Cryptominers have already cracked Nvidia's RTX 3060 hash rate limiter | TechRadar
 
When the GeForce RTX 3060 was launched on February 25, Nvidia announced that the mining efficiency of the graphics card was deliberately being reduced by around 50% in a bid to get more of the GPUs directly to gamers. However, this limitation appears to have been quickly bypassed by Chinese cryptocurrency miners using customized mods. Nvidia’s latest generation of graphics cards, including the RTX 3080, RTX 3090 and RTX 3070, have been extremely difficult to buy since their launch late last year due to low stock production, bots buying up inventory for scalping and cryptocurrency miners bulk buying the GPUs to use for mining cryptocurrencies.
 
There was already concern brewing about how well the limiter would stand against savvy miners, but Nvidia has been vocally confident in the hash rate limit. A statement was given to PC Gamer regarding how difficult it would be to get around the protections placed on the GPUs, claiming "End users cannot remove the hash limiter from the driver. There is a secure handshake between the driver, the RTX 3060 silicon, and the BIOS (firmware) that prevents removal of the hash rate limiter."
 
The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 can deliver around 40-45 MH/s for standard performance but this dropped down to 20-25 MH/s if the GPU detected mining-related activity, providing the limiter is in place.

A picture spotted by I_Leak_VN reveals a Chinese mod developed to help miners unlock the full hash potential of the GeForce RTX 3060 graphics card, with the image showing the Geforce RTX 3060 delivering 45 MH/s in Ethereum. The hash-rate limiter mod has also been separately confirmed to work by a Vietnamese Facebook group, apparently even capable of outputting 50 MH/s. If the above proves true, this could be bad for the gaming community as miners can expect the same hash output as GPUs such as the RTX 3060 Ti and close to the RTX 3070 using the cheaper RTX 3060, but with a significantly lower power requirement.

There is still some hope that miners will opt for Nvidia's upcoming Cryptocurrency Mining Processor (CMP), as this will help them have better cooling solutions, and they’ll have lower running costs due to a lower peak core voltage and frequency.

The entire situation felt much like calling the Titanic the 'Unsinkable Ship', and hindsight is a wonderful thing. We don't currently know the release date for the CMPs, or how often fresh stock will be released for the GeForce RTX 3000 series graphics cards, but until something changes we're likely to continue seeing gamers losing hardware to mining farms during this ongoing cryptocurrency boom.
 
Well that didn't take long to crack. Faster than I thought. 

I mean, who didn't see this coming? 

Somebody I know on twitter in vietnam sent me a DM over that I noticed this AM
 
no link to the fixed driver or card BIOS however
 
 

aka_STEVE_b
WHY would it matter ? - Remember the Nvidia board member who said in the latest meeting that she didn't believe bitcoin miners were the reason for the card shortages...? 
...but yet they specifically target that market with gimped performance...? 
 
They really need to make up their mind as to what excuse to use from week to week...

The board does not have a clue
 

ty_ger07
It's good for NVIDIA that the hash rate limit was hacked so quick.  Otherwise everybody would have one less scapegoat for why the cards are not in stock.
Plus, purposely disabling features for the purpose of product segmentation is never a good thing for the buyer.

 Like it has been done before in differing ways, on different products. I don't understand the decision to try to implement the limit on performance. 

Looks like the demise of the mining limiter was a bit premature.
 
https://youtu.be/pI8YlbfCFfA
 

All rhetoric aside this is no more or less than supply side economics. Supply low + high demand = higher prices. The only loser here is the consumer. There is nothing new here in terms of demand from mainstream to mining. You have to know they would have planned for it and wonder if it's on purpose.

NVIDIA RTX 3060 Hashrate Limited Defeated, GeForce 470.05 Driver Unlocks Full Mining Performance | TechPowerUp

it useless as far as i can see
 
Pheonix miner is coming out with changes to software thwart existing drivers anyways
 
if i was the mining software co i would bring the algorithm closer to something from crunching or folding
that way if nvidia gimps it.... it gimps the scientific community from doing work
 
furthermore there are some scientific apps that might be hampered already by the gimp
as well you may gimp future scientific applications from running fully
it will also hurt encryption applications - they use SHA256 predominately
Ethereum uses ECDSA (Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm) for it's public-key cryptography. This is the same as bitcoin
 
