Analysts acknowledge Nvidia’s failure in trying to limit the performance of its video cards in mining
Video card manufacturer Nvidia has been “between two fires” for quite some time now. There is a huge demand for its products from miners, which in recent years has led to a sharp increase in the cost of video cards – and much higher than the recommended price tag. At the same time, this situation is very unfortunate for gamers who need performance devices for video games, but sometimes they can not even find the right card in stock. To please the latter category, Nvidia has previously tried to artificially lower GPU performance in cryptocurrency mining. However, all its attempts failed to yield the expected results. We tell you more about the situation.
Note that the topic of blockchain potential of Nvidia graphics cards has become very popular among cryptocurrency miners. After all, certain models of devices used to make a lot more money, but now their earnings have gone down.
What is happening has also become a challenge for software developers for miners. In particular, we have already tested Nvidia graphics cards with various cryptocurrency mining software, whose creators have achieved some success in unlocking the potential of such devices. For example, in September 2021 we tested mining with updated Gminer, a month later we tested T-Rex, and at the end of the year we got acquainted with the latest update of lolMiner. The course of this experiment is described at the link.
What is going on with Nvidia graphics cards?
According to Decrypt sources, last May Nvidia announced hash rate limitation for its line of RTX 3000 graphics cards. In this way, the company was trying to make GPUs “less suitable” for miners and improve availability in the market. Specifically for this purpose, Nvidia developers released a software update called Lite Hash Rate (LHR), which was supposed to reduce the processing power of video cards in Etherium mining by about 50 percent.
Nvidia RTX 3090 Ti is the most powerful video card
However, experts note that by the end of that time, the LHR integration had “little to no impact on miners”. Another anonymous solo miner noted that “the LHR update was useless”. This miner’s crypto farms consist of a set of different video cards – with and without LHR. Even with this update, he earns around $4,500 in Etherium per month. The scale of his hardware, however, is unknown.
Nvidia
So why did Nvidia’s efforts fail? Firstly, the effect of the software update can be reduced, meaning that video cards with LHRs are “unlocked” for mining and their efficiency is about 74 per cent of devices without LHRs. Secondly, miners can mine more than just Etherium. Some of them focus on smaller crypto projects that can provide tangible returns in a bull market. Consequently, this has not solved the problem of high demand for the devices. And the lack of product has predictably kept its prices up.
It should be noted that experienced miners are still opting for Etherium, and there are several reasons for that. Firstly, ETH remains one of the most profitable cryptocurrencies to mine among popular crypto projects with large market capitalization. Secondly, the new payout mechanism on 2Miners pool allows you to save on commissions when paying out fees.
We checked actual data: now 2Miners pool is used by 122.78 thousand people. Among them the most part of it is mining Etherium in the form of 85 thousand miners.
2Miners mining pool statistics
We believe that Nvidia's decision to hit the miners really didn't help it in any way. Still, the owners of the computing equipment found a way to unlock its potential, well, extra difficulties for fans of mining rather affected their attitude towards the manufacturer.
What do you think about it? Share your opinion in our Millionaire Crypto Chat. There, we’ll talk about other topics related to the world of blockchain and decentralisation.
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