Nvidia’s cryptocurrency mining limits are once more coming into play as they nerf their new RTX 3080, 3070 and 3060 Ti cards. These new cards will be labelled with an LHR or Lite Hash Rate identifier to let potential customers know that the card is restricted for mining. Nvidia had previously applied this LHR identifier to the RTX 3060 when it launched back in February. 

According to Matt Wuebbling, Nvidia’s head of GeForce Marketing, this new LHR identifier only applies to newly manufactured cards and not to pre-existing cards already in the market.

The move comes as an attempt to get more RTX cards into gamer’s hands and not being snatched up by cryptocurrency miners. 

These new cards will start shipping in late May and should really help bring RTX cards to more users as crypto miners will hopefully stop pursuing these cards. Aforementioned, the LHR identifier will be displayed on the retail product listing. 

The damage already done

However, as the company was trying to put out drivers to nerf mining with the previously released RTX 3060, they also accidentally released a beta driver, which did the exact opposite — unlocking hash rates and increasing performance.

While Nvidia has already fixed the issue with driver updates, the beta drivers are all around the internet now. 

As for crypto miners, the company provides a separate Cryptocurrency Mining Processor, otherwise known as a CMP for Etherium miners, that offers the best performance for mining but won’t handle traditional GPU loads at all. 

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