NBMiner update unlocks the mining performance of Nvidia RTX 30 LHR cards
Earlier this year, Nvidia released the Lite Hash Rate (LHR) series for its RTX 30 cards. With this revision, miners could only use 50% of the mining performance on these GPUs.
Even more power
Now, NBMiner, a popular mining software, has released an update that unlocks some of Ethereum's hidden mining power.
According to the change log on the GitHub page, the tool can restore up to a maximum of 70% ETH mining hashrate.
The developer recommends Ethereum miners to set 68% as the optimum mining performance for these Nvidia 30 RTX LHR cards. According to the change log, tests show that this value is the most stable on large rig setups.
Although the tool is not able to restore all the blocked hashrate, the update still improves the mining performance by up to 35%.
The reason behind Nvidia's performance on the RTX 30 cards was the extreme shortage. Due to the global silicon shortage, GPUs have barely been available this year.
Because these boards provide excellent Etheruem mining production, many miners have increased demand, making the shortage worse.
Eventually, Nvidia decided to crack down on miners by introducing the aforementioned Ampere LHR series. The company has released other products for mining purposes that it wants miners to collect.
There were rumors that some closed mining groups have already found workarounds for these hashrate blocks. However, until now nothing concrete has been available to the general public.
With the new NBMiner update, the Nvidia RTX 30 series is once again a viable option for mining Ethereum. This could lead to another major GPU shortage as miners cut back on the already limited supply.
Ethereum Proof Of Stake
As ETH plans to move to Proof of Stake (PoS) perhaps in the next 6 months, gamers are hoping the Nvidia RTX 30 GPU shortage will alleviate somehow.
While proof-of-work requires high computing power, PoS does not as it is a clean and energy efficient model. So that when the switch takes place, Ethereum miners will dump their cards on the second-hand market in hordes, helping with supply problems.
Earlier this year, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang also commented on the GPU and ETH PoS shortage during an interview. At the time of this writing, the quotation of Ethereum is on the rise.
