[ggreg84]

> I'm not a big fan of limiting hardware to run only approved software. One day it's for limiting crypto mining, the next day it will be for limiting our ability to use strong encryption. It's a slippery slope.

I'd assume that developing extra features costs money. If a buyer doesn't need a feature, why should they have to pay for it?

For example, if a gamer does not need drivers for a CAD program, or crypto features, why should the gamer have to foot the bill for developing these features, and suffer the consequences of them (e.g. scarcity due to cryptominers buying all gaming cards) ?

[matheusmoreira]

Because the hardware already does all of those things whether you paid for them or not. I don't care what the company thinks, if I pay for hardware I want the ability to use it to its fullest extent and without any question about my intentions. That is what it means to have computing freedom: I shouldn't have to answer to some bullshit corporate concerns over what I'm doing with my property.

It's one thing to test your chip and turn off defective parts so that you can sell a downgraded but still viable version and increase yields. Selling the exact same chips to everyone with software that locks out features just to segment the market is unacceptable and frankly quite offensive. It's the sort of thing that makes everyone wish they get cracked on principle, just to make things sane again.

[ggreg84]

> Because the hardware already does all of those things whether you paid for them or not.

AMD and Intel GPUs have the hardware capability of being great at CAD, but in practice they suck and nobody uses them because AMD and Intel do not have driver integration & certification with CAD software.

Why? Cause developing that costs money.

NVIDIA hardware and software only has this _because_ people that need it pay 10k$ for GFX cards that do these things.

If you'd wanted gamer cards to do these things, you'd need to add to the price tag of gamer cards the cost of developing and maintaining these things, which would make them more expensive.

The claim that this should be free because software and hardware costs nothing once you already have developed is illogical. CAD software, GPU driver software for CAD, and GPU hardware to meet CAD's demand, continues to evolve, which costs money.

[7steps2much]

There is a difference between hardware that simply doesn't support a use case and hardware that technically supports stuff but was artificially locked to no longer do so.

If the hardware was actually different then of course your argument would make sense, you could build cards that can only be used for a certain use case and sell those, but in that case you wouldn't have to lock down the card anyways

[greggsy]

Intel have been selling cpus with binned cores for ages for performance reasons, and some IBM mainframes require you to license some features in hardware which you’ve purchases.

I know it’s counter to human nature to be denied use of the physical object that you bought, but it’s not new territory.

[ggreg84]

Reply in this comment thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30568961

[7steps2much]

> The claim that this should be free because software and hardware costs nothing once you already have developed is illogical. CAD software, GPU driver software for CAD, and GPU hardware to meet CAD's demand, continues to evolve, which costs money.

I do agree with you, developers are expensive. And if i came across that way then that wasn't my intention.

If a gaming CPU doesn't support CAD tasks, never did so in the past and nobody expects them to suddenly do so.

However, what i personally was referring to is not lacking Software Support for a certain feature set but software throttling of Hardware.

Sadly it is something that happens a lot. Phones throttling because they received software updates, graphics cards pretending to be artificially slow because drivers include code specifically to slow them down.

In my opinion there is a big difference between "Sorry, we don't support that use case, but good luck to you" and "We are going to invest time to stop you from doing X"

The first is fine, it happens all the time. The second is (in my eyes) not.

[ggreg84]

If by software throttling hardware you mean LHR.

Then as other have mentioned there are two options for GPU vendors:

* Hardware unblocked: GPU can be used for mining, scarcity becomes worse, good luck finding gaming GPUs for less than 2000$ for as long as it is profitable to use them for mining (~2 years maybe?)

* Hardware blocked: GPU can't be used for mining (profitably), gaming GPUs can be bought by gamers (still scarcity due to COVID, but not as bad)

The main reason only NVIDIA does this, and AMD and Intel don't isn't because of "freedom", but rather because AMD and Intel GPUs are so bad at compute that nobody can use them for anything but gaming anyways.

Independently of whether one agrees with nvidia's decision here, and whether it actually achieved its goal or not, the thought process isn't really hard to follow.

And I mean, before LHR people were complaining that miners were buying all nvidia gpus, and they couldn't get any, and asking nvidia to do something. nvidia did something, and now that people got to get the GPUs for gaming, they are complaining that they can't mine on them, which is probably the only reason they actually were able to get one in the first place.

So :shrug:. To be honest, it was foreseeable that people were going to complain either way.