Nvidia’s low-hash-rate GPUs are most effective at addressing device shortages for gamers. CFO Colette Kress said.
According to her, despite miners’ attempts to remove the hash-rate limiter from LHR GPUs, completely unlocking their Ethereum mining performance will not be possible.
“Low-hash-rate cards work only with our Game Ready graphics drivers. In such a scenario, large miners won’t buy gaming GPUs and will focus on acquiring specialized accelerators,” said Kress.
The executive stressed that Nvidia does not know what share of gaming GPUs goes to miners. However, she added that for gamers, government bans on cryptocurrency mining in several countries and Ethereum’s upcoming switch to the Proof-of-Stake algorithm are working in their favour.
Currently, real retail prices for GPUs are well above the MSRP. The company expects the availability of gaming devices to improve significantly by the second half of 2022.
Earlier in February, Nvidia halved the hash rate of the desktop GeForce RTX 3060 to target gamers.
In March, RTX 3060 performance restrictions were bypassed using an Nvidia experimental driver. The company confirmed the bug and removed the software from its site.
In May, the hash-rate lock spread to GeForce RTX 3080, 3070, and 3060 Ti models.
According to the media, in August miners managed to recover up to 70% of the original performance on RTX 30-series cards up to 70% of original performance. In October, the creators of the miner T-Rex bypassed the LHR restriction by simultaneous mining of two different cryptocurrencies.
To meet miners’ demand, Nvidia developed the CMP line of chips (Cryptocurrency Mining Processor). The CMP 30HX, the CMP series’ junior model, was introduced in March. Its hash rate is 26 MH/s.
In October, the CMP 170HX high-end graphics card went on sale. The adapter provides up to 164 MH/s for Ethereum mining.
According to the latest data, from July to September CMP GPU sales volumes fell by 60% compared with the previous quarter — from $266 million to $105 million.
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