Posts Tagged ‘GeForce RTX 3060 reduced hashrate

It seems that a workaround to the artificially enforced hashrate limiter for the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 GPUs mining Ethereum has been discovered and it is pretty simple apparently. You just need to use the developer driver version 470.05 where there is apparently no hashrate limiting being applied, unlike with the regular GeForce video driver that you would normally download for these video cards. This has been reported by some users and we can confirm that it is indeed working and you can get the full mining hashrate for Ethereum with this driver, however there is still a catch… read on below with the latest updates on what and how it works.However, if you are fond of online games, check out https://sickodds.com/lol.

We are getting 47 MH/s Ethash mining hashrate using the Nvidia developer driver version 470.05 with PhoenixMiner mining Ethereum, with the following settings in MSI Afterburner: 70% TDP, -500 MHz GPU, +1000 MHz video memory. You can check what performance does a Asus ROG Strix GeForce RTX 3060 OC Edition manage to provide you with with the limited hashrate regular drivers, though the limit is not for all crypto algorithms, but for memory-intensive ones such as Ethash and VertHash for instance.

The drawback is that the Nvidia developer driver version 470.05 does require you to register on the Nvidia website as developer and is currently still available for Windows only, but hey, it works and you get the full mining hashrate mining Ethereum and other algorithms such as Verthash used by Vertcoin that apparently also suffered from the hashrate limitation introduced by Nvidia for the RTX 3060. For VTC mining with the above settings the hashrate we are getting is around 810 KH/s instead of the reduced in half sub-400 with the regular driver.

Update: It seems that this “workaround” is still somewhat limited to just when using a single RTX 3060 GPU connected to a monitor, with more GPUs in a mining rig it does not seem to work for full hashrate on all of the video cards… If you do not have the hardware you can look for personal loans for bad credit and use it to buy the equipment that you need. When looking for help to apply for a loan and will match you to the best deal offered based on your application, you can visit a site similar to https://sunnyloansuk.co.uk/same-day-loans-direct-lender/ for more info!

Further researching into the matter with a single RTX 3060 GPU working with unrestricted hashrate, while multiple ones not working has revealed that there seem to be some conditions met. Having a single RTX 3060 GPU connected on a ь8/x16 PCI-E slot (no extenders) and a monitor connected to it. This makes us believe that Nvidia did not in fact forget to implement the protection in the latest developer driver 370.05, but has instead further improved their protection mechanism instead. What they could’ve done is to detect that you are using a single video card in a gaming setup and then no limitations, even for mining will be enforced, while if more GPUs on a slower PCI-E interface are present then this is a mining rig and the hashrate will be reduced.

To download the Nvidia developer driver version 470.05 (free registration required)…

The new Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 video cards are here and we managed to buy one quickly while there was some stock left to do some mining benchmarks and tests. We already know that mining performance for the RTX 3060 is limited for Ethereum, but what else can you mine with the full performance is something that we also wanted to find out for sure. As we have predicted availability and pricing of the RTX 3060 is off the charts as people expected these GPUs to be the sweet spot for mining Ethereum – high hashrate and low price. Neither of these did turn out to be true however and stock availability is low, so buying even just one of these new GPUs was pretty hard and we had to pre-order it and buy it bundled with a motherboard just to get our hands on it for testing.

Specifications wise – nothing unexpected. We already knew what to expect from the RTX 3060 GPUs in terms of hardware and GPU and VRAM specs. We also though we knew what to expect from them in terms of performance, but then Nvidia suddenly surprised us with their plans a couple of days ago. And although they are saying that they want to have the RTX 3060 available for gamers, what they are meaning is that they want to sell their new Nvidia CMP HX Dedicated Crypto Mining GPUs to miners instead of RTX 3060. In the end they will probably not succeed very well with either for a number of reasons…

When we run Phoenixminer on the ASUS RTX 3060 GPU with 70% TDP and +1000 MHz video memory in MSI Afterburner we are getting almost 46 MH/s hashrate for Ethereum, however the protective mechanism quickly kicks in and drops that to about 23-24 MH/s. Mining Ehtereum with 46 MH/s at just about 120W of power usage is probably some miner’s wet dream for a mining GPU, but unfortunately that is not going to happen at least for the moment. And it is not only affecting Ethereum mining, Ethereum Classic also gets the half hashrate reduction (it is very similar in terms of algorithm), even Vertcoin’s VertHash algorithm is affected and possibly other memory-intensive algorithms as well.

Affected Algorithms Performance:
– Ethereum – Ethash algorithm – 45 -> 23 MH/s
– VertCoin – Verthash algorithm – 850 -> 370 KH/s
– Ethereum Classic – Etchash algorithm – 47 -> 25 MH/s

All is not lost however as there are some profitable crypto algorithms that are not affected by the forced half hashrate for mining from Nvidia, so the RTX 3060 is still usable and performing quite well in some other popular algorithms…

Unaffected Algorithms Performance:
– Ravencoin – KAWPOW algorithm – 22 MH/s
– Veil – ProgPoW algorithm – 20.8 MH/s
– BitCash – X25X algorithm – 4.2 MH/s
– Conflux – Octopus algorithm – 42 MH/s
– Beam – BeamHashIII algorithm – 22.5 MH/s
– Aeternity – CuckooCycle algorithm – 6.6 G/s
– Grin – Cuckatoo32 algorithm – 0.39 G/s
– ZEL – Zelhash algorithm – 33.6 Sol/s
– Firo (XZC) – MTP algorithm – 2.4 MH/s

So, while the RTX 3060 may not be the best option for Ethereum mining, it can still perform quite well in some other mining algorithms, so not a total waste of money as far as crypto mining is concerned. If you are only focusing on Ethereum mining however, then you might want to think twice and leave the RTX 3060 to other miners or gamers instead.

