NVIDIA announced today that it will halve the Ethereum hash rate of the new RTX 3080, 3070 and 3060 Ti graphics cards to make them less attractive to cryptocurrency miners. They want them to stop being the best GPUs for cryptocurrency mining and thus make it easier for gamers and graphics professionals to acquire these graphics cards.
NVIDIA said these cards will ship in late May with a new “Lite Hash Rate” identifier that will differentiate them from existing RTX 30-series graphics cards. If they’re Lite Hash Rate, it means their hash rate — the main thing used to mine Ethereum and Bitcoin — has been reduced.
NVIDIA, strong with the fight against miners
But this Limtied Hash Rate only applies to newly manufactured cards with the LHR identifier and not to cards already purchased. That rating addresses an issue about Nvidia's anti-mining efforts such as potential class action lawsuits if it retroactively limits the hash rate of existing graphics cards. The introduction of new clearly labeled variants that ship with a reduced hash rate was likely intended to circumvent that problem entirely.
It's currently unclear how Nvidia will limit the Ethereum hash rate on these RTX graphics cards with LHR. It's also unknown whether they will actually become less attractive to miners. Today's announcement follows Nvidia's efforts to reduce the RTX 3060's hash rate in February. Things didn't go as planned: miners quickly discovered a beta driver that allowed their RTX 3060s to mine Ethereum without the hash rate limiter.
Most of NVIDIA's RTX 30 series lineup has been modified to make it less attractive to Ethereum miners, but the RTX 3090 doesn't appear to be included in this restriction. It's hoped that this limitation will make it easier to buy a card if you're not a miner and don't have bots hired to buy up all the stock. However, it doesn't address the issue of component and semiconductor shortages, another major factor in the current scarcity and rising prices of graphics cards.
Source: Tom's Hardware
