The Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060's Etherium mining limit has been bypassed for real this time

A report from last week told us about some Chinese cryptocurrency miners bypassing the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060's hash rate limiter for Etherium mining. It was subsequently debunked when the cryptocurrency in question was found to be Conflux. This time around, however, some miners appear to have bypassed the restriction for real. Nvidia declined to comment on the matter and said that it would get back to us at a later point.

One Guru3D user (via Wccftech) claims that his Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 could mine Etherium at a consistent rate of 46MH/s for six hours. This is important, as Nvidia's hash rate limiters kick in after a few minutes, reducing the mining rate to 25MH/s. The user even pushed it to 50MH/s with some tweaks to the graphics card's settings. Another Twitter user chimed in with proof of a second GeForce RTX 3060 managing to hit the 45MH/s mark. While these results seem legitimate, some scepticism in order, because it is an anonymous user on the internet, at the end of the day.

Japanese new outlet PC Watch (via Videocardz) also confirmed the news independently using its resources. Although the publication states that there are no VBIOS or driver modification required, users are experiencing mixed results. Apparently, all you need to do is install the GeForce 470.05 development driver. Computerbase.de and Hardwareluxx.de have also managed to bypass the 25MH/s restriction. The former used the stock Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 VBIOS while the latter installed TechPowerUp's custom version with build number 94.06.14.00.DF.

However, this has set a bad precedent for Nvidia's near 'unhackable' limiter. Nvidia will now be engaged in an endless game of whack-a-mole, with miners. Things are slated to get even worse now, with Etherium's proof of work model due to expire soon. Miners will want to accumulate as much coin as possible to cement their position in the new proof of stake model, which determines your value based on the amount of coin you own, instead of the processing power you have to offer.

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