Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 3060 crypto mining perf-nerf was surprisingly easy to bypass, given that the company is a leader in the IT and AI industries. Now it looks like the green team has learned some hard lessons and will refresh the GPU powering the mass-market targeted RTX 3060 to properly prevent miners fiddling with these cards to make them worth snatching out of the eager outstretched hands of PC gamers.
A report published by HKEPC, via VideoCardz, indicates that Nvidia has readied a new GPU to replace those going into RTX 3060 cards. The new GPU is codenamed GA106-302 and set to replace the GA106-300, with new crypto-mining limiting tech.
A new device-ID will prevent older drivers installing on the GA106-302 equipped cards and there will be “further mechanisms” put in place to ensure this isn’t a great budget choice for ETH miners. What those mechanisms might be, Nvidia might be advised to stay quiet about, but we probably won’t get any hint until the cards hit customers.
Expect the new GA106-302 equipped GeForce RTX 3060 graphics cards to start to filter through to retail in May. It will be interesting to see how they are marked by AIBs (if at all), whether one will have to look at the back of the box, or whether one won’t know what kind of RTX 3060 is in any particular package.
Some of you might wish Nvidia put similar efforts into crypto-perf-nerfing its higher-end GeForce GPUs. Well, there is a good chance that will happen according to Twitter tech leakster kopite7kimi who reckons similarly adapted GA102 and GA104 GPUs may be on the way.