Nvidia Is Throttling New RTX 3070/3080 Cards For Ethereum Cryptocurrency Mining

Nvidia has announced that new RTX 3080, RTX 3070, and RTX 3060 Ti cards will feature limits designed to curtail the cards' cryptocurrency mining potential. This move was previously reported by a variety of hardware-focused outlets, but this recent announcement is the first official word from the company that it will continue to include measures to nerf cryptocurrency mining on its high-end cards.

In a blog post, the company confirmed that these cards will be labeled with an "LHR" identifier on the box to indicate that they have a "lite hash rate." Cards that were previously sold by Nvidia will not have their hash rate limited in the same way, which is likely to drive up the cost of such cards on the secondary market.

Nvidia previously included a limiter on its RTX 3060 card, which launched back in February. The company then accidentally released a driver that bypassed the measures and boosted the card's hash rates. These LHR measures are part of a broader effort by Nvidia to de-incentivize crypto miners from snatching up their cards strictly for that purpose, which is a large driver of the ongoing GPU shortage affecting PC gamers, along with a pinched global supply of semiconductors. It remains to be seen if this effort will be effective. Nvidia announced back in February that it will release more stock of its older cards to help alleviate the shortage.