It turns out, the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 graphics card was proving to be incredibly popular with the cryptocurrency mining crowd. And gamers, who actually wanted to buy this for their gaming PCs, could have perhaps felt left out. That is when Nvidia decided to step in and take corrective action, preemptively, ahead of the GeForce RTX 3060’s release on February 24. The company has now ensuring that the graphics drivers now cut down the hash rate (mining efficiency) of the RTX 3060 in half for Ethereum miners. This is an attempt to make this card less attractive to crypto miners and will allow gamers to buy these instead.
At the same time, Nvidia has said that there is the new Nvidia CMP, or the Cryptocurrency Mining Processor, which crypto miners should look at instead. “CMP products — which don’t do graphics — are sold through authorized partners and optimized for the best mining performance and efficiency. They don’t meet the specifications required of a GeForce GPU and, thus, don’t impact the availability of GeForce GPUs to gamers,” says Nvidia in an official statement. RTX 3060 software drivers are designed to detect specific attributes of the Ethereum cryptocurrency mining algorithm, and limit the hash rate, or cryptocurrency mining efficiency, by around 50 percent.
Nvidia insists that the GeForce RTX 3060 graphics card has been developed for gamers, and includes RTX real-time raytracing, DLSS AI-accelerated image upscaling technology and Reflex super-fast response rendering technology, specifically to improve the gaming experience. While the interest in the Nvidia graphics card from crypto miners has been great for the company, they are however apprehensive about alienating the gaming crowd, their core audience. Out of stock graphics cards or short supply of solutions for gaming doesn’t reflect well on the brand.
