The NiceHash mining software has released an update that unlocks 100% Ethereum hashrate on Nvidia’s LHR RTX graphics cards.
Ethereum Miners Can Now Completely Circumvent Nvidia’s LHR
The “Lite Hash Rate” (LHR) is an updated version of the RTX graphics cards series that comes preinstalled with a limiter on the mining power.
There was an industry wide silicon chip shortage last year that, combined with the unprecedented demand, made GPUs a very hard buy.
Nvidia released this line of cards to discourage Ethereum miners from buying up the cards as gamers, the company’s main customers for the GPUs, weren’t able to buy any.
With the limiter, the hashrate of the RTX 30 series was reduced by 50%. The “hashrate” here refers to a measure of the total ETH mining power of the card.
Higher is the value of this metric, faster can the card crunch out the numbers, and so naturally higher is the profit for the miner.
Related Reading | Proof-Of-Profit: Ethereum Mining Brings Better ROI Than Bitcoin
Only a few months after Nvidia dropped these cards, workarounds in the ETH mining community already started to appear.
The solutions ranged from outright unlocking more of the hashrate, to using the available power for mining ETH and using the locked portion for mining any other coin simultaneously.
None of these workarounds, however, let miners use 100% of the hashrate on their RTX GPUs for mining Ethereum.
Now, “NiceHash” has announced in a blogpost that the mining software has become the first to fully unlock the LHR cards.
“Now you can earn more profits than any other mining software on the market if you are using LHR graphics cards with NiceHash QuickMiner,” said the developer.
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Ultimately, Nvidia’s LHR could do little to stop miners from using their cards for mining Ethereum and other cryptos.
Even before any workarounds were available to the public, ETH mining was still quite profitable as the bull run last year meant that the mining rewards were worth a lot in USD.
ETH Price
At the time of writing, Ethereum’s price floats around $2.4k, down 13% in the last seven days. Over the past month, the crypto has lost 23% in value.
The below chart shows the trend in the price of the coin over the last five days.
The price of the crypto seems to have plunged down over the last few days | Source: ETHUSD on TradingView
Ethereum as well as the wider cryptocurrency market, including Bitcoin, have crashed down over the past few days.
At the moment, it’s unclear whether a bottom has been hit or if the price will continue to slide further in the near future.
Featured image from Pixabay.com, chart from TradingView.com
Info about an upcoming LHR unlocker for the Nvidia RTX 30 series claims that the software unlocks 100% of the Ethereum mining hashrate.
Nvidia’s LHR Completely Unlocked, Claims Yet Unreleased Software
A new hashrate unlocker for mining Ethereum and other coins on Nvidia’s RTX 30 series has surfaced up, and it makes some interesting claims.
As per its GitHub page, the “Nvidia RTX LHR v2 Unlocker” by Sergey can fully unlock the mining performance of the Ampere cards.
The “Lite Hash Rate,” or LHR in short, versions of the Nvidia graphics cards come packed with a limiter that prevents miners from being able to use the full computing power of the GPU for mining Ethereum or any other crypto.
With the default LHR series cards, it’s only possible to extract 50% of the performance for mining. Last year, some miners were able to come up with some solutions that help circumvent this limit.
However, even with the latest version of NBMiner, the software that unlocks the additional hashrate, only 70% of the power can be used for Ethereum mining.
Now this new unlocker supposedly removes the complete limit, and lets miners make use of all the available power.
Unlocked performance of the various Nvidia RTX GPUs | Source: GitHub
“The first fully automated BIOS modifier for RTX cards with LHR v2 lock. Using it is simple, intuitive and requires no advanced knowledge,” reads the GitHub page.
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The software claims that before modifying and flashing the BIOS file, it also creates a backup. This means the process would be reversible in theory if things go wrong.
To actually unlock the entire hashrate, modified drivers for the Nvidia RTX cards also need to be installed, which the software also automatically handles if the user is on Windows.
It should be noted that while the developer claims this process is safe, you should still proceed at your own caution as modified BIOS and driver files may mean that your card could become incompatible with tasks other than mining, like gaming.
Related Reading | Ethereum Dominance Will Go Down As Competitors Emerge, Says Morgan Stanley
The intent behind Nvidia releasing these LHR cards was to discourage miners from buying their GPUs amidst a shortage that persists to this day.
However, it seems that didn’t quite pan out as Nvidia may have wanted since even with 50% hashrate, miners still found Ethereum mining quite profitable. And now, if what this software claims is true, all limitation efforts by the GPU company have been completely worked around.
Ethereum Price
At the time of writing, ETH’s price floats around $2.6k, down 16% in the last seven days.
Ethereum's price seems to have plunged down over the last few days | Source: ETHUSD on TradingView
Featured image from Pixabay.com, chart from TradingView.com
A report reveals that Nvidia’s efforts to stave off Ethereum miners from using their GPUs for mining was apparently a failure.
Nvidia’s LHR Couldn’t Stop Miners From Mining Ethereum
As per a report from PCMag, it seems Nvidia’s LHR-version graphics cards weren’t sufficient to hold off miners from mining ETH on them.
The “Lite Hash Rate” line of GPUs was an effort by the world’s leading graphics card company to prevent miners from mining on their cards.
Following the onset of COVID back in 2020, a GPU shortage began, resulting from an astronomically high demand and industry-wide silicon chip supply issues.
Related Reading | Nvidia: Ethereum’s PoS Upgrade Will Set Back Graphics Card Demand
The Nvidia RTX 30 series launched that year with supply that wasn’t near enough to satisfy the demand, and thus immediately sold out. Scalpers soon started buying these cards to put them up for 2x or even 3x the MSRP.
At the same time, a crypto bull run also started, leading to much bigger profits for Ethereum miners. These miners bought Nvidia’s GPUs in bulk and added to the shortage.
Gamers, Nvidia’s target audience for these cards, couldn’t get their hands on any cards due to this shortage. Listening to their pleas, the company then decided to take measures that would discourage miners from using their GPUs.
This was when the RTX 30 LHR series launched, almost a year ago. These versions of the GPUs came with a limiter that cut the hash rate or the mining power of the card in half.
However, these measures weren’t enough. Miners still found it profitable to mine Ethereum on these GPUs, and in the last few months they have even figured out ways to unlock more of the hash rate from 50% to 70%.
It seems Nvidia’s efforts with LHR to hold off miners from buying their cards was in the end a failure, as suggested by the report. The graphics card shortage still hasn’t eased up and scalpers have continued to sell GPUs at ridiculously marked up prices.
Related Reading | Ethereum Miners Can Now Use 70% Of Nvidia RTX 30 GPU Hashrate, Thanks To This NBMiner Update
Some good news seems to be that industry experts think the chip shortage will soon start to subside and GPU prices may have come down by year end.
The recent Ethereum (and the wider crypto market) crash may also help ease the demand from miners somewhat as mining profits might also shrink.
ETH Price
At the time of writing, Ethereum’s price floats around $2.5k, up 11% in the last seven days. Over the past month, the crypto has lost 31% in value.
The below chart shows the trend in the price of ETH over the last five days.
Ethereum has mostly moved sideways in the past few days | Source: ETHUSD on TradingView
Featured image from Unsplash.com, chart from TradingView.com