Nvidia has announced that it is introducing hash rate limits on its GeForce RTX 3080, RTX 3070, and RTX 3060 Ti graphics cards; beginning in late May, Nvidia will be re-releasing these RTX 30 series graphics cards under the "LHR," or "Lite Hash Rate" banner and is working with manufacturers to re-release them under the "Hash Rate" banner so that customers know exactly what they are getting.

"To help get GeForce GPUs into the hands of gamers, we announced in February that all GeForce RTX 3060 graphics cards will ship with a lower ethereal hash rate," the company said in a blog post.

"Today, we are taking further action by applying the ETH hash rate reduction to newly manufactured GeForce RTX 3080, RTX 3070, and RTX 3060 Ti graphics cards. These cards will begin shipping in late May."

The new cards will also receive a new identifier, LHR, which stands for Lite Hash Rate; according to Nvidia, this identifier will appear on all retail product listings and on the box itself.

It is unclear whether the RTX 3060 12GB, the card that first appeared with a limiter, will receive an update that will once again bring back the limiter. Nor has Nvidia confirmed that all future releases of cards such as the rumored GeForce RTX 3080 Ti, RTX 3070 Ti, or RTX 3050 Ti will come with limiters.

Nvidia has confirmed that graphics cards manufactured prior to the LHR series will not have crypto currency limiters.

Nvidia's hash rate limiter was initiated on the RTX 3060 12GB. It detects when a user starts mining Ethereum (Ether) and slows down the card's computing power to half its original speed. This is not just a driver limitation, either; it is implemented across the driver, vBIOS, and the GPU itself.

However, it got off to a rocky start, to say the least.

Nvidia believed it was unhackable, but the company would doom itself: a developer driver version containing code to circumvent the RTX 3060's Ethereum limiter was released soon after the card's launch, lifting the coded limiter The GPU market was transformed once again into a cryptocurrency free-for-all as the GPU market was once again transformed into a cryptocurrency free-for-all.

This means that we don't really know how well the limiters can withstand a bit of hacking. Nor do we know if it will stand the test of time against more coordinated efforts. However, Nvidia is confident that its renewed push with LHR will "get more GeForce cards into the hands of gamers everywhere at better prices," and for many reasons, we hope they are right.