NiceHash Unlocks 100% Of NVIDIA’s GeForce RTX 30 LHR Mining Limiter For These GPUs
Almost a year ago NVIDIA announced their LHR GPUs with their intent to be a nerf to crypto mining, in an effort to free up GeForce inventory for gamers. The original idea was that if a crypto miner was being used the card would operate at 50% efficiency. We even had a 2.5 Geeks Episode Section on the announcement. The goal of this move seemed to be an attempt to stabilize crypto demand, allowing more gamers to actually get their hands on the GPUs during the worst chip shortage the industry has ever seen. Still, if you want to know how to mine on your GeForce 30-series GPU, NiceHash has a nice tutorial video for you below.
How to Start Mining With QuickMiner, YouTube
It didn't help much for long, NVIDIA actually accidentally released a driver themselves that lifted that 50% limit up to 70%, which miners took immediate advantage of. Later, a particularly motivated seller in China sold desktop 3060 GPUs that were actually modified laptop 3060s, because the laptop versions of the card did not actually have LHR. There were even malware scams directly claiming people could unlock their hashrates, which of course was just a ploy to get folks to install nefarious software payloads.
NiceHash has not revealed exactly how they have managed to unlock these GPU efficiency limits for miners, and we believe this secrecy is probably intentional, so that NVIDIA can't patch whatever it is using to make the magic happen. The FAQ for the blog even says that it is a "Kind of Magic" then links to Queen song of that title. Currently, the NiceHash Miner, QuickMiner, will only work with 100% efficiency for the coin DaggerHashimoto (Ethash), but only specific LHR cards do work. Additionally the LHRv3 RTX 3050 and GeForce RTX 3080 12GB are unsupported, but all other LHR cards are claimed to be supported with the following table of hashrates from the announcement.
| Model | Expected Performance, 100% LHR Unlock |
|---|---|
| RTX 3060 LHR | ~ 50 MH/s |
| RTX 3060 Ti LHR | ~ 60 MH/s |
| RTX 3070 LHR | ~ 60 MH/s |
| RTX 3070 Ti LHR | ~ 81 MH/s |
| RTX 3080 10GB LHR | ~ 98 MH/s |
| RTX 3080 Ti LHR | ~ 120 MH/s |
The NiceHash QuickMiner with this support only runs on Windows, so there is currently no Linux support. Will this have any affect on the overall stock of GPUs available to general consumers? It's hard to say right now because, as of this publication, almost all Cryptocurrency is way off its previous price peak in the market. As a result, current profitability, even at 100% efficiency, may be a lackluster prospect to some miners.
Regardless, if you want to check this out for yourself, you can download the QuickMiner app here. And be sure to let us know your results in the comments below...
