Nvidia made a big deal last month with reducing the hash rate of Ethereum mining on its new RTX 3060 graphics card. A special system was supposed to make the RTX 3060 undesirable for cryptocurrencies, but Nvidia has now confirmed that it accidentally unlocked the restrictions with a new driver.
“A developer manager has inadvertently included code used for internal development that removes the hash speed limit on RTX 3060 in some configurations,” an Nvidia spokesman said in a statement. The edge. “The driver has been removed.”
While Nvidia has now removed the driver, the genius is out of the bottle. Nvidia’s latest 470.05 beta driver automatically unlocks performance for most RTX 3060 cards, increasing rates for Ethereum mining. Driver mirrors can be easily found online, and Nvidia will not be able to prevent the RTX 3060 owners from continuing to use the driver in the future.
Nvidia originally limited RTX 3060 mining performance in an effort to keep cryptocurrencies away from purchasing the cards. The GPU manufacturer was confident that its limitations could not be overcome, and even claimed that it was not just a driver that was degrading performance. “It’s not just a driver,” said Bryan Del Rizzo, Nvidia’s head of communications, last month. “There is a secure handshake between the driver, the RTX 3060 silicone and the BIOS (firmware) that prevents the removal of the hash speed limit.”
Nvidia clearly did not expect to release a driver that would inadvertently unlock its own limitations.