NVIDIA CMP GPUs: Not suitable for gaming – YouTuber explains why

The CMP 50HX GPU from NVIDIA, which was originally developed for crypto mining, has now been converted into a gaming card. However, its performance is not particularly impressive. Due to limited PCIe lanes and a lack of driver support, NVIDIA’s CMP “crypto” GPUs are woefully unsuitable for gaming. The CMP range was introduced in 2021 when crypto mining was at its peak. NVIDIA saw an opportunity to offer a stripped-down version aimed at consumers who didn’t expect much from their GPU other than good mining performance. Although the series delivered acceptable results for its intended purpose, the conversion proved woefully inadequate for gaming.

Sfdx Show, a YouTuber, recently conducted a test using the MSI NVIDIA CMP 50HX variant. This GPU has 3,584 CUDA cores and a 10 GB GDDR6 memory, which operates at a speed of 14 Gbps and a 320-bit interface. These specifications put the GPU on a similar level to the flagship of the Turing series at the time, NVIDIA’s GeForce RTX 2080 Ti.

Gaming with the CMP 50HX may sound easy, but it’s a difficult task, especially because the GPU has a unique BIOS and no display port. However, if you somehow manage to get it working, the next big hurdle is the GPU’s driver.

Since the NVIDIA CMP GPUs were not geared towards gaming, there were no drivers for them to run games. The only way to run them is to use an older version of a particular driver and use a Windows that does not perform driver validation. This allows “unofficial” drivers to be used for the GPU.
However, it is important to note that such workarounds can lead to significantly poorer performance. For this reason, we advise against using such methods in any case, as this would ultimately not lead to a good result.

Sfdx Show tested a number of titles with the NVIDIA CMP 50HX GPU, such as Counter-Strike 2 and Cyberpunk 2077, but as expected, the gaming performance was not on par with the RTX 2080 Ti, nor did it match the performance that would be expected based on its hardware specs.
Despite relatively decent video memory, the GPU was only able to deliver an average of 25 FPS in Cyberpunk 2077. The reason for the drop in performance is that the CMP 50HX has a limited PCIe lane width, essentially bottlenecking it and resulting in such numbers. Crypto mining workloads only stress the VRAM more than the GPU itself, while gaming workloads require both GPU and VRAM power on board the graphics card to achieve optimal performance.

When NVIDIA introduced its CMP lineup, the company was so caught up in the “crypto hype” that it didn’t even bother to explore other use cases for the GPUs. Furthermore, the limitations in terms of PCIe lanes and driver support complicate things, as the GPU cannot be optimized in any way for any application other than mining. However, since the crypto hype is over, NVIDIA has shifted its focus to AI and you now see consumer-level GPUs being used in data centers, AI and also workstations. Will we now see AI-specific GPUs like the PCIe H100/H800 or A100/A800 running games? Only time will tell.

Source: Sfdx Show