Nvidia reaffirms controversial stance against cryptomining with new 'Lite Hash Rate' cards

Shawn Knight

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The big picture: Nvidia argues that its GeForce products are made for gamers. With cryptocurrency mining on the rise, the ongoing chip shortage and scalpers buying up inventory and reselling it for a premium, gamers have struggled to get their hands on new RTX 30 Series cards. Nvidia believes that by making its cards less desirable to mining enthusiasts, gamers will be able to more easily acquire them for a fair price.

Nvidia has officially reaffirmed its controversial stance against cryptomining – or at least, for those that elect to use RTX 30 Series for the task.

The GPU maker recently revealed that all newly manufactured GeForce RTX 3080, RTX 3070 and RTX 3060 Ti graphics cards will ship with a reduced Ethereum hash rate in place. To help differentiate the new cards from existing models, GeForce partners will label them with a “Lite Hash Rate” or “LHR” identifier.

Notably, the reduced hash rate will only apply to newly manufactured cards with the identifier, and not cards that have already been purchased.

Nvidia earlier this year announced that its newly launched RTX 3060 would ship with an unhackable mining limiter that would reduce its effectiveness by roughly 50 percent. A few weeks after launch, however, Nvidia accidentally published a beta driver for the RTX 3060 that removed the limiter.

The company isn’t totally dismissing the crypto community, however, as it recently introduced a dedicated GPU for miners. Nvidia CMP cards don’t have display outputs and “don’t meet the specifications required of a GeForce GPU,” and thus, are designated as mining-only cards.

Nvidia’s continued pushback against cryptocurrency remains puzzling on multiple levels. The company didn’t explicitly mention what is different about these new LHR cards versus their standard counterparts. Is there a hardware change that truly makes the anti-mining feature irreversible, or is this just round two of a driver implementation?

Furthermore, it’s puzzling from a pure numbers standpoint to see a company do anything that would discourage people from buying your product. At the end of the day, a sale is a sale.

What’s more, it seems as though Nvidia’s moves are going to make non-limited (original) cards more valuable due to their versatility to game and / or mine. Some people want to do both. CMP cards, meanwhile, are only good for mining so once the hash rate climbs past the point that makes them no longer efficient, they’re essentially useless.

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Well at least the driver to bypass the limitation didn't make it to miners *before* the cards make it to consumers this time around. So the card scalpers might have to sell to gamers instead of miners, which inherently slows them down and removes a bit of the incentive of individual sales vs some miner buying willing to buy 100k of cards all at once.

But I'm still unconvinced this won't be circumvented like, immediately. And if it's not, we should see if the driver or method used negatively impacts gaming at all because we just don't know what they're doing so even if it's tempting to go ahead and buy, I think at least a few days of cautions for independent reviewers to test this is advisable.
 
Its mostly? aimed at ethereum mining which uses a the same loop of code .. it shouldnt affect gaming , or at least be minimal, maybe 2% 3% .IMO.
Dont look for any alleviation in prices tho , they may decline . This is the new normal , 50-60% (at least) above what they could be.
Look to be gaming at 960p or less in 2022 ..
 
As the crypto bubble nears its inevitable end (at least, for this year), we will see more and more "smart" solutions to appease to gamers, that they "just" come up with...
 
Nvidia is now working on maximizing their profits on both sides. They created hundreds of thousands of GPUs that have mostly found their ways into the hands of miners and these cards will forever have no mining restriction and will hold second hand resell value well - be it for other miners or gamers.

Now GPUs to come out with hashrate limiters for ETH means, if ETH doesn't hold a high enough return for a limited hashrate, these cards should (<----- key word here) hopefully land in the hands of gamers. But, if ETH keeps going up and even at half hashrate of other Ampre cards, these cards will fall into the hands of miners and we'll all be right back to where we currently are.

The issues will continue to pile up. Folks will work on grabbing these as soon as they hit the shelves and resell them. Then you'll have people selling them off as non-LHR models and trying to scam people.....it'll just be a big cluster F all around.

The only one that wins here is Nvidia.
 
Nvidia is now working on maximizing their profits on both sides. They created hundreds of thousands of GPUs that have mostly found their ways into the hands of miners and these cards will forever have no mining restriction and will hold second hand resell value well - be it for other miners or gamers.

Now GPUs to come out with hashrate limiters for ETH means, if ETH doesn't hold a high enough return for a limited hashrate, these cards should (<----- key word here) hopefully land in the hands of gamers. But, if ETH keeps going up and even at half hashrate of other Ampre cards, these cards will fall into the hands of miners and we'll all be right back to where we currently are.

The issues will continue to pile up. Folks will work on grabbing these as soon as they hit the shelves and resell them. Then you'll have people selling them off as non-LHR models and trying to scam people.....it'll just be a big cluster F all around.

The only one that wins here is Nvidia.
And AMD ,I planned on buying a 3080[ I prepaid the card in january] to mine with on my off computer game times so I can afford it....if hash rate limiter is on it I will buy AMD instead and cancel 3080 order. I know there are many people who only get flagship [3080,2080 ect] every time because they can mine with it. Without that ability many will simply go lower tier or move to the competition.
 
Lets see what greedy nvidia does, since in the end, both the gamer and mining GPU uses the same chip, they have a hard limit of those.

So they will redirect their allocation to the miners cards and the gamers will have cr@p to buy anyways.

In the end, nvidia wins, gamers lose and now miners also, since these miners cards cant be sold used to gamers.

And people continue worshiping nvidia.....
 
