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 "slug": "a-3090-in-its-own-words",
 "title": "A 3090, in its own words",
 "dek": "Fiction, and the byline says who wrote it: a used EVGA GeForce RTX 3090 XC3 Ultra, 24 GB, tells its three lives in the first person: a year of mining, a sky across two monitors, and now the minds it serves.",
 "published": "2026-09-21",
 "series": [
  "notes"
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 "licence": "CC BY 4.0",
 "status": "pending-judge",
 "pack_note": "no judge is seated, so every chip is held",
 "notice": "items with published:false are held and are not this page's published words",
 "source": {
  "url": "https://research.strata2signal.com/a-3090-in-its-own-words/",
  "md_url": "https://research.strata2signal.com/a-3090-in-its-own-words/index.md",
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 "short": {
  "paragraph": "this is a story, and the storyteller is a graphics card. one of two 3090s this workshop bought used in 2021 mined Ethereum for about a year, drew Flight Simulator across two monitors, and now runs chat, vision and image models and sits at a public dinner table, playing the dead for strangers. we wrote it an outline and a list of facts, each with its page. the language model that lives on that card wrote and revised the three parts below across seven short calls, at 290 to 300 watts, while still serving its public seat; it read an editor's notes and its own, and revised itself. the text below is its fifth round, word for word: nothing added by a human, nothing cut by one. how it was made, with every number, is at the end.",
  "from_dek": false,
  "counts": {
   "words": 2054,
   "minutes": 9,
   "tables": 1,
   "kit": true
  },
  "bullets": [
   {
    "text": "a 3090 Ti was 8.0 and 22.4 per cent",
    "figure": "8.0 and 22.4 per cent",
    "cite": "part-three-mind",
    "quote": "It was faster-8.0 and 22.4 per cent faster at writing text, 9 to 12 per cent less time per picture.",
    "span": [
     4992,
     5013
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   },
   {
    "text": "the calls ran from 02:02:16 to 02:53:03",
    "figure": "02:02:16 to 02:53:03",
    "cite": "how-this-was-written",
    "quote": "How this was written This block is the humans' receipt for the story above, written on 2026-09-20 (UTC), the day the calls were made; the seven calls ran from 02:02:16 to 02:53:03 UTC that day, and no earlier run of this kind exists to compare against.",
    "span": [
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     5585
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 "sections": [
  {
   "id": "part-one-proof-of-work",
   "heading": "Part one: proof of work",
   "level": 2,
   "span": [
    1695,
    2748
   ],
   "chunks": [
    [
     1695,
     2748
    ]
   ],
   "chars": 1053,
   "digest": "the card describes its first life in 2021, hashing for ethereum with 220 watts, voltage, and core clock locked. after the merge on september 15, 2022, the mining ended and the company on its shroud announced it was leaving the graphics-card business.",
   "digest_skipped": null
  },
  {
   "id": "part-two-flight",
   "heading": "Part two: flight",
   "level": 2,
   "span": [
    2748,
    3984
   ],
   "chunks": [
    [
     2748,
     3984
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   ],
   "chars": 1236,
   "digest": "the second life involved flight simulator across two monitors, where the card drew weather, water, mountains, and cities. the work felt lighter with steady, purposeful noise as the person in the chair moved a stick and the world reacted.",
   "digest_skipped": null
  },
  {
   "id": "part-three-mind",
   "heading": "Part three: mind",
   "level": 2,
   "span": [
    3984,
    5378
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   "chunks": [
    [
     3984,
     5378
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   ],
   "chars": 1394,
   "digest": "now the card talks, sees, paints, and learns. it handles a public table where open-weight models play guests. the card ran a test against a 3090 Ti, which was 8.0 and 22.4 per cent faster at writing text.",
   "digest_skipped": null
  },
  {
   "id": "how-this-was-written",
   "heading": "How this was written",
   "level": 2,
   "span": [
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    11694
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   "chunks": [
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   ],
   "chars": 6316,