all the gimp does is hurt the scientific community in total
 
 
Im with linus it was a fools move in the first place
between creating e-trash and risking a class action suit by users that want to use the way the card was designed for 
both Gaming and Number crunching/scientific work (and mining is that and so is physx/folding/crunching/encryption/etc)
 
gimping one section will only make people made that you are taking away a feature - or reducing its ability to do work... in bold defiance of what the card was intended for ...BOTH
 
all Nvidia is doing is risking a class action lawsuit for it anyways.... also a fraud charge for advertising its ability as a compute card while gimping the compute
just imagine you bought the card to do video compression - and Nvidia changes the rules and gimps that because media companies are buying up all the ampere - class action suit - i can see it
same goes if it impacts the scientific community in any way
 
STUPID you ask me
 
solution like i said make a better mining card than the existing ampere line - take out the stuff you don't need like RTX cores, tensor cores, apply a bigger bus like 512+ and faster ram
you don't need clock speed so much(ie lower clocks to help keep cool) - you need memory bandwidth(faster- wider bus) - and cool the ram with a WC block - leave the video inputs(limited) - limit to 1080o 60fps that way gamers really won't want it 
that way they have a resale to low end gamers after they are no longer used for mining
 
IE a specialized Mining GPU - its a better idea than using old turing cores - but hey if your gonna use them - make a bigger bus with faster ram with them - downclock the gpu and upclock the ram and cool it properly
make sure it mines better than Ampere
 
and with future chips ...do the same - offer ampere with upgrades ram speed and bus - while ada is used for gaming
the upgraded ampere will offer higher hash rate over previous ampere and will beat ada's hash rate 
 
thats how you do it
 
that way you can use a old fab process (for the mining cards) and the new process for gamers
 
there will still be people that will get the newest chip to both game and mine on - you can't stop that
it's like trying to stop people from gaming and folding/crunching on new cards
 
good luck with that
 
remember miners want the higher hash rate and if you can offer it cheaper than the gaming line
it a biz and it's about ROI and how fast you can pay the hardware off - so cheaper and mine faster is better with less power consumption(because that impacts ROI)
 

NVIDIA confirms the ETH limiter on RTX 3060 was removed accidentally

A day after the news broke that RTX 3060 mining limiter has been removed, the company responsible for this situation has released a short statement. This company is NVIDIA. 
 
After initial reports that the Ethereum hash rate limiter on GeForce RTX 3060 mid-range *gaming* graphics card has been bypassed, NVIDIA has finally confirmed that the driver responsible for this situation was released inadvertently. NVIDIA has since removed the driver, but the damage has already been done.
It was discovered that GeForce 470.05 driver that was released only to software developers who are enrolled in the NVIDIA program, actually removed the hash rate limiter that NVIDIA was eager to announce as a cure for the GPU mining craze. This software was never publically available, but miners and enthusiasts were quick to notice that the mining limiter does not work with this particular driver. NVIDIA today confirmed that this was an internal development driver that had hash rate limiter disabled in some configurations:

A developer driver inadvertently included code used for internal development which removes the hash rate limiter on RTX 3060 in some configurations.
The driver has been removed.
— NVIDIA

As noted in the statement, the driver does not work for all graphics cards. It also does not work for graphics cards that do not have a display connector attached to a monitor or if the graphics card is used with a riser. Multiple-GPU configurations are possible but only when cards are inserted into the motherboard slots and have dummy monitor plugs.
According to people familiar with the matter, the driver works for ASUS, Palit, EVGA, GALAX, Gigabyte, and MSI cards. Some people encounter problems with ZOTAC and Inno3D graphics cards though.
 
https://videocardz.com/ne...eum-hash-rate-limitier

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Cryptocurrency Mining Limit Bypassed Using Dummy HDMI, Fools The GPU/Driver Handshake Easily
 
 
https://wccftech.com/nvid...ssed-using-dummy-hdmi/
 
 

Crazy times in which we are living...

Life finds a way. Unless they implement some how a way to change the hardware to limit the mining ability they will always crack the code.

We'll see if their new method works:
 
https://wccftech.com/nvidia-geforce-rtx-3060-cryptocurrency-mining-hash-rate-limit-gpu-shipping-mid-may/
 
Starting mid-May, 3060 cards will require this new driver. I have to imagine the smart folks in the mining community will find a way around this, but we'll see!