If you’re a PC gamer, then I don’t have to remind you of the burden it is trying to find a GPU in stock, anywhere. Thanks to COVID-19, the scalpers, and we can’t forget the cryptominers, it’s been nearly impossible to find a GPU – this includes both AMD’s and Nvidia’s video cards.
However, Nvidia has a plan, and it sounds like one that could help those looking for GPUs. Nvidia has announced a new line-up of video cards, Lite Hash Rate (LHR) cards, that will limit the hash rates and making them less attractive to cryptominers.
Nvidia will release new variants of the GeForce RTX 3070, RTX 3080, and RTX 3060 Ti GPUs, starting in late May 2021. The company will also work with various manufacturers to ensure that everyone is on the same page. Absent from this is the previously released RTX 3060 12GB, which released with a limiter in an attempt to make the card less attractive to cryptominers. Nvidia once considered this attempt to be unhackable, yet thanks to a developer driver for the video card, it was possible to bypass the limiter – to an extent.
According to Nvidia, the company has no plans to introduce a method to limit mining on the existing RTX 3070, RTX 3080, or RTX 3090 GPUs. This may be impossible to implement as the driver is only one part of the equation and would need users to update the bios on the card as well.
Nvidia has firmly stated that its line of GeForce GPUs were created with the gamer in mind. The recent months have been frustrating, to say the least. To me, at the end of the day, if the company is making money, I doubted they cared how they were making this money. That said, it looks like the company is doing what it can to curb the cards’ non-gaming usage.
GeForce RTX GPUs have introduced a range of cutting-edge technologies — RTX real-time ray tracing, AI-powered DLSS frame rate booster, NVIDIA Reflex super-fast response rendering for best system latency, and many more — created to meet the needs of gamers and those who create digital experiences.
We believe this additional step will get more GeForce cards at better prices into the hands of gamers everywhere.
For now, we’ll have to wait for Nvidia to release these new LHR cards and see how they fare. Or if the crypto mining scene finds yet another way to defeat Nvidia at its own game.
Source: Nvidia
