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.
MSI RTX 3060Ti LHR NBMiner@davideneco25320 @VideoCardz @kzk_PC @jisakuhibi @3DCenter_org @BitsAndChipsEng @tomshardware @VideoCardz @hms1193 @harukaze5719 @nbc_net @elchapuzas pic.twitter.com/Iv5Wypb0EcAugust 15, 2021
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).