https://www.techpowerup.com/299838/nvidia-removes-hashrate-limiter-for-rtx-30-series-lhr-gpus-in-the-latest-driver
 
In a last-ditch effort to clear inventory of its GeForce RTX 30-series "Ampere" graphics cards, NVIDIA has reportedly removed the hashrate limiter in the latest GeForce 522.25 drivers, without mentioning it anywhere in the driver's release notes. A Redditor and GeForce RTX 3080 Ti owner by the username "Timbers007" rested that their card, which launched exclusively as LHR-enabled graphics cards (with no RTX 3080 Ti cards without LHR in circulation); is now achieving double its usual hashrates when benchmarked with ethminer. It's able to put out 112 MH/s, a hashrate only possible with mining software that circumvents the LHR limiter, such as NiceHash or NBMiner.

In the thick of the graphics card shortage in 2020-21, as crypto currency miners were buying up inventory of gaming graphics cards through sophisticated retail bots; NVIDIA attempted to sour the milk for miners by introducing LHR (lite hashrate), a supposedly hardware-level limitation that cripples the mining performance of the GPU. This failed to improve things as NVIDIA accidentally released drivers without the hashrate limiter early on and redacted them, but not before they spread among miners. It was only a titanic crash in crypto-currency values, and the recent Ethereum merge that killed GPU-accelerated mining, which arrested demand, bringing RTX 30-series GPUs to prices more acceptable to gamers, as miners began flooding the market with their used GPUs at much lower prices. Will this improve sales of the RTX 30-series? Unlikely. Miners with RTX 30-series LHR graphics cards who already had the hacks to circumvent the limiter, are dumping their cards.
 
I really don't know if this will achieve any objectives that NVIDIA is trying. 
 

A dumb twist to a dumb plot.

Definitely not an accident... Nvidia is getting pretty shameless at this point with the market manipulation.

dwoodward

808sting
You win the post of the day and made me laugh.
 

 
Funny that nVidia secretly sells to miners, superficially cripples gamer card inventory for optics, acknowledge mining revenue in public filings, then uncripple cards after the mining bust and the supply/demand fallout.

I think it's entertaining that the 4090 has a removable cover on the front of the card that unveils 2 screw holes for use to mount the card in a rack. They clearly designed the card to be mining capable.

That’s not what the holes are for. They are for the use of a support bracket to prevent GPU sag. every board partner is also including an anti sag bracket or stand in the box too. 

CraptacularOne

dwoodward

808sting
You win the post of the day and made me laugh.
 

 
Funny that nVidia secretly sells to miners, superficially cripples gamer card inventory for optics, acknowledge mining revenue in public filings, then uncripple cards after the mining bust and the supply/demand fallout.

I think it's entertaining that the 4090 has a removable cover on the front of the card that unveils 2 screw holes for use to mount the card in a rack. They clearly designed the card to be mining capable.

That’s not what the holes are for. They are for the use of a support bracket to prevent GPU sag. every board partner is also including an anti sag bracket or stand in the box too. 

Are you sure? Most of the sag stands I've seen merely have a rubber plate that sits under the GPU, fastened with a thumb screw to hold it up. I've never seen one that actually screws into the GPU itself.

the_Scarlet_one

dwoodward

Spoiler

CraptacularOne

dwoodward

808sting
You win the post of the day and made me laugh.



Funny that nVidia secretly sells to miners, superficially cripples gamer card inventory for optics, acknowledge mining revenue in public filings, then uncripple cards after the mining bust and the supply/demand fallout.

I think it's entertaining that the 4090 has a removable cover on the front of the card that unveils 2 screw holes for use to mount the card in a rack. They clearly designed the card to be mining capable.

That’s not what the holes are for. They are for the use of a support bracket to prevent GPU sag. every board partner is also including an anti sag bracket or stand in the box too. 

close

Are you sure? Most of the sag stands I've seen merely have a rubber plate that sits under the GPU, fastened with a thumb screw to hold it up. I've never seen one that actually screws into the GPU itself.

Yes, he is 100% sure because those holes have openly been on GPU’s for many years, even before GPU mining was popular, and typically come installed in systems that dell and other system integrators create and it braces the GPU during shipping so the card is just flopping around in the PCI slot.

Most miners just set their GPU’s in vertical mount on a rack and would have little to no use for that mounting location. They don’t want more things to remove when they need to swap a GPU.
 
 7870 with bracket installed:

 GTX280:

GTX580:

GTX1080:

 
GTX1080 with the actual bracket installed:

Interesting... I guess I never noticed them before. Do they only exist on FE cards?

dwoodward
 
Interesting... I guess I never noticed them before. Do they only exist on FE cards?

Nope, some Gigabyte, PNY, ASUS and Colorful 4090s have them too. 

As for the topic at hand, I doubt Nvidia disabled the limiter to try and increase sales. They more than likely did it because it just isn't needed anymore and rather than paying to have their driver team Q/A something that isn't necessary, they opted to cut it and save money and wasted time on a feature that is now irrelevant. 

dwoodward

CraptacularOne
As for the topic at hand, I doubt Nvidia disabled the limiter to try and increase sales. They more than likely did it because it just isn't needed anymore and rather than paying to have their driver team Q/A something that isn't necessary, they opted to cut it and save money and wasted time on a feature that is now irrelevant. 

I saw a report that some cards are seeing 10-25% performance increases with the new drivers. I wonder if their hash limiter removal has any impact on that, because it's not only 4090's seeing jumps from the new driver. 

There have already been many many tests comparing LHR to non LHR cards in performance and the difference is zero between them. That's been put to rest almost a year ago so you can remove your tinfoil hat now.
https://www.youtube.com/w...b_channel=TestingGames
 
This is a driver optimization and it seems to really only benefit DX12 games as DX11 and Vulkan games are virtually the same in most cases.
https://www.youtube.com/w...b_channel=TestingGames