Nvidia Geforce RTX 3000 series gets stifled mining performance

A perfect storm of crying lack of circuit, sky-high demand among gamers and a new one mining-boom has made it virtually impossible to buy a graphics card. To meet the latter, Nvidia has launched computing cards in the new series Cryptocurrency Mining Processor (CMP) based on older graphics circuits and made attempts to stifle mining performance with the Geforce RTX 3060.

To help get GeForce GPUs in the hands of gamers, we announced in February that all GeForce RTX 3060 graphics cards shipped with a reduced Ethereum hash rate.

Today, we’re taking additional measures by applying a reduced ETH hash rate to newly manufactured GeForce RTX 3080, RTX 3070 and RTX 3060 Ti graphics cards. These cards will start shipping in late May.

After a long period of rumors, Nvidia officially states that they limit the performance when breaking cryptocurrencies with Geforce RTX 3080, RTX 3070 and RTX 3060 Ti. The restriction should not apply to the flagship RTX 3090, where previous speculations have said that it is just too expensive to be interesting for those who buy graphics cards primarily to break cryptocurrencies.

Because these GPUs originally launched with a full hash rate, we want to ensure that customers know exactly what they’re getting when they buy GeForce products. To help with this, our GeForce partners are labeling the GeForce RTX 3080, RTX 3070 and RTX 3060 Ti cards with a “Lite Hash Rate,” or “LHR,” identifier. The identifier will be in retail product listings and on the box.

This reduced hash rate only applies to newly manufactured cards with the LHR identifier and not to cards already purchased.

According to Nvidia, the restriction means a halving in hash rate in the event of a breach of the Ethereum currency and applies only to newly manufactured graphics circuits. To distinguish old from new, Nvidia’s partner manufacturers are required to label their graphics cards with “Lite Hash Rate” or the abbreviation “LHR” both in the product name and on the packaging.

The announcement comes just under three weeks after Nvidia confirmed that the new Geforce RTX 3060, which will be delivered to the end customer in mid-May, has a hash limiter. In practice, the graphics card has no real hardware level limitation, but Nvidia has changed its PCI Device ID and made it only compatible with drivers that restrict mining-performance. This move means that Nvidia could choose to unlock the performance at a later time.

With the exception of the Geforce RTX 3090, Nvidia thus stifles the performance of breaking cryptocurrencies for the entire Geforce RTX 3000 series. Previous reports have said that the same restriction will be applied to future RTX 3080 Ti and RTX 3070 Ti, but whether this will be the case remains to be seen. Deliveries of the new LHR graphics cards will begin at the end of May.

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