Alleged LHR unlocker for Nvidia GPUs contains malware – update

A developer says Saturday to release a tool that would remove the Lite Hash Rate limitation of Nvidia RTX cards with an Ampere GPU. This works by adjusting the bios and the driver of the video card.

Update, Thursday, 08:54: The alleged LHR unlocker turns out to be malware, Red Panda Mining discovered. The GitHub page is gone. The title of the article has therefore been changed. Following is the original article.

Developer Sergey writes on GitHub that Nvidia RTX LHR v2 Unlocker is a “fully automatic” tool to modify the bios and driver of RTX cards, to remove the LHR limitation. He says he will release a public beta test of the tool on Saturday, February 26.

The maker says it has tested its tool with the RTX 3060, RTX 3060 Ti, RTX 3070 Ti, RTX 3080 and RTX 3080 Ti. He also tested the tool with the RTX A2000 and RTX A4000. Judging by the results shown, the LHR restriction has indeed been removed, but as the tool has not yet been released, it has not yet been confirmed by third parties.

According to the developer, it is possible to restore the video cards to their original state afterwards, with the original driver and the original bios. The maker points out that he is not responsible for what people do with the tool and what the consequences are.

Last year, NBMiner already released software that could boost the performance of RTX 30 video cards with an LHR GPU when mining ethereum. This means that up to 68 percent of the performance can be achieved compared to a non-LHR GPU. Sergey claims to be able to remove the LHR restriction completely.

Nvidia introduced the LHR restriction on new RTX GPUs early last year. The limitation means that the video cards are less efficient at mining ethereum, while the gaming performance remains the same. The manufacturer wanted to improve the availability of video cards for gamers.