is the new nvidia
rtx 3060 good for a beginner in deep
learning
and more importantly is the crypto
mining ban that
everyone is talking about going to help
in regards to actually buying this card
based on pure specs alone the geforce
rtx 3060 seems to be like a brilliant
budget proposition for anyone looking to
start with deep learning it has plenty
of cuda cores especially for
a beginner just under 3600 cores and it
has 12 gigabytes of gddr6
memory with the other benefit that you
actually can use
it for gaming too if that's something
you fancy
but why do we need an nvidia gpu
for deep learning in the first place it
is a bit of a long story and i'll try to
cut it very short
and the main reason that you need an
nvidia gpu
is because of cuda cuda is a proprietary
programming framework developed by
nvidia that facilitates
massive parallelization of computations
using the cuda cores
in an nvidia gpu nvidia has also
developed qdn
a library with the accelerated functions
that are needed to train
deep neural networks because both
tensorflow
and pytorch decided to rely on these
libraries
in their implementations you have little
option other than
just buying an nvidia gpu if you are
interested
in deep learning so i hope that
clarifies it but why does the number of
cuda cores actually
matter the number of cuda cores
determines
the number of parallel computations
which
can be performed at the same time and
the higher
the number of cuda cores the better and
the new rtx
3060 has around 3584 cuda cores
which means it can execute 3584 parallel
computations
at the same time i am overly simplifying
here so don't take me literally
but i hope you understand what is a
stake here
and why the number of cryptocurrencies
is quite important
having a lot of cuda cores and
very little in terms of gpu memory is is
like having
a big mouth and no teeth
even though cuda cores can make
everything
go faster if you don't have enough gpu
memory
that's the end of it for example if
you're trying to train a style gun which
is
particularly demanding in terms of gpu
memory
with images sizes above 256 pixels
it will not work if you have less than
10 gigabytes of
gpu memory available because
starganzer is just demanding in general
it can still take a huge amount of time
train the model and this is where the
higher the number of cores the better
but if it was me before i start
compromising
in the amount of gpu memory i will
compromise first on the number of cuda
cores
because if you don't have enough gpu
memory is really the end of it
and this is where the rtx 3060
is a very strong proposition compared to
the other gpus in the 30 series family
it has
12 gigabytes of gddr6 which is
fantastic for taking to account the
recommended price
at the moment how does the rtx 3060
compare
to the other cars in the rtx 30 series
family well
it looks very compelling indeed
for machine learning and gaming of
course it has the lowest number of
credit cards yes that's true but it is
the second
highest in terms of gpu memory just
behind the rtx 3090 which has
24 gigabytes of gddr6x
memory which is a faster type of memory
but still
compare that to the recommended price
for an rtx
3060 is 329 and then you compare that
to the price of the 3090 which is 1500
okay these are fantasy prices because
right now almost no one is able to buy
these cars perhaps except miners
is it a good thing then that crypto
miners are not
allowed to use this car for crypto
mining
well with such a compelling budget
proposition
the rtx 3060 is also
very much in a sweet spot for
cryptominers
who want to make some quick money and
who tend to buy
gpus let's be honest like hotcakes
this makes the latest decision from
nvidia
not really that surprising at all the
idea is they want to
restrict the rtx 3060 from being used
for uh crypto mining because they want
all the cryptominers to buy from a new
line of gpus they have especially for
them
hopefully with higher prices who knows
so what
nvidia has done they have put some
restrictions in the card itself
so it doesn't actually do very well when
hashing for
crypto mining and these changes were
made not just
at the driver level but also in the bios
at the gpu level so it should be
reasonably difficult to bypass
assuming no one is able to come up with
a way to
remove this restriction is this going to
help with the general availability of
gpus
which let's be honest right lately it's
almost impossible to buy
a decent gpu or any gpu at all so my
honest opinion is that i don't think
this is going to help much
at least not in the long term but i have
to
remain a little bit open-minded because
okay all the evidence right now points
to the contrary
nvidia is still providing a new line of
gpus for fulfilling the demand for
crypto miners
which means that there will still be an
issue in competing for
limited resources and right now the main
issue is that
with the world in lockdown everyone
wants to have a computer
with good games and everyone wants
silicon
so there's not enough silicon available
to fulfill
all the demand out there even automotive
companies
can get enough of it so this is not a
problem just specific to
gpus it's a problem specific to the
market in general so it's unlikely
that this measure is actually going to
make it easier to buy
gpus at all because it doesn't solve the
main problem in the first place
another important point which was raised
by
linus tech tips is about the second hand
market and
wastage by creating gpus
that are only good enough for crypto
mining
later down the line when the next crypto
mining bust
comes or more likely when
the gpus become obsolete for mining
at least the most likely destination for
all of these
gpus will be the the landfill
instead of going on ebay for
gamers or machine learning enthusiasts
to buy
this is of course going to keep the gpu
prices higher
while doing nothing to help gamers or
even the environment my final
recommendation is
if you are new to deep learning go for
the rtx 3060.
that is if you can't find one in stock
and think no further
but let's imagine you can't find it in
stock if you can't find in stock
you can always buy another nvidia gpu
almost any will do if you're just
beginning into deep learning perhaps not
for gaming but
for deep learning it should be okay or
if you can't find the gpu
which is unfortunately also quite
possible in today's
global shortage of gpus can still use
google app for free and if you have
watched my videos before you will notice
that i like to
to actually use google cloud a lot in my
videos and i
i do have a deep one in pc too but
google cloud
is so convenient that i often i don't
bother even switching on my deep
learning pc
yeah that's it for now i hope you
enjoyed my video and
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