https://ift.tt/3G19zXj Geforce RTX 3050 is not suitable for Ethereum mining

The next graphics card that Nvidia will put on the market, namely the GeForce RTX 3050, will not be suitable for Ethereum mining. 

The specifications of the Nvidia Geforce RTX 3050 card

It is scheduled to be launched on the market on Thursday, 27 January 2022, but the official specifications have already been released. 

The GeForce RTX 3050 will have 8GB of GDDR6 RAM, enough to deliver 18 TFLOPs of ray tracing performance, 73 TFLOPs of AI tensor performance and 9 TFLOPs of shader performance. 

The hashrate will be 12.5 MH/s with 73 W of power, so most likely the card will be able to use the Lite Hash Rate algorithm, and not Ethash needed to mine ETH. 

Even the leaker wxnod confirmed that he only saw a hashrate of 13.66 MH/s at 57 W, using other mining software anyway.

As such, the GeForce RTX 3050 could be affordably priced, as it won’t be able to meet the demand of Ethereum miners, and should therefore be aimed at the low-cost graphics card market. However, the current chip shortage might still raise the price from the recommended one.

According to the official prices, €249, it has been estimated that it would take an ETH miner about 500 days to recover the cost of the investment, provided though that the price does not increase after the launch (which is likely) and that the value of ETH does not fall further. 

Graphic cards and Ethereum mining

Graphics cards are widely used by Ethereum miners, while Bitcoin miners prefer ASICs that have far more power and much higher costs. 

This is why there is always a huge demand for graphics cards, partly generated by miners themselves. This tends to significantly increase the price of these cards, putting in difficulty those who use them for other purposes, such as gaming. 

That of Nvidia could have been a strategic choice, i.e. to put on the market a new economic graphics card specifically designed not to be used for Ethereum mining, so as to be able to keep the price relatively low. Partly because the chip shortage will certainly raise it a bit anyway, so it was necessary to eliminate the other powerful factor of price increase altogether. 

It is also worth noting that in recent months the profitability of Ethereum mining has plummeted, due to the sharp decline in the value of ETH. 

At the beginning of November, it was above $0.08 per day per MHash/s, while now it has plummeted just above $0.03, back to December 2020 levels, when 1 ETH was worth only $600.