NVIDIA Removes Hashrate Limiter for RTX 30-series LHR GPUs in the Latest Driver

[btarunr]

In a last-ditch effort to clear inventory of its GeForce RTX 30-series "Ampere" graphics cards, NVIDIA has reportedly removed the hashrate limiter in the latest GeForce 522.25 drivers, without mentioning it anywhere in the driver's release notes. A Redditor and GeForce RTX 3080 Ti owner by the username "Timbers007" rested that their card, which launched exclusively as LHR-enabled graphics cards (with no RTX 3080 Ti cards without LHR in circulation); is now achieving double its usual hashrates when benchmarked with ethminer. It's able to put out 112 MH/s, a hashrate only possible with mining software that circumvents the LHR limiter, such as NiceHash or NBMiner.

In the thick of the graphics card shortage in 2020-21, as crypto currency miners were buying up inventory of gaming graphics cards through sophisticated retail bots; NVIDIA attempted to sour the milk for miners by introducing LHR (lite hashrate), a supposedly hardware-level limitation that cripples the mining performance of the GPU. This failed to improve things as NVIDIA accidentally released drivers without the hashrate limiter early on and redacted them, but not before they spread among miners. It was only a titanic crash in crypto-currency values, and the recent Ethereum merge that killed GPU-accelerated mining, which arrested demand, bringing RTX 30-series GPUs to prices more acceptable to gamers, as miners began flooding the market with their used GPUs at much lower prices. Will this improve sales of the RTX 30-series? Unlikely. Miners with RTX 30-series LHR graphics cards who already had the hacks to circumvent the limiter, are dumping their cards.



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[Hyderz]

rtx 30 series cards not selling

 

[Blue4130]

If they were really interested in clearing inventory, they further reduce prices.

 

[Crackong]

a supposedly hardware-level limitation

Well well

 

[Fluffmeister]

Non issue at this point frankly.

 

[Chaitanya]

If they were really interested in clearing inventory, they further reduce prices.

If they do that then they wont be able to afford leather jackets.

 

[N/A]

I guess it's good for in-game performance not having this extra layer of programming constantly monitoring for algorithms. This latest 25% improvement in DX12 could be the result.

 

[Tsukiyomi91]

btw, new driver has some bug on CP2077 when viewing the map.

 

[ixi]

How about someone go and put few billion fine on this company?

Lied to customers, crippled performance. Undercutting AIB. Just fair bussiness - nvidia.

 

[Chaitanya]

How about someone go and put few billion fine on this company?

Lied to customers, crippled performance. Undercutting AIB. Just fair bussiness - nvidia.

FTC has castrated itself, just look at things Apple, Google, Amazon, etc... have gotten away with.

 

[evernessince]

FTC has castrated itself, just look at things Apple, Google, Amazon, etc... have gotten away with.

All US agencies have essentially be defanged. There are multiple outbreaks of salmonella each year and every time the FDA is months late and often fails to properly inform customers. 1 in 6 Americans suffer from foodborn illness each year. They are so afraid of making new rules that they often act far too late and are far too lenient.

The former head of the FTC was a lobbyist, goes without saying it didn't do squat.

It's gotten to the point where it's not only anti-consumer but it's a detriment to the economy at broad. Unfortunately the Supreme Court ruled that federal agencies are not allowed to regulate anything not expressly delegated to them, making it essentially impossible for agencies to act on anything new that pops up.

You have companies in the US routinely cause the death of thousands of Americans for profits and get out of liability with a simple texas two step bankruptcy declaration. If Nvidia does get fined it will be at best a slap on the wrist, at least in the US. EU might actually do something.

 

[lexluthermiester]

Non issue at this point frankly.

Exactly. GPU mining is dead, no need for hash-rate-limiters.

 

[Pumper]

Can they get more desperate?

 

[GoldenX]

All US agencies have essentially be defanged. There are multiple outbreaks of salmonella each year and every time the FDA is months late and often fails to properly inform customers. 1 in 6 Americans suffer from foodborn illness each year. They are so afraid of making new rules that they often act far too late and are far too lenient.

The former head of the FTC was a lobbyist, goes without saying it didn't do squat.

It's gotten to the point where it's not only anti-consumer but it's a detriment to the economy at broad. Unfortunately the Supreme Court ruled that federal agencies are not allowed to regulate anything not expressly delegated to them, making it essentially impossible for agencies to act on anything new that pops up.

You have companies in the US routinely cause the death of thousands of Americans for profits and get out of liability with a simple texas two step bankruptcy declaration. If Nvidia does get fined it will be at best a slap on the wrist, at least in the US. EU might actually do something.

Night City here we goooo!

 

[cyberloner]

stop buy and let the price drop~!

 

[mb194dc]

stop buy and let the price drop~!

Can't do that or the 40xx series pricing will look even more insanely expensive.

Pricing for new cards needs to come down to similar to when 980 and 1080 launched. $550-650.

Long painful road ahead for the industry.

 

[ymdhis]

You have companies in the US routinely cause the death of thousands of Americans for profits and get out of liability with a simple texas two step bankruptcy declaration. If Nvidia does get fined it will be at best a slap on the wrist, at least in the US. EU might actually do something.

EU would give them a record fine of several billions of euros, which they would then proceed to debate on for a decade until it is reduced to a few million.

 

[ZoneDymo]

Big N amIright?

 

[Vayra86]

Let this be an eye opener to all those idiots saying Nvidia was 'doing a great job trying' with their LHR cards. Don't be so naive next time

You cannot make GPUs not do a job proper unless you want your fully priced product to be handicapped out of the box.

 

[Deleted member 185088]

Stupid decision to begin with, why cripple the product while not reducing the price to reflect this.

 

[BoboOOZ]

Some good old Ngreedia stuff right there

 

[Bwaze]

So miners welcome, and we'll have another round of pretending we care about gamers when the cryptocoins start their march "to the moon" again?

 

[Dyatlov A]

Nvidia's best friends miners.

 

[igralec84]

Nice, you can now mine at a loss while having up to date drivers to play the newest games!

 

[Calenhad]

GPU mining on previous gen. hardware, when GPU mining is all but dead. I honestly don't care.
We already knew it was a driver + firmware level implementation. Since they screwed up once and released a driver without the limiter active ages ago.

I guess it's good for in-game performance not having this extra layer of programming constantly monitoring for algorithms. This latest 25% improvement in DX12 could be the result.

You seriously overestimate the impact of having the driver monitor for a certain type of compute task. There wouldn't be an extra layer of programming since this would be done by the same driver as everything else. There are most likely at least thousands of other checks for workarounds in the same driver. If there was any performance hit at all, we're talking within margin of error imho.