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Chipmaker Nvidia is making sure that its new models of graphics cards, which are geared for gaming, go into their intended users. The company is putting an Ethereum hash rate limiter on the hardware to make them less desirable to crypto miners that mine Ether (ETH).
While the GPUs are designed with gaming in mind, Nvidia knows that crypto miners have been buying the hardware for their mining activities, which could sometimes create supply shortages. “Because NVIDIA GPUs are programmable, users regularly discover new applications for them, from weather simulation and gene sequencing to deep learning and robotics,” the company said in a post. “Mining cryptocurrency is one of them.”
The explosive growth of the DeFi industry is expected to increase the crypto mining activities for Ether. This is because most of the new DeFi applications are being built on the Ethereum blockchain where ETH is the native cryptocurrency.
Earlier this year, Nvidia placed Ethereum hash rate limiters on the RTX 3060 in a bid to make them less appealing to miners. In its latest announcement, the company decided to place similar limiters on the GeForce RTX 3080, RTX 3070, and RTX 3060 Ti as well.
“To help get GeForce GPUs in the hands of gamers, we announced in February that all GeForce RTX 3060 graphics cards shipped with a reduced Ethereum hash rate,” Nvidia said. “Today, we’re taking additional measures by applying a reduced ETH hash rate to newly manufactured GeForce RTX 3080, RTX 3070, and RTX 3060 Ti graphics cards. These cards will start shipping in late May.”
The GPUs were originally launched with a full hash rate, which means that there might be GeForce RTX 3080, RTX 3070 and RTX 3060 Ti cards in stores that don’t have limiters. To help customers distinguish the newer versions (with limiter), the newer cards will have a “Lite Hash Rate,” or “LHR” identifier appearing on the box and on the product listing.
“This reduced hash rate only applies to newly manufactured cards with the LHR identifier and not to cards already purchased,” the company explained. With the ETH mining restriction on the new cards, Nvidia hopes that the move “will get more GeForce cards at better prices into the hands of gamers everywhere.”
