What you need to know
- NVIDIA is cutting the hash rate in half of newly-manufactured GeForce RTX 3080, 3070, and 3060 Ti graphics cards.
- The move is being made to help GeForce graphics cards get into the hands of gamers rather than crypto miners.
- Cards with limited hash rates will be marked with a "Lite Hash Rate" or "LHR" identifier.
NVIDIA continues its push to get GeForce GPUs into the hands of gamers rather than crypto miners. The company announced in a blog post that it will halve the hash rate of newly-manufactured GeForce RTX 3080, RTX 3070, and RTX 3060 Ti graphics cards. Any cards shipped from late May onward will have reduced hash rates. The move will affect several of the best mining GPUs.
Hash rate refers to how many calculations a piece of hardware can perform every second. It's an important metric for mining cryptocurrency because mining relies on solving complicated math problems. Being able to perform more calculations per second speeds up the mining process. For reference, the RTX 3060 Ti hash rate is around 60 megahash per second (MH/s) when it's not limited.
Cards with limited hash rates will be marked with a "Lite Hash Rate" or "LHR" identifier. These identifiers should make it easy for shoppers to know if they're getting an old model without any limits or a new model with limits.
When NVIDIA announced a driver for the RTX 3060 that limited its hash rate, it mentioned that the limiter would be required for all products shipped after mid-May. The recent blog post confirms which products will be limited.
NVIDIA's blog post specifies that the hash rate limiter "only applies to newly manufactured cards with the LHR identifier and not to cards already purchased."
The company emphasizes that "GeForce is made for gaming" and explains that the motive behind this move is to get gaming GPUs into the hands of gamers, "We believe this additional step will get more GeForce cards at better prices into the hands of gamers everywhere."
