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RTX 3060 Ti LHR Receives a 35% Hashrate Boost in NBMiner

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So much for lite hash rate sillicon

Yesterday, a new update to NBMiner came out that was reportedly able to partially bypass Nvidia's LHR limitations on its RTX 30 series GPUs, giving RTX 30 series GPUs up to 70% of their 'unlocked' mining power (as opposed to the usual 50% limit). Now, according to I_Leak_VN on Twitter, an RTX 3060 Ti LHR card was tested in the real world with the new NBMiner update, and the card was able to hit 40.5MH/s. That's a 35% improvement over the 3060 Ti LHR's standard hashrate of 30MH/s.

As we've long suspected, it was only a matter of time before the mining software packages started to figure out ways around Nvidia's hashrate limiter. With this NBMiner update, the RTX 3060 Ti LHR hashrate is now competitive with some of the best mining GPUs like the RTX 2070 and RX 5700 — if miners can find them for a good price, naturally.

Unfortunately for both miners and gamers alike, prices for the RTX 3060 Ti remain especially bad. On eBay, according to our latest GPU price index, scalpers are still inflating costs for the RTX 3060 Ti by over 2x its official MSRP. The average price during the past week was around $940, with most cards going for at least $750.

This makes the RTX 3060 Ti a rather terrible deal, despite the NBMiner hack, for mining farms. Even at 41MH/s, that's an average earnings of around $3.25 at current rates, so it would take nearly 290 days to break even. That seems to be the going rate for most GPUs on eBay. The RX 6600 XT that just launched does around 32MH/s after tuning with a price of $620 on eBay. That's about $2.50 per day, with a break even time of 248 days at current rates.

Regardless, NBMiner delivers some impressive performance improvements for the RTX 3060 Ti LHR, and the same should apply to all LHR graphics cards. If prices on Ethereum continue to go up, we could see another wave of miners eating up GPU supply again — at least until the upcoming shift to proof of stake takes over (currently slated for December).

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Aaron Klotz
Aaron Klotz
Contributing Writer

Aaron Klotz is a contributing writer for Tom’s Hardware, covering news related to computer hardware such as CPUs, and graphics cards.

5 Comments Comment from the forums
  • Im__A__Blimp
    My heart races. This is a good thing. Keep the shortage going. Less GPUs = lower difficulty on eth = More profits for us. It also keeps GPU prices high, which will keep it out of most gamers' hands and will make it easier for us to get them and increase profits. I don't know why NVidia thought that we would just be like.... "Oh, they limited the hash rate. I guess we won't buy GPUs anymore". LMAO. It ain't gonna happen. Good try though.... Lol. It's only a matter of time until there is a 100% LHR crack. All my cards are non LHR anyway. But that's not the point. Setting LHR is a form of market manipulation and is highly unethical, then they have the nerve to lie straight to the gamers face: See, we're trying to help you. Ya ... I betcha..... lol. LHR is economically dangerous because it can pave the way for much bigger problems down the road that will eventually hurt gamers and content creators too.
    Reply
  • octavecode
    Another useless article giving tips to ppl who want to bypass Nvidia's mining "protection"
    Bravo...
    Reply
  • Mistame
    Im__A__Blimp said:
    Keep the shortage going... More profits for us... It also keeps GPU prices high... keep it out of most gamers' hands... increase profits... crack... market manipulation... highly unethical... economically dangerous...

    The irony is strong with this one.
    Reply
  • Im__A__Blimp
    Mistame said:
    The irony is strong with this one.

    No, not at all actually. In fact, not even in the slightest. Nope. Nothing. Zero. Zilch. Nadda.
    Reply
  • evilpaul
    It's called market segmentation. Nvidia's been doing it since like the Geforce 4 days with Quadro cards (anyone old enough to remember Quadro cards?). They charged like 4x more money for a card that could do CAD better because they turned a feature on in the drivers. People bypassed that using a pencil (no, really).

    If you hate mining and want to make it less profitable, start mining on any GPU you've got that can.

    There's shortages as a result of two things. Companies that manufacture silicon not adequately investing back into capital and instead padding their quarterly profits, stock prices, and their personal bonuses from those profits/stock options. This was a very smart move on their part, as they got to keep all that money and enjoy charging higher prices from the shortages, and you now to get help pay to build them new factories. The second is the government dumping trillions of dollars into the economy increasing demand, while lying about the inflation as being "transitory," people apparently believing that, and not adjusting prices accordingly. There's shortages in things like lumber too, which probably wasn't caused by wooden mining rig frames. I know it's really hard to believe that, for once, huge systemic global problems were caused by the people with all the money and power and not by something anyone with a $200 GPU can do, but that seems to be the case here.
    Reply