Monday, March 15th 2021
NVIDIA RTX 3060 Hashrate Limiter Defeated, GeForce 470.05 Driver Unlocks Full Mining Performance
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 hash-rate limiter has been defeated, by the company itself, through a driver update. The RTX 3060 was announced by NVIDIA to be meant purely for gamers as it came with measures that make them unviable for mining. The card purportedly had a hash-rate limiter that detected workloads from typical crypto-currency mining algorithms, and spooled down GPU clock speeds, halving the mining efficiency of the card. The idea was to sour the milk for miners, so there could be inventory for gamers. PC Watch reports that the latest GeForce 470.05 drivers distributed by NVIDIA to developers through the Windows Insider Program defeats the hash-rate limiter, significantly improving mining performance of the RTX 3060. With this driver out in the open, miners are sure to pick up RTX 3060 cards to go with it; and simply ignore all future driver updates through NVIDIA's official driver channel.
HardwareLuxx.de and ComputerBase have each independently verified that GeForce 470.05 drivers "restore" mining performance on RTX 3060 cards back to levels their hardware is capable of—roughly matching that of the RTX 2070 Super. This development confirms that the hash-rate limiter was purely driver based, and NVIDIA hoped to artificially throttle mining performance of RTX 3060 cards by simply adding this limiter to all compatible versions of GeForce drivers since the card's launch; but those behind the 470.05 special drivers probably forgot to implement it. Probably because it is based on a different branch of the source code, which is developed in parallel. NVIDIA earlier claimed that the hash-rate limited is a much more sophisticated mechanism involving a "secure handshake between the driver and system-firmware that prevents tampering." So much for that.
Sources:
PC Watch, HardwareLuxx.de, ComputerBase.de, VideoCardz
HardwareLuxx.de and ComputerBase have each independently verified that GeForce 470.05 drivers "restore" mining performance on RTX 3060 cards back to levels their hardware is capable of—roughly matching that of the RTX 2070 Super. This development confirms that the hash-rate limiter was purely driver based, and NVIDIA hoped to artificially throttle mining performance of RTX 3060 cards by simply adding this limiter to all compatible versions of GeForce drivers since the card's launch; but those behind the 470.05 special drivers probably forgot to implement it. Probably because it is based on a different branch of the source code, which is developed in parallel. NVIDIA earlier claimed that the hash-rate limited is a much more sophisticated mechanism involving a "secure handshake between the driver and system-firmware that prevents tampering." So much for that.
111 Comments on NVIDIA RTX 3060 Hashrate Limiter Defeated, GeForce 470.05 Driver Unlocks Full Mining Performance
Screw them.
Knew it was all show and no teeth.
Mining lawyers are sad lol
This really was a shitty move no matter how you look at it. A lot of people who buy a GPU for gaming actually do single-GPU mining in free time just to offset the cost. I personally do just that, my 3080 is mining whenever I don't use the computer. Underclocked and limited to around 200W it chugs along at around 85MH/s which is more than enough to pay for my monthly electrical bill and a gigabit connection with some spare change left.Wait, did you really think corporations care about you or any consumer? It never worked like this. Honestly, if I was weaving and selling baskets, I really wouldn't care if you used my product to blow up a kindergarten, as long as you paid in full. Corporations care even less. It's all about marketing and believe me, sincerity never had any place in the market.
I've always stated companies owe no loyalty to consumers. Though, in reality, it's very good business to listen to those who buy the product.
GPUs have stopped being graphics accelerators over a decade ago, they are massively parallel computing devices and must continue to perform this way.
And neither NVIDIA, nor AMD can control where their GPUs go. Period. Whoever believes this is possible should go and make this possible.
Edit: The only glitch with that, is AMD and Nvidia still sell their chips at the previously negotiated prices. It's the AIB partners that pocket the difference.
That was quick.
lol the driver is rehosted around the net...