NVIDIA announces GeForce RTX 30 Lite Hash Rate (LHR) series with cryptomining limiter

NVIDIA RTX 30 Lite Hash Rate series

NVIDIA officially announced its GeForce RTX 30 series lineup is receiving new GPU variants.

LHR stands for Lite Hash Rate, which basically means that new GPUs will feature cryptocurrency hash rate limiter. This is not the first time NVIDIA is introducing such a ‘feature’, because only in February the first attempt was made with RTX 3060 12GB model. Unfortunately, due to an NVIDIA error, a driver with the limiter removed has been released, which essentially meant that the limiter made no sense at that point, at least not in that form.

Today NVIDIA has confirmed it will be reintroducing the limiter, but this time for almost the entire Ampere lineup. The new 446.47 driver already has the PCI device IDs of new chips. There is only one SKU missing that that’s RTX 3090 LHR. This would confirm our leak that RTX 3090 is not getting an LHR refresh, at least not right now.

NVIDIA has not provided a mining hash rate for new LHR chips, but the company confirmed that mining performance will be halved compared to existing models. The public statement also does not mention RTX 3060 non-Ti as an LHR model, instead, it is mentioned that the SKU already launched with crippled mining performance months ago.

NVIDIA confirmed that LHR models will be clearly marked in the product listing and on the retail packaging. Customers should now definitely pay more attention to the product they are purchasing.

NVIDIA Blog Post

A Further Step to Getting GeForce Cards into the Hands of Gamers

We’re reducing the hash rate of newly manufactured GeForce RTX 3080, 3070 and 3060 Ti graphics cards so they’re less desirable to miners.

GeForce products are made for gamers — and packed with innovations. Our RTX 30 Series is built on our second-generation RTX architecture, with dedicated RT Cores and Tensor Cores, delivering amazing visuals and performance to gamers and creators.

Because NVIDIA GPUs are programmable, users regularly discover new applications for them, from weather simulation and gene sequencing to deep learning and robotics. Mining cryptocurrency is one of them.

Halving Hash Rate

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.

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.

Clear Communication to Gamers

Because these GPUs originally launched with a full hash rate, we want to ensure that customers know exactly what they’re getting when they buy GeForce products. To help with this, our GeForce partners are labeling the GeForce RTX 3080, RTX 3070 and RTX 3060 Ti cards with a “Lite Hash Rate,” or “LHR,” identifier. The identifier will be in retail product listings and on the box.

This reduced hash rate only applies to newly manufactured cards with the LHR identifier and not to cards already purchased.

GeForce Is Made for Gaming

GeForce RTX GPUs have introduced a range of cutting-edge technologies — RTX real-time ray tracing, AI-powered DLSS frame rate booster, NVIDIA Reflex super-fast response rendering for best system latency, and many more — created to meet the needs of gamers and those who create digital experiences.

We believe this additional step will get more GeForce cards at better prices into the hands of gamers everywhere.

Source: NVIDIA