I can say the same for gaming.
That's just a pointless and reductive argument. Crypto mining is a completely artificial mechanism to make a 'currency' hard to obtain. Other mechanisms can be employed to do this that don't involve wasting vast amounts of energy. I'm sure if other mechanisms could be employed to render 3D scenes that didn't involve buying graphics cards we'd be all over them unfortunately that's not the case - hence nobody saying that 'using graphics cards for gaming should be banned'.

But ...'using graphics cards to solve ludicrous artificial hashing algorithms so that a set of people who produce nothing of any benefit can waste vast amounts of resources to make themselves rich at everybody else's cost should be banned' sounds pretty sensible to me.
 
That's just a pointless and reductive argument. Crypto mining is a completely artificial mechanism to make a 'currency' hard to obtain. Other mechanisms can be employed to do this that don't involve wasting vast amounts of energy. I'm sure if other mechanisms could be employed to render 3D scenes that didn't involve buying graphics cards we'd be all over them unfortunately that's not the case - hence nobody saying that 'using graphics cards for gaming should be banned'.

But ...'using graphics cards to solve ludicrous artificial hashing algorithms so that a set of people who produce nothing of any benefit can waste vast amounts of resources to make themselves rich at everybody else's cost should be banned' sounds pretty sensible to me.
You dont need 3d images either. Simple entertainment can be made far cheaper, both cost wise and enviromental wise. You dont need expensive silicon consuming hundreds of watts to play your bing-bing-wahoo.

"using expensive silicon that comes from a production line requring expensive materials, heavy metals, and produces toxic emissions to play vapid electronic entertainment that produces nothing of any benefit for society, and thus should be banned" sounds pretty sensible to me.
Crypto needs to be criminalized immediately.

A complete waste of resources.
Purchasing high end video cards should be criminalized immediately.

A complete waste of resources.

Purchasing high end iphones every year should be criminalized immediately.

A complete waste of resources.
 
Hashrates reduced? No problem, just buy two GPU to equal the hashrate and problem solved. Or just mine other coins... The limiter is only for ETH. Other coins can get you profit and with ETH 2.0 coming in two months... Nvidia is late into the game on this lol. I'll just keep mining hashing power :). For people crying about mining is messing up gamers, I literally mine and game at the same time. Just lower the mining clocks on the GPU I'm playing while the other is mining full speed. Once I'm done just continue mining normally. Getting paid to play. Haters gonna hate.
 
You dont need 3d images either. Simple entertainment can be made far cheaper, both cost wise and enviromental wise. You dont need expensive silicon consuming hundreds of watts to play your bing-bing-wahoo.

"using expensive silicon that comes from a production line requring expensive materials, heavy metals, and produces toxic emissions to play vapid electronic entertainment that produces nothing of any benefit for society, and thus should be banned" sounds pretty sensible to me.

Purchasing high end video cards should be criminalized immediately.

A complete waste of resources.

Purchasing high end iphones every year should be criminalized immediately.

A complete waste of resources.

A coworker has an iPhone 11 of some model type - whatever the helI these iPhone models are now. Anyway, she said her ex (who she has a kid with) just got an iPhone 11.

So she felt the need to 1-up him and she purchased a new iPhone 12. I forget how shallow people can be at times.
 
A coworker has an iPhone 11 of some model type - whatever the helI these iPhone models are now. Anyway, she said her ex (who she has a kid with) just got an iPhone 11.

So she felt the need to 1-up him and she purchased a new iPhone 12. I forget how shallow people can be at times.
People care more about what others think and see of them... As a poster on here always says... He buys things to "flex"... Bro live your life and who cares what others think or see about you. If something works, no need to change it.
 
People care more about what others think and see of them... As a poster on here always says... He buys things to "flex"... Bro live your life and who cares what others think or see about you. If something works, no need to change it.
Your philosophy stinks like your mining.
 
Folks there is no point arguing with folk who use we should ban gaming as well - It is such an appalling bad analogy - that fails straightaway on all it's fundamental assumptions - except they both use power .
They have put forward the same gotcha rubbish before - they will NOT change their point off view no matter your arguments .
The same reason I do no argue with climate change deniers - they are worse they are 100% dishonest. Those guys for 15 years plus claim it was all lies the world was getting warmer - data was being massaged etc etc - I have seen none of them admit they got that wrong-NOT ONE . Now they claim the same stuff week after week - never addressing the arguments refuting that the main tenant the the primary cause is man - and acceleration is inline with the industrial revolution .
No the world was not warmer in Roman times - it was just very warm in a localised area . I'm not even going to mention all their other silly arguments about volcanoes, planets motions, inclination , sunspots etc - The proof that climate change is man made hit the gold standard in 2019 of 5 Sigma and no loner toiling away with 5 PhDs in applied mathematics is going to overturn that ( they always gravitate to outliers ignore a lot of their work has been dodgy ,and forget about all real Sceptics who are now believers- who they raved about when it suited them )
 
Nothing lasts forever and the gaming as a hobby could die sooner than later. Human evolution both genetically and behaviorally is in it's infancy.
 
No government is willing to de-legitimize such a (on paper) cash cow. I would imagine most governments are looking for a way to turn these (on paper) values into actual in-the-bank taxes. The huge mining operations in China won't be affected by Western taxation, of course, but might well be closely scrutinized by the PRC. I understand that tax avoidance in the PRC is non-existant.

There are also rumors that the US IRS is going to tax anyone that buys any RTX 3090 an annual fee of 2500$ each to get their share of the mining revenue. 3080's, 2000per unit/year, and so on. Retroactively.
 
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