NVIDIA cripples cryptocurrency mining

 

On 18th of May 2021 NVIDIA announced that they are halving the hash rate for Ethereum cryptocurrency mining on their new GeForce RTX 3080, 3070, and 3060 Ti graphics cards to make them less desirable for miners.

"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," said Matt Wuebbling, NVIDIA's Global Head of GeForce Marketing.

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

NVIDIA will add "Lite Hash Rate" or "LHR" identifiers to retail product listings and boxes for all these new nerfed graphics cards that will start shipping later this month. According to Wuebbling, this decision was taken to make sure that more of these cards will be used just by the gamers around the world instead of getting stacked in cryptocurrency mining farms.

RTX 3060 cards' hash rate also halved in February

"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," said Matt Wuebbling. This announcement comes after NVIDIA also nerfed the Ethereum hash rate on all GeForce RTX 3060 cards shipped starting February.

"Our RTX 30 Series is built on our second-generation RTX architecture, with dedicated RT Cores and Tensor Cores, delivering amazing visuals and performance to gamers and creators," Wuebbling concluded.

"We believe this additional step will get more GeForce cards at better prices into the hands of gamers everywhere."

Mining Specs

The table below shows the specs for the company's dedicated GPU for professional mining :

	30HX	40HX	50HX	90HX
Ethereum Hash Rate	26 MH/s	36 MH/s	45 MH/s	86 MH/s
Rated Power	125 W	185 W	250 W	320 W
Power Connectors	1x 8-pin	1x 8-pin	2x 8-pin	2x 8-pin
Memory Size	6GB	8GB	10GB	10GB
Starting Availability	Q1	Q1	Q2	Q2