With the GeForce RTX 3000 in version Lite Hash Rate (LHR), that is with the limiter of the power with the calculations related to the mining of some cryptocurrencies, Ethereum in the first place, NVIDIA aims to curb the purchase of gaming video cards by miners, affecting their profitability: the card undermines 50% of its potential.
Pending the transition of Ethereum between the end of 2021 and the beginning of 2022 from the proof-of-work (PoW) model to the proof-of-stake (PoS) model which will eliminate the need to mine with video cards, however, the wall built by NVIDIA seems to show some cracks. Until now, only private groups of miners have claimed to have managed to find loopholes through custom solutions, but with the availability of a public miner, the situation becomes more interesting.
The developer of NBMiner, popular mining software, seems to have found a ploy, albeit partial, that allows it to bypass NVIDIA’s limiter. The latest version of the program (39.0), according to the changelog, able to potentially restore up to 70% performance in Ethereum mining of video cardsLHRbased on GPU Ampere. However, the NBMiner developer recommends setting no more than 68%, as a higher value could lead to a lockout state and therefore lower performance.
For now we are not faced with a total bypass, but a jump from 50% to a potential 68% which is still not bad and could induce some miners to throw themselves again on the GeForce LHR cards, or in any case to put them in the viewfinder if NBMiner allowed in future of bypassing the block and harnessing the full power of video cards.