author: Bartlomiej Sagan
Nvidia Accidentaly Removed Anti-mining Limiter in RTX 3060
The performance limiter on cryptomining implemented in GeForce RTX 3060 was supposed to remedy the dire situation with the card's availability on the market. However, the safeguards have accidentally been removed in driver code.
The situation in the graphics card market currently resembles a soap opera. There are no surprises, everyone knows what will come up in the next episode titled "New GPU Enters the Market". Nvidia, in an attempt to combat the massive buying up of chips from the Ampere family for cryptomining developed a limiter that was supposed to limit the card's performance in mining Ethereum (ETH) on the GeForce RTX 3060. Was supposed to, because as it turns out, this security measure was accidentally removed by Nvidia itself.
As originally reported by Japanese website PC Watch, the measures can be circumvented without modifying the driver or BIOS. While the exact method was not presented, it was stated that the limiter could be removed by anyone with little effort. However, video clips have appeared on social media showing alleged RTX 3060s mining Ethereum at speeds above 40 MH/s. What's more, HardwareLuxx and ComputerBase confirmed the Japanese revelations that the latest GeForce 470.05 drivers (for now only available to a select few) disable the performance limiter.
The company released a statement confirming the situation, and informing that the code deactivating the limiter found itself in the card's latest driver by accident. Version 470.05 has been temporarily removed. And that's a good thing, because unlocking the full mining power of Nvidia's GPU could mean only one thing - even higher prices and even more limited availability. Phew, that was a close one. Stay tuned for the next episode.
Nvidia unwittinglu shotitself in the foot with new drivers.