To prevent NVIDIA RTX 30 Series graphics cards from being used for Ethereum mining, the company came up with LHR. This solution cuts hashing computing power in half, making mining less profitable. Well, NiceHash has announced that they have unlocked 90% of LHR v3.
NVIDIA’s Low Hash Rate (LHR) idea for graphics cards to reach out to gamers. To meet mining demand, the company released CMP charts designed for Ethereum mining that lack video output, among other tweaks.
NiceHash breaks NVIDIA LHR v3
Currently, the only graphics cards with NVIDIA LHR v3 are the RTX 3050 8GB and RTX 3080 12GB for desktop. Note that previous versions of this limitation had already been broken. So currently, all NVIDIA graphics cards with more than 4 GB of VRAM can be used for mining.
This solution was introduced in February 2021 with the RTX 3060 and since then, all of them have integrated this limitation. The RTX 3080, RTX 3070, RTX 3060 Ti, and RTX 3060 featured LHR v2, which seemed to be more robust than the previous version. Recently, the RTX 3040 8 GB and RTX 3080 12 GB have arrived that have LHR v3.
From NiceHash they report that all RTX 30 Series have been fully or 90% unlocked. Ethereum miners just need to download NiceHash QuickMiner v0.5.4.2 RC . This software update, in addition to “breaking” LHR, brings “important stability improvements”. With this update, 41 Mh/s is achieved on the RTX 3050 and 90 Mh/s on the RTX 3080.
Although the market has undergone a significant correction, mining continues, even if it is less profitable. The reason is that the market usually undergoes these corrections to go back up significantly. You just have to go back to 2017, when Bitcoin touched $20,000 and then fell to $4,000. A few months ago Bitcoin hit $60,000 and is currently hovering around $30,000.
A limitation whose days were numbered
When NVIDIA announced this measure, it was already clear that its duration was going to be limited. There are many mining engineers who have worked to unlock these graphics cards.
Note that currently only NVIDIA implements limitations on its graphics cards and offers exclusive solutions for mining. AMD does not implement any restrictive elements for the mining of Ethereum, Ravencoin, ERGO, GRIN or any other cryptocurrency. Moreover, AMD has a blockchain tab on its website where they advertise different mining rigs.
The only effective measure to prevent graphics cards from being used for Ethereum mining is in the amount of graphics VRAM. Currently, the Ethereum DAG (“file” needed for calculations) exceeds 4.5 GB in capacity. This makes any graphics card with a lower amount of VRAM unusable for this process.
Possibly, NVIDIA is working on a more effective measure for the RTX 40 Series, although there is no data. The truth is that this market generates a lot of money and in the end, sales are what matter.
