Nvidia has equipped the GeForce RTX 3060 with a special driver that can halve the Ethereum hash rate. Previously, Nvidia’s head of communications Bryan Del Rizzo disclosed that the limitation is hardware bound to the chip, so it cannot be circumvented in theory. Nvidia has since confirmed that the restriction was accidentally lifted.
Namely, it had published a beta driver (470.05) that lacked security. The Verge now writes that the chip designer has now removed the driver from his database. According to an Nvidia spokesperson, it was a developer driver with “in-house development programming language that removed the RTX 3060’s hash rate limitation in certain configurations.”
Also Read: The Mining Restriction on Nvidia RTX 3060 GPU is Not Limited to Drivers and May Affect Other Models
Of course, the driver is no longer on the web page, but mirrors can be found on the internet. So the driver is already circulating through alternative sources which allow users to use regular RTX 3060s for mining ETH. It appears that the limitation can only recognize the algorithm used for Ethereum mining, so other proof of work cryptocurrencies can still be mined.
