Nvidia in an attempt to address retail shortages of its latest RTX 3000 series graphics cards last month took the bold and controversial step of artificially limiting the effectiveness of the GeForce RTX 3060 for cryptocurrency mining.
Japanese site PC Watch first revealed that Nvidia’s protections can be bypassed without needing to modify a driver or BIOS. ComputerBase has since confirmed PC Watch’s report and revealed that Nvidia’s latest 470.05 beta driver is automatically unlocking performance for most RTX 3060 owners. Andreas Schilling, an editor at Hardwareluxx, has also backed up these findings.
The beta driver appears to unlock Ethereum mining performance across a variety of RTX 3060 cards, which was likely not what Nvidia had planned for its test drivers. The 470.05 driver is designed for developers to test the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) performance and new features like OpenCL 3.0 support.
Nvidia originally restricted RTX 3060 mining performance in an attempt to steer cryptominers away from purchasing the cards. Nvidia is offering a new Cryptocurrency Mining Processor (CMP) for Ethereum miners instead. The beta driver bypass of Ethereum mining performance will certainly make the cards more attractive to cryptominers now.
Nvidia seemed confident in its software restrictions to nerf RTX 3060 mining performance. “It’s not just a driver thing,” said Bryan Del Rizzo, Nvidia’s head of communications, last month. “There is a secure handshake between the driver, the RTX 3060 silicon, and the BIOS (firmware) that prevents removal of the hash rate limiter.”
