Nvidia's Crypto Mining Preventions Breached As GPU Prices Normalize

Nicehash, maker of the of the world's most-used Ethereum miners, has officially circumvented the measure Nvidia put in place on a range of its GPUs to slow down mining operations.

Nvidia's LHR (Lite Hash Rate) identified algorithms used for cryptocurrency mining and prevented the associate GPU from reach its full mining potential. Nvidia hoped that this would dissuade potential miners from buying the GPUs in bulk and help return market prices to some normality. Even with LHR in place, that didn't happen fast, but with mining profits down and semiconductor supply increasing, GPU prices have been steadily falling back to normal levels lately.

But Nicehash's new workaround threatens to stifle that. Confirmed by Tom's Hardware, the new version of Quickminer (which only works on Windows currently) is available for download and restores the normal hashrate on almost all Nvidia cards that shipped with LHR. More recent Nvidia GPU releases, such as the RTX 3050, feature a third revision of LHR, with Nicehash saying that these won't have their hashrates boosted above normal levels like is possible on other cards.

One aspect that might make this less of an issue today is the fact that cryptocurrency markets are in bad shape currently, along with many other markets. As inflation soars, more money has left the volatile markets of cryptocurrencies and entered more established, sounder bets. This has made mining even less profitable, meaning the prospect of buying GPUs for that sole purpose makes less sense now than it did a year ago.