History of LHR graphics cards

Since February 2021, NVIDIA has begun to lower the hash rate for mining on video cards. The company posted a blog post titled “GeForce Is Made for Gaming, CMP Is Made to Mine”.

In May 2021, NVIDIA publishes an article titled “A Further Step to Getting GeForce Cards into the Hands of Gamers”: “One More Step Getting GeForce Cards into the Hands of Gamers”. The article talks about Ethash hash rate reductions for the GeForce RTX 3080, 3070 and 3060 Ti graphics cards. These cards go on sale at the end of May 2021 and are labelled with the “Lite Hash Rate” or “LHR” identifier.

NVIDIA announced the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti and GeForce RTX 3070 Ti graphics cards at the end of May 2021. The news is posted here.

No “LHR” was officially announced for these graphics cards, but according to preliminary information they too had a reduced hash rate on the Ethash algorithm, which was confirmed after the video cards went on sale and tests were conducted.

It was from May 2021 that the term “LHR” started to be actively discussed in professional circles.

Description of the test bench. Evaluation of potential LHR hash rate and impact

The makeup of the test bench:

• Motherboard: BIOSTAR Hi-Fi B85S2
• CPU: Intel Pentium G3220
• Memory: DDR3 SDRAM Kingston 4Gb
• HDD: Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 160Gb
• PSU: EVGA 1000 GQ 80+ GOLD 1000W
• GPU: EVGA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti FTW3 ULTRA GAMING
• Two graphics cards connected to the motherboard via Riser PCI-E X16-X1
• OS: Windows 10
• Nvidia drivers: 512.15
• Overclocking: MSI Afterburner
• Monitoring: GPU-Z

Tested on three different boards with identical configuration in ambient room temperature +15°C.

Potential hash rates for RTX 3080 Ti on Ethash and Etchash algorithms are described in details in the article "How to Increase Hash Rate in Mining. A method to unlock LHR video cards with GMiner".

The potential, i.e. without LHR blocking, speed on Ethash and Etchash algorithms is 116 MH/s, while blocking reduces the hash rate to 64 MH/s or by 45 percent.

NBminer review and testing

NBminer is an all-in-one GPU cryptocurrency miner that supports AMD and NVIDIA platforms. The miner has been under development since 2018. NBminer currently supports popular algorithms Ethash, Kawpow, Octopus, Autolykos2, Cuckoo and Beamv3.

The miner’s developers keep in touch with users on popular resources and social networks.

• Website: https://nbminer.com
• Github: https://github.com/NebuTech/NBMiner
• BitcoinTalk: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5099379

Review of NBminer v.39.0

On August 15, 2021 the developer unveiled the first miner to unlock LHR up to 70 percent of its potential hash rate. Download the miner and read about the features of the release here.

Let’s run the miner on rig at the following video card settings: PL(%): 70, CC(MHz): +0, MC(MHz): +1000.

Bat-file:


nbminer -a ethash -o stratum+tcp://eth.2miners.com:2020 -u WALLET_ADDRESS.RIG_08 --temperature-limit 71 --temperature-start 50
pause


The speed in the Ethash miner varies between 77-78 MH/s. Memory Controller Load and GPU Load graphs are stable, Board Power Draw graph with small fluctuations.

Thus, with these settings NBminer v.39.0 unlocks LHR up to 67% of potential hashrate.

Review of NBminer v.40.1

On November 24, 2021 the developer introduced NBminer v.40.1, which significantly increases the performance of LHR. Download the miner and read about the features of the release here.

Let’s run the miner on rig at the following video card settings: PL(%): 70, CC(MHz): +0, MC(MHz): +1000.

Bat-file:


nbminer -a ethash -o stratum+tcp://eth.2miners.com:2020 -u WALLET_ADDRESS.RIG_08 --temperature-limit 71 --temperature-start 50
pause


The speed in the Ethash miner varies between 83-85 MH/s. Memory Controller Load and GPU Load graphs are stable, Board Power Draw graph with small fluctuations.

Thus, at these settings NBminer v.40.1 unlocks LHR up to 72% of its potential hash rate.

Testing NBminer v.41.0

On 8 May 2022 the developers announced NBminer v.41.0. Download the miner and read about the features of the release here.

A feature of this version is 100% LHR unlocking. In order to get the announced features, the developer recommends to use video drivers 512.15 for Windows and 510.60 for Linux, as well as to run the miner with administrator rights. It’s also recommended to reduce video memory overclocking by 100-200 MHz compared to previous versions for better stability.

Let’s run miner on the first rig with following video settings: PL(%): 70, CC(MHz): +0, MC(MHz): +1000.

Bat-file:


nbminer -a ethash -o stratum+tcp://eth.2miners.com:2020 -u WALLET_ADDRESS.RIG_08 --temperature-limit 71 --temperature-start 50 --log
pause


Information from the log file just after the start of the miner and after twenty hours of operation:

“Enable LHR unlocker” appears only in one place in the text, at the very beginning of the log file. “LHR lock” does not appear in the text of the log file. There were no miner restarts.

The miner has been running for 22 hours and 21 minutes. The speed in Ethash miner varies in the range 115-116 MH/s. Memory Controller Load and GPU Load graphs are stable, Board Power Draw graph with small fluctuations.

