Chip giant Nvidia is extending its measures to limit the usefulness of its graphics cards for cryptomining, making the announcement it will halve the hash rate on a number of its RTX 30-series GPUs.
“GeForce products are made for gamers,” the company said in a blog post.
“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.”
In order to differentiate the original RTX 30-series cards from the ones to be manufactured, the new cards will carry the LHR label, which stands for “Lite Hash Rate”.
Nvidia said the latest move was designed to get its products out to consumers and help overcome a GPU shortage caused by cards being scooped up by cryptobros.
Over two years ago, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said he would prefer GPUs to be used for gaming, AI, and high performance computing rather than cryptomining.
Earlier in the year, Nvidia launched its own crytocurrency-focused chip while also attempting to limit the hash rate of RTX 3060 cards through a driver update.
The company then accidentally released a set of drivers undoing the limit, before eventually reinstating the limit.
It was reported last month that newer cards would be prevented from using the accidentally released driver.
