lately anyway.

 

[Morbad]

The PSU is an FSP Hyper, as far as I know it is a pretty mediocre PSU, not bad, but not good either. I could probably go up to 300W with the GPU as the 4-core 7700k remains below 100W at all times, which means under no circumstance I would draw above 500W.
In general I'm trying to be on the safe side as I'm not that experienced...

Unless it's older than the rest of the system, it will probably hold you over.

BTW the system boots with 4 beeps - I found that it is pretty common with Ampere cards mated with 7700k and Z270 mobos, and it is probably associated with booting (UEFI?) with otherwise no issues reported, so I decided to ignore it... I don't often turn off my PC lately anyway.

Is there an option to disable CSM in the BIOS setup? Shouldn't need it enabled with an Ampere part and Windows 10.

 

[[VR] optimal_909]

Unless it's older than the rest of the system, it will probably hold you over.



Is there an option to disable CSM in the BIOS setup? Shouldn't need it enabled with an Ampere part and Windows 10.

No, it's about 3-year old and same as the mobo and CPU. So do you think it's OK to target 300W with the GPU along a 7700k (set to 1.26V), two SSDs, one HDD and a flight stick plus Reverb G2 as peripherals?

I tried to find CSM in the BIOS yesterday, but no luck (MSI Z270 A-Pro), for booting there is an option to switch from legacy/UEFI to UEFI only.

Oh, and cheers for all the advice!

 

[Morbad]

So do you think it's OK to target 300W with the GPU along a 7700k (set to 1.26V), two SSDs, one HDD and a flight stick plus Reverb G2 as peripherals?

Probably.

I'm still slightly concerned about the quality of that FSP unit as it's the low-end product line of a mid-tier OEM, but they don't appear to be in danger zone territory and you aren't trying to run it at maximum capacity.

 

[Morbad]

No direct bearing on Ampere, but hell freezing over has implications for the whole performance IC supply chain:

TSMC To Produce Intel Core i3 CPUs on 5nm Process Node in 2H 2021, 3nm Mainstream & High-End CPUs Enter Mass Production in 2H 2022

TSMC will be mass-producing Intel's next-generation entry-level, mid-range and high-end CPUs on its 5nm and 3nm process nodes

wccftech.com

Things are going to get real problematic if TSMC becomes the only source for the most advanced lithography processes.

 

[[VR] optimal_909]

No direct bearing on Ampere, but hell freezing over has implications for the whole performance IC supply chain:

TSMC To Produce Intel Core i3 CPUs on 5nm Process Node in 2H 2021, 3nm Mainstream & High-End CPUs Enter Mass Production in 2H 2022

TSMC will be mass-producing Intel's next-generation entry-level, mid-range and high-end CPUs on its 5nm and 3nm process nodes

wccftech.com

Things are going to get real problematic if TSMC becomes the only source for the most advanced lithography processes.

Then things are going to get worse really. Plus Taiwan is a collision zone between US and China, it is an additional risk.

As mentioned above, I'm a bit anxious where we are heading economically. On top of mentioned the semiconductor shortage that disrupts supply chains in many industries, the red hot commodity prices and rising oil, I just learned that shipping costs from China effectively doubled at the very least in the past two months. Plus the US tariffs kicking in, we're in for a hell of a ride in terms of rising prices across the board.

 

[EUS]

GPUs are not alone in sourcing issues.

Chip shortage forces Ford, Toyota, Nissan, FCA to cut vehicle production

Ford Motor Co, Toyota Motor Corp <7203.T>, Fiat Chrysler Automobiles and Nissan Motor Co Ltd said on Friday they would cut vehicle production this month due to a shortage of semiconductors, becoming the latest automakers hit by a chip crunch as demand rebounds from the coronavirus...

www.reuters.com

 

[Morbad]

Indefinite hold on the 3080 Ti and potential Super refreshes:

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUvdyIP1mpw&t=493s

 

[[VR] optimal_909]

GPUs are not alone in sourcing issues.

Chip shortage forces Ford, Toyota, Nissan, FCA to cut vehicle production

Ford Motor Co, Toyota Motor Corp <7203.T>, Fiat Chrysler Automobiles and Nissan Motor Co Ltd said on Friday they would cut vehicle production this month due to a shortage of semiconductors, becoming the latest automakers hit by a chip crunch as demand rebounds from the coronavirus...

www.reuters.com

Make no mistake, they are pretty tight lipped on the production impact, I recon the loss is easily in the high 6-figures.
I feel like I made the right choice to hrab that 3080 even at that price.

 

[Morbad]

My brother still has all his EVGA notifications queued up, and he got in the queue for several 3080/3090 models the second day...which they still haven't go to yet (it's been three months and the best anyone can figure is that EVGA is still on the first day of the queue).

I'm hoping that the queue gets moving before April 12th, because that's the cut off for being able to place and order at the original MSRP, rather than the newer price that has been inflated by tariffs and gouging. NVIDIA is still saying that more supply should be available by the end of Q1, so maybe I've got a chance.

 

[EUS]

Insanity.

 

[Morbad]

Insanity.
View attachment 204757

Scalper prices for the 3090 FE are down to 2k USD in the States...which honestly isn't a super crazy mark up. Still more than I care to spend though.

 

[EUS]

Scalper prices for the 3090 FE are down to 2k USD in the States...which honestly isn't a super crazy mark up. Still more than I care to spend though.

Trying to remember which line of cards have the "lower quality" chips on them?

 

[Morbad]

Trying to remember which line of cards have the "lower quality" chips on them?

I'm not sure if any specific GPU binning was ever confirmed. As far as I know, it's just luck of the draw. Wouldn't rule out some AIBs doing some kind of binning, but I haven't heard any credible reports of it.

If you're referring to the filter capacitor controversy, it seems that any model with at least one block of MLCCs is fine. All SP-cap solutions seem to provide 20-30MHz worse peak clocks. Almost all the FEs have two blocks of MLCCs and four SP-Caps.

 

[[VR] optimal_909]

My brother still has all his EVGA notifications queued up, and he got in the queue for several 3080/3090 models the second day...which they still haven't go to yet (it's been three months and the best anyone can figure is that EVGA is still on the first day of the queue).

I'm hoping that the queue gets moving before April 12th, because that's the cut off for being able to place and order at the original MSRP, rather than the newer price that has been inflated by tariffs and gouging. NVIDIA is still saying that more supply should be available by the end of Q1, so maybe I've got a chance.

In EU, there is not even a queue system at EVGA.
It took about 24 hours for the 3080s to disappear and now only a few blower 3090s can be found at about $2.8k. Some of the 3080s are now actually back at scalper prices in local listings.
Honestly the current shortage feels worse than that of the first mining boom.

Insanity.
View attachment 204757

I quickly checked the best local retailer, no 3080s, only 3090 available is a blower type for 3580 CAD incl. VAT/Sales tax.

 

[Morbad]

Honestly the current shortage feels worse than that of the first mining boom.

That's because it is.

The shortage in 2013-2014 was driven almost entirely by demand from the GPU mining boom. The current shortage is driven by a convergence of many supply constraints and largely unprecedented demands, of which mining is only one part of.