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.
For now, it is not known how Nvidia will limit the Ethereum hash rate on these RTX graphics cards with LHR. It is also not known if they will really stop being interesting for miners. Today's announcement follows Nvidia's efforts to reduce the hash rate of the RTX 3060 in February. Things did not go according to plan: the miners quickly discovered a driver beta which allowed their RTX 3060s to mine Ethereum without the hash rate limiter.
Most of NVIDIA's RTX 30 series lineup has been modified to be less attractive to Ethereum miners, but this limitation does not appear to include the RTX 3090. This limitation is expected to make it easier. buy a card if you are not a miner and do not have bots contracted to buy all the stock. But it does not address the problem of component shortage and semiconductors, another major factor in this shortage and rising graphics card prices.
Source: Tom's Hardware
