Some Nvidia LHR playing cards now have crypto mining unlocked
If you tried to discover a new graphics card any time in 2020 or 2021, you most likely had a extremely tough (and costly) expertise. A increase in cryptocurrency and the mining thereof made already-low inventory practically nonexistent, and scalpers solely exacerbated the issue. Nvidia’s resolution was to make “Lite Hash Rate” (LHR) variations of its hottest RTX 30-series playing cards, which restricted crypto mining on the firmware degree, making them far much less interesting to crypto miners. But now, in accordance to a couple customers, the most recent Nvidia drivers have eliminated this limitation on some playing cards.
The information comes from Reddit (noticed by Tom’s Hardware), the place numerous customers testing on the 522.25 driver utilizing the LHR-limited playing cards are abruptly seeing that they will mine Ethereum-type cryptocoins at full velocity and energy. This successfully makes these playing cards (RTX 3050 by RTX 3080 Ti, constructed from early 2021 onward) similar to the RTX 30-series playing cards that don’t characteristic the LHR limiter.
Why would Nvidia basically erase one thing that it labored so onerous on, even repairing the system after it was damaged by mining-obsessed GPU patrons? Probably as a result of it’s not related. The Ethereum cryptocurrency switched to a proof-of-stake system final month, shifting away from the huge computing energy and electrical energy wanted for the everyday cryptocurrency proof-of-work setup. It’s an enormously sophisticated challenge, however the finish end result for shoppers is that highly effective GPUs basically grew to become nugatory for mining Ethereum. As one Reddit person posted within the thread, “GPU mining is lifeless.”
There are nonetheless different sorts of cryptocurrency one can mine with GPU energy, however between this variation and a basic pattern downward in cryptocoin worth, the strain on the GPU market has successfully been negated. Though it isn’t talked about within the driver launch notes, Nvidia appears to have taken the chance to alleviate itself of not less than one nagging downside for its software program improvement.