- The crypto mining cap put on the RTX 30xx range of Nvidia graphics cards seems to have been broken
- Nvidia had hoped to limit the new cards’ usage for crypto mining by implementing a 50% power cap
- NBMiner software claims to have unlocked up to 70% of the new cards’ power
Nvidia’s hopes of keeping cryptocurrency miners at bay by putting a limiter on its most recent range of graphics cards may have been dashed six months after they debuted. Popular mining software NBMiner claims to have bypassed the restrictions imposed by Nvidia on their range of RTX 30xx cards and boosted the mining capacity up to 70% of that of the card’s capabilities, 20% more than the card was previously capable of. The news will not go down with gamers who have not yet managed to get their hands on one of the new cards, although the fact that Ethereum is taking steps to move towards a proof-of-stake consensus mechanism suggests that sales might not be as high as in previous years anyway.
Lite Hash Rate Limited Output to 50%
Nvidia released their newest range of graphics cards in January which featured an algorithm that would limit the power that the new cards could allocate to crypto mining. This was in response to years of complaints from gamers that cryptocurrency miners were snapping up the most powerful Nvidia cards, causing the prices to rocket and stocks to run low.
The Lite Hash Rate (LHR) feature was effective against some algorithms used for Ethereum mining and were supposed to limit the capacity to 50% of the card’s possible output. At the time however, gamers were not enthusiastic over the likelihood of the LHR remaining uncracked for long:
Nvidia’s High Hopes Dashed
It seems that their fears were well founded, as the latest version of NBMiner claims to have restored up to 70% of the card’s capacity for mining operations. Further updates of this and other software will no doubt push this figure higher, so gamers should be doing everything they can to get their hands on the cards now.
