NVIDIA Shipped Driver That Unlocked RTX 3060 Ethereum Mining

NVIDIA has confirmed it accidentally shipped a driver update that unlocked full-speed Ethereum mining on its RTX 3060 GPU....
NVIDIA Shipped Driver That Unlocked RTX 3060 Ethereum Mining
Written by Matt Milano

NVIDIA has confirmed it accidentally shipped a driver update that unlocked full-speed Ethereum mining on its RTX 3060 GPU.

NVIDIA made headlines — and upset crypto miners — when it announced it would throttle its RTX 3060 GPU for Ethereum mining. Because of their high performance and programmability, GPUs are a popular choice for crypto mining. Unfortunately for the rest of the industry, miners have been snapping up GPUs so fast that NVIDIA has been struggling to keep up. As a result, its solution was to hobble the RTX 3060’s performance to 50% if it detects Ethereum mining.

In a rather embarrassing mistake, the company has admitted a driver update inadvertently disabled the throttling, enabling full-speed performance.

“A developer driver inadvertently included code used for internal development which removes the hash rate limiter on RTX 3060 in some configurations,” an Nvidia spokesperson said in a statement to The Verge. “The driver has been removed.”

It’s unlikely NVIDIA will be able to pursue its plans with the RTX 3060. Even though the company has since pulled the driver, miners will be able to share the accidental version and make sure everyone who wants it has access. There is also no way to prevent users from continuing to use the driver.

At least for now, it appears NVIDIA’s grand plan will have to wait until its next great GPU is released.

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