What performance other Nvidia RTX 30 Series GPU deliver for Ethereum…

Today, February 25th, marks the day that the newest mid-range GeForce gaming GPU from Nvidia is supposed to be released on the market and both crypto miners and gamers are eagerly anticipating this release. The release of the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 GPU with 12GB of GDDR6 video memory is definitely an interesting event, but should gamers and miners be so enthusiastic about the new model? Well, neither gamers, nor miners will most likely be so happy after what they will see today - you can expect to see high prices and limited availability and the main reason for that is Ethereum mining of course.

Up until very recently crypto miners were expecting the new GeForce RTX 3060 GPU to be the next big thing in mining and more specifically in Ethereum (ETH) mining as the latest crypto mining craze is focused there. The GeForce RTX 3060 was supposed to be delivering around 40 MH/s mining hashrate at stock settings and up to about 45 MH/s hashrate after some tweaking… and it does manage to deliver that, but there is also a catch. Nvidia has decided to enforce hashrate limitation for the RTX 3060 via their video drivers in order to drive away miners and have the GPU available to gamers. So, instead of 40–45 MH/s hashrate for Ethereum mining users will be getting just around half of that at 20–22 MH/s and that is definitely not as attractive for such a high-priced video card.

What Nvidia did wrong here is announcing this software-enforced hashrate reduction in half just a few days before they release the new GeForce RTX 3060 GPU and that did not have a positive effect for sure. Most crypto miners still may not be aware of the reduced hashrate for Ethereum and a lot of them have already ordered the new GPU for building mining rigs with it. And because of the high interest from miners the prices are high and availability still a problem, so gamers are once more not too happy that they cannot get their hands on the new video cards or if they can the price is artificially inflated because of the miners’ interest in it.

Nvidia should have announced their plans much earlier than they did, so that miners will be well aware of that by the release on the market and will not bother buying these GPUs and thus the price and availability could’ve been much better for gamers. Now, crypto miners will be buying RTX 3060 GPUs in bulk at high price just to find out that their actual performance for Ethereum mining really sucks and is only half of what they expected and they will feel cheated. As a result, these GPUs will most likely be finding their way back to distributors and retailers and these companies will have hard time selling them to gamers due to the high initial price they got their stock at expecting miners to buy it.

It is not all lost for miners that got their hands on the new GeForce RTX 3060 GPU expecting high Ethereum mining hahsrate. No, you will not be able to get 40–45 MH/s mining Ethereum with these for now, unless a workaround is quickly discovered, if possible at all. Furthermore, the limitation extends not only to the most popular for mining Ethereum, it covers the whole Ethash algorithm that ETH among other crypto coins also use. Not to mention that the artificial limitation for the half performance of the actual one is not bound to a specific coin or algorithm such as Ethereum or Ethash. In fact, may if not all memory-intensive algorithms that have a way of working similar to that of Ethash used by Ethereum could also be affected as Nvidia uses an algorithm to detect a specific behaviour for the GPU to know if it is mining or not.

It is already known that VertCoin (VTC) and its VertHash crypto algorithm is also affected and you will be getting similar drop in performance with the RTX 3060 GPU. It is not all lost however as RavenCoin (RVN) for instance does work normally for mining on the RTX 3060 and manages to deliver a good performance with over 20 MH/s hashrate with power optimized settings and with a bit of overclocking even around 22 MH/s with just 120W of power usage. Mining other crypto coins that use GPU-intensive Proof of Work mining algorithms will also most likely be problem free as far as getting the actual performance the RTX 3060 is capable of instead of the artificially reduced hashrate to half of what it is supposed to be.

There are some other currently profitable crypto coins available for mining that might be doing quite well on the new RTX 3060 GPU, besides Ravencoin and its KAWPOW algorithm of course. You should check out crypto coins that use algorithms like MTP, CuckooCycle, Cucatoo31, Cucatoo32, Cucatoo29s, Zhash, ProgPow, ZelHash, EquihashZero, ProgPowZ, BeamHashIII, X25X and others. That of course would need some testing first, but there is a good potential to still maximizing the performance that the GeForce RTX 3060 has for crypto mining even when you take out Ethereum from the picture. A lot of people however will probably not even bother trying out something different than mining Ethereum, especially people new to crypto mining that know only of Ethereum mining as a profitable thing to do.

You can never say that crypto and crypto mining is a boring thing to do, especially if you are not one of those people that just want the easiest way around in making money mining and are not really interested in cryptocurrencies… If you are reading this now, then you most likely aren’t one of these people anyway.

More on the Limited Mining Hashrate of the GeForce RTX 3060…


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