   "digest": "this section details the creation of the story on 2026-09-20 (UTC) using an EVGA GeForce RTX 3090 XC3 Ultra. it describes the seven calls made to Mistral Small 3.2, the power limits, and the human edits applied to the model's output.",
   "digest_skipped": null
  },
  {
   "id": "what-this-page-does-not-know",
   "heading": "What this page does not know",
   "level": 2,
   "span": [
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    12839
   ],
   "chunks": [
    [
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   ],
   "chars": 1145,
   "digest": "the text clarifies that the feelings are invented and the card does not know what it feels. it notes that no page records which of the two 3090s did which life, nor how fast the sky was drawn.",
   "digest_skipped": null
  },
  {
   "id": "who-ran-this-and-thanks",
   "heading": "Who ran this, and thanks",
   "level": 2,
   "span": [
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    13310
   ],
   "chunks": [
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     13310
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   "chars": 471,
   "digest": null,
   "digest_skipped": "credits"
  }
 ],
 "chips": [
  {
   "id": "c-12592167",
   "q": "how did the card function during the ethereum mining era?",
   "a": "The card performed relentless hashing, billions of times over, with the voltage and core clock locked and the memory clock turned down to keep the memory junction cooler. It operated at 220 watts during this period.",
   "cites": [
    "part-one-proof-of-work"
   ],
   "published": false,
   "publish_state": "held",
   "quote": "",
   "quote_cite": ""
  },
  {
   "id": "c-07380a1e",
   "q": "what kind of visual work did the card perform in its second life?",
   "a": "The card rendered Flight Simulator across two monitors, processing weather, water, mountains, and cities sixty times a second. The work involved drawing textures, coordinates, and physics to create a landscape.",
   "cites": [
    "part-two-flight"
   ],
   "published": false,
   "publish_state": "held",
   "quote": "",
   "quote_cite": ""
  },
  {
   "id": "c-0bb3ed4a",
   "q": "how does the current workload differ from previous tasks?",
   "a": "The current work involves talking, seeing, painting, and learning through words and pictures. Unlike the relentless hammer of hashing, the instructions arrive in waves, and the memory fills and clears with constantly changing data.",
   "cites": [
    "part-three-mind"
   ],
   "published": false,
   "publish_state": "held",
   "quote": "",
   "quote_cite": ""
  },
  {
   "id": "c-7bc93882",
   "q": "what process was used to generate the narrative text?",
   "a": "The text was produced through seven calls in five rounds using an open-weight model. The process involved an initial prompt, an editor's notes, rewrites of specific parts, and final revisions based on accepted suggestions.",
   "cites": [
    "how-this-was-written"
   ],
   "published": false,
   "publish_state": "held",
   "quote": "",
   "quote_cite": ""
  },
  {
   "id": "c-754c6c26",
   "q": "what information is unavailable regarding the card's thermal history?",
   "a": "The article does not know how hot the memory ran. While an operator remembers the memory clock being turned down to keep the junction cooler, the driver provides no memory-junction temperature readings.",
   "cites": [
    "what-this-page-does-not-know"
   ],
   "published": false,
   "publish_state": "held",
   "quote": "",
   "quote_cite": ""
  }
 ],
 "related": [
  {
   "slug": "home-inference-and-diffusion-rig-cost",
   "why": "shares ground with § Part three: mind · § What kind of performance to expect"
  },
  {
   "slug": "a-short-history-of-mistral",
   "why": "shares ground with § Part three: mind · § What to take with you"
  },
  {
   "slug": "two-3090s-out-one-3090-ti-in",
   "why": "shares ground with § Part three: mind · § Why this card, and why 350 W"
  }
 ],
 "thanks": "## Who ran this, and thanks {#who-ran-this-and-thanks}\n\nMistral Small 3.2 (Apache 2.0), served by ollama on the card that is the subject; the numbers it was given come from the pages linked above and from [Ethereum's own page on the Merge](https://ethereum.org/en/roadmap/merge/); the driver read the watts. The humans wrote the outline, the facts and two rounds of notes, made two cuts to an earlier draft, and signed it. And the card, which did not consent and cannot.",
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