But for more casual folks that will raise some barrier to entry and maybe it will be enough to make the 3060 widely available to people who aren't interested in mining. We'll see
I actually think that this will cause even a greater shortage. Consider that a mining card uses pretty much all of the standard components than a Video Card uses (The GPU chip, DRAM chips, VRMs, etc), but with no video outputs. What is on short supply? The GPUs themselves. If you create a line specifically for miners, you are allocating the same parts that would go to a Video Card, to something that can't serve such purpose. If the demand for mining cards and the price premium nVidia charges for them is high enough that it makes more sense to divest a lot of the produced GPUs to these mining cards instead of standard Video Cards, it means... LESS VIDEO CARDS!! Amazing way to shot yourself in the foot, it isn't?
And consider the following scenario: What happens if the Drivers can be hacked, and the mining card prices aren't competitive enough in such a way that miners keeping purchasing standard Video Cards like the GF3060 because it makes more sense than a mining card as it is far more reusable (And thus reselleable)? If nVidia screws up with the new line of mining cards due to pricing and lack of alternative usages, the end result is that you divested the scarse GPUs to make a product that will be sitting in a warehouse because no one wants to buy it. Once again, LESS VIDEO CARDS!! Besides, at what price does nVidia has to sell that mining junk when AMD Navi kicks it in the butt?
At this point, I think that what nVidia wants is to destroy the resale value of mining cards because they don't want that when a professional miners upgrades its operation, it dumps a ton of dirt cheap 3-years old cards that can cannibalize the market of new mainstream cards. Oh, and maybe some PR stunt to make gamers believe that they aren't a for-profit company and that it cares about them...
TBH, a dedicated CMP mining GPU seems like a good place to move away from PCIe and risers, and just put a PCIe to USB bridge on the CMP board or some other mass interface.
I can agree with this. If you were making a mining card, it should NOT use power from the PCIe Slot itself so that you save yourself from a cable from the powered riser or powered PCB with slot. It would make the thing simpler if it just used power from the 1 or 2 PCIe Power cables.
Also, there are 3-piece PCIe risers
identical to this one that are a PCIe 1x card that goes into the Motherboard, a standalone PCB with a PCIe 16x slot for the card and power input for the slot, and an USB 3 cable wiring them together that carries PCIe signals (The cable is standard, but the pinout on both ends of the cable is custom). You could ship a mining card with a custom PCB that already has such custom USB Port already on the mining card to connect it to the PCIe 1x-to-USB adapter and save yourself from one PCB piece.
If instead, what defines a "mining card" is the same standard card but without having video output slots... shove it where the sun doesn't brights. No added value, just market segmentation.