Nvidia appears to have lifted hashrate restriction on RTX 30 series

Nvidia has apparently removed the hashrate limitation on its RTX 30-series GPUs. Users report higher hashrates after installing the new 522.25 drivers, even when using software that cannot bypass the LHR limitation.

Nvidia does not mention the change in the release notes of driver version 522.25. It’s a user on the EtherMining subreddit who comes to that conclusion, with other commenters mimicking his findings with their RTX 30-series cards. That Reddit poster gets 112MH/s on an RTX 3080 Ti, which was previously only possible with mining software that circumvents Nvidia’s LHR protection, such as NiceHash.

It is not clear why the hashrate restriction has been lifted. Commenters and news sites speculate that Nvidia wants to run out of RTX 30-series stocks to prevent it from getting in the way of the new RTX 40-series. On the other hand, this limitation has already been circumvented in practice. Furthermore, the change is no longer interesting for miners who are on Ethereum, since it has recently gone to proof of stake. Nevertheless, there are plenty of other proof of work cryptocurrencies, such as Dogecoin, Litecoin and Ethereum Classic.

Another advantage, according to the Reddit user, is that it is no longer necessary to run mining software with root or administrator rights, which is necessary in a hack that circumvents LHR according to the user.

Image: Timbers007 on Reddit