NVIDIA cripples cryptocurrency mining on RTX 3080 and 3070 cards

NVIDIA announced today that it's halving the hash rate for Etehereum cryptocurrency mining on the new GeForce RTX 3080, 3070, and 3060 Ti graphics cards to make them less desirable for miners.

The company will add "Lite Hash Rate" or "LHR" identifiers to retail product listings and boxes for all these new nerfed graphics cards that will start shipping later this month.

"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," said Matt Wuebbling, NVIDIA's Global Head of GeForce Marketing.

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

According to Wuebbling, this decision was taken to make sure that more of these cards will be used by gamers worldwide instead of stacked in cryptocurrency mining farms.

RTX 3060 cards' hash rate also halved in February

This announcement comes after NVIDIA also nerfed the Ethereum hash rate on all GeForce RTX 3060 cards shipped starting February.

"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," Wuebbling added.

NVIDIA is also hoping to push professional mining operations towards its new range of CMP dedicated mining GPUs by deliberately reducing the new GeForce RTX's mining performance by 50%.

The specs for the company's dedicated GPU for professional mining are available in the table embedded below.

"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," Wuebbling concluded.

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