If you've signed yourself into EVGA's queue for buying a new RTX 30-series graphics card, which are among the best graphics cards current available (depending on your definition of "available"), there's a good chance your order has or will be swapped to an LHR variant of the card you ordered. EVGA members are beginning to receive emails relating to their order being updated to a newer model featuring Nvidia's anti-mining silicon.
LHR, or "Lite Hash Rate," is Nvidia's hardware-level anti-mining feature that was initially introduced with the RTX 3060, and later the RTX 3080 Ti and RTX 3070 Ti. It's also part of newer model 3080, 3070, and 3060 Ti cards. This feature cuts the Ethereum mining performance of all affected cards in half. Nvidia stated last month that it planned to start producing RTX 3080, 3070 and 3060 Ti will the LHR silicon in late May — the RTX 3080 TI, RTX 3070 Ti, and RTX 3060 12GB already have it included.
If for some reason you really, desperately, want the older model, EVGA will still allow you to switch your queue back to the original part number you signed up for. But EVGA says this is a one-time deal and by swapping back you cannot sign up for the LHR version of the card if you change your mind.
EVGA also warns that queueing back up for the older card will not guarantee order fulfillment at all. This makes sense given Nvidia plans to discontinue the non-LHR silicon permanently. Well, discontinue it for GeForce cards at least — we won't be surprised if CMP products using non-LHR silicon show up at some point in the future, assuming Bitcoin and Ethereum manage to recover from the recent slump.
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I'm pretty much certain that "LHR silicon" can have the LHR part of the thing disabled by some combination of fuse bits, firmware and drivers just like most other features.
