Nvidia partner Galax will be releasing new Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 and RTX 3070 graphics cards kitted with anti-mining limiters, purpose-built to discourage cryptominers from purchasing the cards.
Reported by VideoCardz, Galax’s LHR series (an abbreviation for what the company is calling ‘lower hash rate’) of graphics cards are cracking down on popular cryptocurrency Ethereum, limiting the amount of the digital currency that can be mined and hopefully making the sought after RTX 30 series GPUs more readily available to gaming consumers.
The new Galax GeForce RTX 3080 Black General has a limited hash rate of around 43MH/s, while the RTX 3070 Black General GPU has a further limit of around 25 MH/s. For comparison’s sake, a regular Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 card, without a limiter, can register hash rates of around 80-100MH/s depending on the model and wattage.
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Readily available RTX 3080s?
So far, no release date has been confirmed for Galax’s new LHR series graphics cards. However, rumors state that Nvidia will be shipping a new supply of silicone around the middle of May. This could position Galax’s LHR GPUs for release in June, and other Nvidia partners could follow suit.
Price point is also something we’re currently in the dark about, though we hope Galax’s cards fall somewhere in the range of Nvidia’s own RTX 30 series cards. That’s $699 (£649 / around AU$950) for the RTX 3080 and $499 (£469 / AU$809) for the RTX 3070. Expect that price to be slightly higher at the very least, though, as these are aftermarket GPUs.
This could be a positive step forward for those of you looking to buy Nvidia’s latest and greatest. Previously, details of a purpose-built cryptomining GPU in the form of the Asus CMP 30HX seemed promising, but the card was actually more expensive than an RTX 3080, perhaps defeating the objective of making gaming GPUs more available relatively moot.
It’s also worth noting that these GPUs feature an updated hash limiter after previous efforts by Nvidia were quickly circumvented by miners (thanks in no small part to Nvidia itself accidentally removing the limiter in a driver update).
There are additional plans to roll out the hash limiter across the entirety of the RTX 30 series, except for the RTX 3090, which is expensive to the point of (usually) not being worth the investment for cryptominers in the first place.
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