Cryptominers Have Already Cracked Nvidia's RTX 3060 Hash Rate Limiter

When the GeForce RTX 3060 was launched on February 25, Nvidia announced that the mining efficiency of the graphics card was deliberately being reduced by around 50% in a bid to get more of the GPUs directly to gamers. However, this limitation appears to have been quickly bypassed by Chinese cryptocurrency miners using customized mods. There was already concern brewing about how well the limiter would stand against savvy miners, but Nvidia has been vocally confident in the hash rate limit. A statement was given to PC Gamer regarding how difficult it would be to get around the protections placed on the GPUs, claiming "End users cannot remove the hash limiter from the driver. There is a secure handshake between the driver, the RTX 3060 silicon, and the BIOS (firmware) that prevents removal of the hash rate limiter."