Nvidia does not stifle mining performance with Founders Edition

The renaissance of cryptocurrency breaking through graphics cards is palpable and with an already meager supply, those who want to buy graphics cards face extra competition, something Nvidia has noticed on several occasions. The company has partly uncovered it mining-specific graphics card series CMP (Crypto Mining Processor), and Geforce RTX 3060 with limit for Ethereum mining – which shortly after launch was joined by a driver that unlocks the function.

This week, Nvidia announced that the Geforce RTX 3060 Ti, RTX 3070 and RTX 3080 will be released in new versions with cryptocurrency restrictions from the end of May. The newly produced cards mean a halving in hash rate for just Ethereum and the property is marked on in names and packages with the acronym “LHR” – Lite Hash Rate. It now appears that the Founders Edition cards are left without the treatment.

Founders Edition is a limited production graphics card sold at MSRP, and at this point we don’t have plans to make versions with LHR

With a statement to PC Gamer, Nvidia explains that the Founders Edition cards are sold in a limited edition and at the nailed target prices, which is why there are currently no plans for LHR versions. The statement can also be interpreted as the company not producing more Founders Edition cards, or alternatively that the mining restrictions only take place in the third-party manufacturers’ models.

For European customers, however, there is no major difference between the two alternatives in practice, as the company’s reference cards have been extra rare since Nvidia closed its digital store doors in October last year. In previous generations, the own models have been marketed throughout the life of the graphics cards, but in the year of the shortage of circuits in 2021, an exception may be missed.

In early June, Nvidia is expected to present two new graphics cards in the Geforce RTX 3000 series, namely the RTX 3080 Ti and the RTX 3070 Ti. More cores and 2 GB of extra graphics memory reportedly apply to the former, while extra cores and faster memory are attributed to the latter. Whether the two models will be released at all in Founders Edition or with “LHR” markings remains to be seen.

Read more about graphics cards: