Graphics card large Nvidia is quietly reintroducing a hash price limiter on its RTX 3060 collection graphics playing cards in an effort to disincentivize cryptocurrency miners.
On Thursday, the corporate issued the GeForce 466.27 driver that reintroduces RTX 3060 crypto mining limiter.
According to sources reported by pc information web site VideoCardz, Nvidia will launch the brand new “Lite Hash Rate” fashions in mid-May, which might be nearly an identical to earlier variations of the identical playing cards.
The gaming large had initially limited the hash on the earlier fashions, lowering mining efficiency by 50%. Matt Wuebbling, head of worldwide GeForce advertising and marketing at Nvidia, mentioned in a blog put up in February:
“We designed GeForce GPUs for avid gamers, and avid gamers are clamoring for extra.”
Hackers first got here up with a workaround, after which in March, a driver replace inadvertently unlocked this “limiter,” unleashing the card’s true potential of 118 megahashes per second and enabling the mining of Ether (ETH) and different cryptocurrencies.
The new playing cards are mentioned to be an identical in each manner besides that they’ll have a brand new PCI Device ID of 2504. Although the unlocked driver is now within the public’s arms, the brand new ID is designed to render them ineffective if used with the 470.05 driver replace. It is, nevertheless, just about sure some miners will try to bypass this, and the earlier fashions had been supposedly hard-locked through the BIOS.
The information has obtained a blended response among the many gaming group. VideoCardz discussion board consumer Eric W stated that the transfer solely appears to sideline small residence miners, who are sometimes avid gamers:
“Well this can be a blended bag. I need to purchase a brand new gpu for gaming, however I additionally mine once I’m not actively taking part in video games… I can’t purchase a mining gpu as a result of Nvidia appears to solely promote them in portions of a number of thousand and I’ve no real interest in having 100s of mining rigs.”
User Mark suggested the limiter wouldn’t put miners off anyway, including that “it must be 90%+” to “be an actual deterrent to miners” whereas Mashed Potato believes it’s only a cash seize:
“They nonetheless need miners to purchase their playing cards… however twice as a lot.”
According to VideoCardz, limits are anticipated to be set on most RTX 30 collection playing cards, though sure fashions, just like the RTX 3090, could not find yourself with a limiter on account of its excessive price ticket of $1,500.
