Nvidia CMP 170H video card revealed the secret of high productivity

In February of this year, Nvidia released a series of video cards designed for mining. Consumer cards are usually marked GTX/RTX. The video card for mining is marked CNPS (Crypto Mining Processor) and there aren’t video outputs in it. The company’s developers initially created 4 video cards (CMP 30HX, CMP 40HX, CMP 50HX и CMP 90HX), to which an unplanned fifth – CMP 170HX – was pulled up in the summer. It can be assumed that the marking indicates 170MH/s. 

Most users were surprised by the high hashrate. The highest productivity indicator of the RTX 3090 was a value no higher than 120Mh/s, and then, if configured as much as possible. 

The truth has become clear when the first CMP 170HX graphics cards fell into the hands of users. It turned out that it was all about defective GA100 chips, which are installed in Nvidia A100 adapters. They have modern and high-performance HBM2 memory with a 4096bit bus. As a result, the total data transfer rate reaches 1,493 Gb/s. The RTX 3090 has a 320bit data bus and a transfer rate of up to 936 Gb/s. 

All of the above technical indicators only confirm why the CMP 170HX graphics card is the most popular in the field of mining. Also, this device saves a lot of electricity, consuming only 1.2 W/MH or 190 W at 160 Mh/s. ERGO mining (Autolykos2 algorithm) displayed the CMP 170HX – 410Mh/s indicator at 240 watts. 

In addition to its popularity and productivity, the cost of a video card will also not leave anyone indifferent – about 4 thousand dollars. Do not forget that this video card system is cooled passively. This means that server or mining enclosures are used, where there is its own flow ventilation. Therefore, it is worth taking into account that to assemble mining rigs using a CMP 170HX video card, you will need to spend money on specialized type enclosures and a high-performance purge system.