Let’s estimate hash rate for the time the miner is running, based on the number of balls sent to the pool. Initial data: 2174 (GPU0: 1122; GPU1: 1052) balls in 22.35 hours, ball complexity 8726 M. Multiplying the number of balls per second by the ball difficulty, we get 235.8 MH/s. This is the hash rate of the two video cards. If we do the calculation for each video card separately, we get for GPU0: 121.7 MH/s; for GPU1: 114.1 MH/s.

For statistically correct results, we recommend longer testing interval: each card should send more than 5000 balls to the pool.

The result is shown on the stats page of the pool website:

Let’s run the miner on the second rig with the following video settings: PL(%): 70, CC(MHz): +0, MC(MHz): +1100.

Bat-file:


nbminer -a ethash -o stratum+tcp://eth.2miners.com:2020 -u WALLET_ADDRESS.RIG_09 --temperature-limit 71 --temperature-start 50 --log
pause


Information from the log file just after the start of the miner and after twenty hours of operation:

“Enable LHR unlocker” appears in the text only in one place at the very beginning of the log file. “LHR lock” does not appear in the text of the log file. There were no miner restarts.

The miner has been running for 26 hours and 50 minutes. The speed in Ethash miner varies in the range 117-118 MH/s. Memory Controller Load and GPU Load graphs are stable, Board Power Draw graph with small fluctuations.

Let’s estimate the hash rate for the time the miner has been running, based on the number of balls sent to the pool. Initial data: 2612 (GPU0: 1308; GPU1: 1304) orbs in 26.83 hours, orb complexity 8726 M. Multiplying the number of balls per second by the ball complexity, we get 235.9 MH/s. This is the hash rate of the two video cards. If we do the calculation for each video card separately, we get for GPU0: 118.2 MH/s; for GPU1: 117.8 MH/s.

For statistically correct result we recommend longer testing interval: each card should send more than 5000 balls to the pool.

The results on the statistics page of the pool website look like this:

In the next ring we have adjusted graphics cards by fixing GPU frequency and voltage. Fixing was done with the help of Voltage/Frequency Curve Editor in MSI Afterburner.

Let’s start miner in the third ring with the following graphics card settings: PL (%): 80, CC (MHz): -109 fix Voltage (mV) 750, MC (MHz): +1000.

The point to fix voltage is chosen so that when the miner works to get the Core Clock (CC) value in the range of 1300-1350 MHz.

Bat-file:


nbminer -a ethash -o stratum+tcp://eth.2miners.com:2020 -u WALLET_ADDRESS.RIG_10 --temperature-limit 71 --temperature-start 50 --log
pause


Information from the log file immediately after the start of the miner and after twenty hours of operation:

“Enable LHR unlocker” appears in the text only in one place at the very beginning of the log file. “LHR lock” does not appear in the text of the log file. There were no miner restarts.

The miner has been running for 27 hours and 46 minutes. The speed in Ethash miner varies in the range 115-118 MH/s. Memory Controller Load and GPU Load graphs are stable, Board Power Draw graph with small fluctuations.

Let’s estimate the hash rate for the time the miner has been running, based on the number of balls sent to the pool. Initial data: 2574 (GPU0: 1283; GPU1: 1291) orbs in 27.77 hours, orb complexity 8726 M. Multiplying the number of balls per second by the balloon complexity, we get 224.7 MH/s. This is the hash rate of the two video cards. If we do the calculation for each video card separately, we get for GPU0: 112 MH/s; for GPU1: 112.7 MH/s.

For statistically correct results, we recommend longer testing interval: each card should send more than 5000 balls to the pool.

The performance of Rig on the stats page of the pool website looks like this.

We have tested the work of the miner in HiveOS.

The miner worked for 5 hours and 6 minutes. Speed in Ethash miner varies from 117-119 MH/s.

Let’s estimate the hash rate over the run time of the miner based on the number of balls sent to the pool. Initial data: 741 (GPU0: 255; GPU1: 233; GPU2: 253) orbs in 5.1 hours, orb complexity 8726M. Multiplying the number of balls per second by the ball complexity, we get 352.2 MH/s. This is the hash rate of the three video cards. If we calculate for each video card separately, we get 121.2 MH/s for GPU0; 110.7 MH/s for GPU1; 120.2 MH/s for GPU2.

For statistically correct results, we recommend a longer testing interval: each card should send more than 5000 balls to the pool.

This way, with different settings NBminer v.41.0 will unlock LHR up to 100% of potential hash rate.


We would like to note that the most up-to-date version of miner is NBminer v.41.3. It has improved the stability of LHR unblocker, fixed a crashing issue on AMD video cards and improved compatibility on systems with low RAM capacity.

Drivers 512.15 should be used for Windows and 510.60 for Linux. Miner for Windows and Linux can be downloaded here and here, respectively.


Concluding remarks and recommendations

Developer of NBminer offers a universal solution to unlock LHR-cards.

NBminer v.39.0 unblocks LHR up to 67 percent of the potential hash rate on Ethash algorithm, NBminer v.40.1 – up to 72 percent of the potential hash rate, and NBminer v.41.0 – up to 100 percent.

Please note that testing was not done at the most extreme video card settings. Your samples may be stable at other settings. Please overclock and test each video card individually.

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