Nvidia implemented a special system to reduce the hash rate of Ethereum mining on its new RTX 3060 graphics card last month. It was supposed to limit mining performance to around 50 percent, but several reports now claim that cryptominerators have bypassed protection.
Japanese website PC Watch revealed for the first time that Nvidia’s protections can be circumvented without the need to modify a driver or BIOS. ComputerBase since then, it confirmed the PC Watch report and revealed that the latest Nvidia beta 470.05 driver is automatically unlocking performance for most RTX 3060 owners. Andreas Schilling, publisher of Hardwareluxx, has supported these findings.
The beta driver appears to unlock Ethereum mining performance on a variety of RTX 3060 cards, which was probably not what Nvidia had planned for its test drivers. The 470.05 driver is designed for developers to test the performance of the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) and new features, such as support for OpenCL 3.0.
Nvidia originally restricted the mining performance of the RTX 3060 in an attempt to prevent cryptominerators from buying the plates. Nvidia is offering a new cryptocurrency mining processor (CMP) for Ethereum miners. The beta driver’s deviation from Ethereum’s mining performance will certainly make the cards more attractive to cryptominators now.
Nvidia seemed confident in its software restrictions for nerf mining performance RTX 3060. “It’s not just a driver thing,” said Bryan Del Rizzo, Head of Communications at Nvidia, last month. “There is a secure handshake between the driver, the silicon RTX 3060 and the BIOS (firmware) that prevents the hash rate limiter from being removed.”
We have contacted Nvidia to comment on this new beta driver and will update it accordingly.