NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 30 series graphics cards will soon be getting a 'Lite Hash Rate' refresh to tackle cryptocurrency mining. As reported by Videocardz, the LHR series is already in the works, and NVIDIA has updated its board partners for shipments commencing by mid of next month.
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 30 'Lite Hash Rate' Series Graphics Cards To Tackle Cryptocurrency Mining Next Month
The main differences between the existing NVIDIA GeForce RTX 30 Series and the GeForce RTX 30 LHR 'Lite Hash Rate Series is going to be the inclusion of the new hash rate limiter which is stated to be impossible to bypass.
The new graphics cards will also feature brand new GPU SKUs under the GA**2 branding and will come with Resizable BAR support out of the box. Currently, users running existing GeForce RTX 30 series graphics cards have to flash the vBIOS to access the feature. The NVIDIA GA**2 GPUs will be shipping in mid of May so we can expect graphics cards with the new chips to start hitting the retail shelves around June 2021.
Specifications and prices for the NVIDIA Geforce RTX 30 Lite Hash Rate series cards are not going to change. To tell if you have an LHR or a non-LHR GPU, you'd need to disassemble the card yourself and look at the codename of the GPU to see if it's part of the GA**2 series lineup or you could wait for hardware detection and monitoring software to get updated support for the new GPUs.
Following are all the new NVIDIA Ampere GA**2 SKUs that you can expect:
- NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 - GA102-300-A1 -> GA102-302-A1
- NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 - GA102-200-A1 -> GA102-202-A1
- NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 - GA104-300-A1 -> GA104-302-A1
- NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti - GA104-200-A1 -> GA104-202-A1
- NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 - GA106-300-A1 -> GA106-302-A1
Also, flashing an old BIOS on the new cards won't work due to a different device hardware ID. This means that there's an additional parameter aside from the GPU-driver hand-shake that will prevent the BIOS firmware upgrade from working on the newer cards & that may totally limit full-hash rate performance for cryptocurrency mining algorithms.
This approach won't affect the drivers since the device ID remains the same and NVIDIA won't have to prepare a new set of drivers for its new hash rate restricted Ampere GeForce RTX 30 lineup but it looks like that this solution will be somewhat complicated for miners to bypass.
Only a new driver which would lock cryptocurrency mining and enforce the hash rate limit once again will be available for the revised GeForce RTX 30 series cards and that NVIDIA will be keeping a close eye on its driver releases this time around. We will certainly see how well that goes compared to their first try which to be very honest, failed spectacularly.
About the author: A Software Engineer by training and a PC enthusiast by passion, Hassan Mujtaba serves as Wccftech's Senior Editor for hardware section. With years of experience in the industry, he specializes in deep-dive technical analysis of next-generation CPU and GPU architectures, motherboards, and cooling solutions. His work involves not only breaking news on upcoming technologies but also extensive hands-on reviews and benchmarking.
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