Last month, NVIDIA announced that it would integrate a feature to limit the hash rate for Ethereum mining on the newly released RTX 3060 graphics card. This was good news for users, as miners would find it difficult to use the RTX 3060 for mining, and the supply would no longer be short for those who truly needed this graphics card.
However, in an unexpected move just a few days ago, NVIDIA inadvertently unlocked this mining limit feature, allowing the RTX 3060 to potentially operate at 100% efficiency for Ethereum mining.
Today, NVIDIA confirmed that this was a major mistake. “A developer driver accidentally integrated code used during internal development, which can remove the hash rate limit on the RTX 3060,” a spokesperson for Nvidia stated: “This driver has now been removed.”
NVIDIA has removed this driver, but it was too late, as miners now have the key to unleash the power of the RTX 3060 “workhorses.” The latest NVIDIA beta driver version 470.05 can automatically lift performance limits on most RTX 3060 graphics cards for Ethereum mining purposes. Miners can now search for and download copies of this driver online, and NVIDIA has no way to stop this.
Previously, NVIDIA was very confident in the mining limit feature on the RTX 3060. In fact, NVIDIA believed there was no way to unlock this feature. The head of NVIDIA’s communications department, Bryan Del Rizzo, stated: “It is not just a special driver. There is a strong security between the driver, the chip of the RTX 3060, and the BIOS to ensure that this feature cannot be unlocked.”
Now, everything has completely changed. Indeed, a small mistake can lead to a big problem!
Source: theverge