Nvidia’s attempt to get the Ether (ETH) miners out of its new GeForce RTX 3060 video card by limiting its hash rate appears to have been short-lived.
Screenshots posted by technical leak The Twitter account I_Leak_VN shows a stack of eight RTX 3060 graphics cards operating well above Nvidia’s 20-25 MH / s mining limit, while allegedly using Ethereum’s Dagger-Hashimoto mining algorithm.
On the same day, a Facebook group focused on Vietnam’s cryptocurrency posted a chart announcing that the RTX 3060 had actually been bypassed and could now reach its full power of 50 MH / s thanks to a mod.
Breaking the limits imposed by Nvidia on Ether mining was apparently achieved using a custom modification, according to reports on March 10. This goes against a recent announcement by Nvidia’s global public relations director, Bryan Del Rizzo, who said on February 21 that secure interactions between GPU hardware, driver software and computer firmware would prevent the removal of the rate limiter hash.
“It is not just a question of a driver. There is a secure handshake between the driver, the silicon RTX 3060 and the BIOS (firmware) that prevents the removal of the hash rate limiter ”, Del Rizzo wrote on twitter.
Nvidia’s imposition of the hash rate limiter was designed to make its cards less attractive to cryptocurrency miners – specifically those who are mining Ether. This followed concerns expressed by gaming aficionados, who were concerned about suffering another shortage of GPU due to demand from miners. According to Nvidia, Ether was specifically targeted for having the highest global mining yield among the GPU mining currencies.
Along with its decision to limit the efficiency of Ether mining, Nvidia also announced the pending launch of a video card created specifically for cryptocurrency mining. Called the CMP line, the cards would be marketed to miners and would have their display exits considered unnecessary for cryptographic mining.
But with the emergence of the aforementioned modification, those plans may now be in the air and could result in a mad rush by would-be miners to snatch more units of the RTX 3060. Nvidia’s future plans are also questioned, as it intended to launch the next RTX 3080 Ti with the same Ether mining limitations.
Nvidia did not immediately respond to Cointelegraph’s request for comment.