NVIDIA announced today that it's halving the hash rate for Etehereum cryptocurrency mining on the new GeForce RTX 3080, 3070, and 3060 Ti graphics cards to make them less desirable for miners.
The company 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.
"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."
According to Wuebbling, this decision was taken to make sure that more of these cards will be used by gamers worldwide instead of stacked in cryptocurrency mining farms.
RTX 3060 cards' hash rate also halved in February
This announcement comes after NVIDIA also nerfed the Ethereum hash rate on all GeForce RTX 3060 cards shipped starting 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," Wuebbling added.
NVIDIA is also hoping to push professional mining operations towards its new range of CMP dedicated mining GPUs by deliberately reducing the new GeForce RTX's mining performance by 50%.
The specs for the company's dedicated GPU for professional mining are available in the table embedded below.
| 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 |
"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."
Comments
Username_Redacted - 2 years ago
This is a surprising move, I feel. A profit-based technology company which apparently saw only two options: 1) continue to manufacture as before; the status quo ante - he with the fastest money gets the prize, or 2) cripple the newly manufactured devices for crypto mining so they're not attractive for that purpose. But, the problem is the glaring 3rd alternative, clearly ignored or overlooked; 3) increase manufacturing numbers to provide adequate hardware for both user groups. It's boggling a profit-based tech company couldn't see 'option 3' ([The Run Down], reference) as the win:win:win solution - perhaps they need new leadership.
-Badger- - 2 years ago
Option 2) has 2 parts,
Part1: cripple gamer cards to show to be doing something.
Part2: force crypto miners to buy more expensive dedicated cards sold at a premium.
Burnsidhe - 2 years ago
The problem with 'producing more' is that all microchip factories worldwide are at 100% capacity. There's no slack capacity to produce extra cards to meet demand. nVidia aren't stupid, if they could produce more they would. They can't.
TanyaC - 2 years ago
I suspect the profit-based technology company would have seen option 3, but the cost of ramping up, particularly if demand is not always going to be high, means more capacity to build - which they probably don't have and would be expensive and risky. These companies do no care about customers, just profit.
This move won't do anything positive to pricing either. Prices are continuing to skyrocket, and even older cards, where available, have even doubled or triple in price. I bought by first GTX 1070 for A$549. My RTX 2070S for A$769 and now the RTX 3070 is A$2200 and higher. I don't expect that will drop any time soon, certainly not with people willing to pay these prices.
Hammerfest - 2 years ago
Linus did a great rant regarding, all that eWaste Crypto cards :(