Nvidia (Nasdaq: NVDA) has reinstated the GeForce driver for RTX 3060 graphics card with a hash limiter for ethereum mining.
The new feature will be available for RTX 3060 cards that will go on sale from mid-May, and they will be fully locked down against running ethereum at full speed, Videocardz.com reports.
The update comes after Nvidia first released the GeForce driver RTX 3060 in February 2021. The company enabled the throttling mechanism as a means of limiting the ethereum mining performance of the cards.
Nvidia’s focus on gamers
The mining efficiency was reduced because Nvidia wants to make the cards less suitable for miners but focus more on gamers. The company is aiming to prevent the cards from running out of stock once released.
Nvidia had initially stated that users could not tamper with the hash limiter from the driver. The company cited a secure mechanism between the driver, the RTX 3060 silicon, and the BIOS that bars the removal of the hash rate limiter.
The approach lasted for less than a month, with Nividia released the card without the complete anti-ethereum mining code in place. The accidental release made it possible to mine ethereum at full speed.
With the tweak, the updated RTX 3060 models will require a new PCI Device ID of 2504 that prevents their utilization with older drivers. This, therefore, forces miners to purchase the NVIDIA CMP HX series instead.
The updated RTX 3060 cards will bear the same label as the existing cards because the functionality and specification have not changed.
