According to Nvidia’s global head of GeForce marketing, the lowered hash rate “only applies to newly manufactured cards,” not to GPUs already bought.
Nvidia announced that the hash rate limiter used on its RTX 3060 graphics cards will be used in other RTX 30 series GPUs in an effort to disincentivize cryptocurrency miners.
In an announcement from Nvidia on Tuesday, the company said it would be applying a reduced Ethereum hash rate to its newly manufactured GeForce RTX 3080, RTX 3070 and RTX 3060 Ti graphics cards. The models will be identified by a “Lite Hash Rate,” or LHR, label, aimed at getting its graphics processing units, or GPUs, to its target customers rather than cryptocurrency miners.
“This reduced hash rate only applies to newly manufactured cards with the LHR identifier and not to cards already purchased,” said Nvidia’s global head of GeForce marketing Matt Wuebbling. “We believe this additional step will get more GeForce cards at better prices into the hands of gamers everywhere.”
Nvidia restricted the hash rate on some of its earlier GPU versions, reporting in February that the modifications cut mining efficiency by half. However, in March, a graphics card manufacturer’s driver update accidentally disabled the limiter, enabling certain crypto miners to reach a hash rate of 118.9 megahashes per second for mining tokens using Nvidia’s RTX 3060 sequence.
Many users on the computer news site VideoCardz seemed to assume that the increased hash rate caps would minimise the opportunity for Nvidia buyers to automatically resell their GPUs to crypto miners for a profit.
“The price a miner would pay for these cards should now also drop slightly more in half too,” said VideoCardz user Manicdan. “If the typical eBay price was $2000 [for example], the new one should be closer to $1000. This might be way over the original price of a $500-$600, but hopefully also reduces the desire for scalpers to try so hard and maybe more get into gamers hands at the store rather than on eBay since scalpers need to sell a card for a sizable profit to cover the eBay fee, their time, and taxes.”
User Prince FA added:
“Miners won’t be enticed to pay the insane current prices for half the profitability.”
The updated RTX 3080, RTX 3070, and RTX 3060 Ti graphics cards will be available in late May, with the LHR branding in retail stock lists and on the packaging.