Nvidia’s brings back its “hash Limiter” for its RTX 3060 and future graphics cards

With the launch of their Geforce 466.27 WHQL driver, Nvidia has updated the Ethereum “hash Limiter” on their RTX 3060 graphics cards, limiting the graphics card’s cryptocurrency mining potential. 

In addition to this change, Nvidia has also confirmed that this new driver will be “required for products shipped starting mid-May 2021”, implying that the limit will not just affect RTX 3060 graphics cards after this date. This semi-confirms what has been long rumoured; Nvidia will be refreshing its RTX 30 series of graphics cards with new models that will feature a “hash limiter”. While Nvidia’s announcement only mentions their RTX 3060, if they can refresh one graphics card to add a mining lock, they can refresh others…

In short, it looks like Nvidia’s Geforce 466.23 WHQL driver will be the earliest driver that Nvidia’s refreshed RTX 30 series lineup will support. These new graphics cards will be identical to their older counterparts but support Resizable BAR (eliminating the need for a VBIOS update) and Nvidia’s hash limiter out of the box. Nvidia will also take precautions to prevent minders from installing old RTX 30 series BIOS files onto their newest GPUs, cracking down on Ethereum mining. 

For the most part, these refreshed RTX products are reported to be identical to their existing counterparts, aside from the aforementioned changes. That said, rumour has it that Nvidia has an RTX 3080 Ti graphics card in the works, which is rumoured to be launching in mid-May. 

While cracking down on cryptocurrency mining will help more of Nvidia’s RTX 30 series graphics cards reach gamers, it is unknown whether or not this change will resolve today’s GPU shortage. Gaming GPUs are in high demand, and it remains to be seen whether or not miners will find a way to bypass Nvidia’s cryptocurrency mining lock.