Nvidia's cryptocurrency mining limiter has been cracked, but it's not quite a farming frenzy yet

GPU for Mining Ethereum
(Image credit: Pixabay)

If you've been keeping up with the cryptocurrency news, you might be aware of Nvidia's clever idea to equip its newest GPU, the GeForce RTX 3060, with a supposedly unhackable hashrate limiter. But of course, as with any challenge set by a major corporation, a workaround has been found. 

However, it didn't exactly come from where we expected.

The limiters were a bid to deter cryptominers from buying up all the gaming GPUs. There's even been talk of the possibility of subsequent cards coming with the same "secure handshake," meant to prevent later cards from mining at their full potential. 

But the second Nvidia laid the plans, it inadvertently set a challenge for the internet. And we all know what happens when you say something isn't possible on the internet: someone will try to prove you wrong.

Since the announcement miners have been springing up across the net claiming to have cracked it. So far we haven't seen any proof that modifying drivers is able to bypass the limitations. But now it seems to have been overcome in a different way, with the workaround coming from none other than... Nvidia itself.

Screen queens

(Image credit: Future)

Best gaming monitor: pixel-perfect panels for your PC
Best 4K monitor for gaming: when only high-res will do
Best 4K TV for gaming: big-screen 4K PC gaming

Confirmation has now surfaced through PC Watch (via VideoCardz) that one such hacker on the Guru3D forum has circumvented the limiters simply by backtracking to Nvidia developer driver version 470.05. With no driver or BIOS changes, user hapghost was able to achieve 46 MH/s on Ethash.

That's right, just reverting to old firmware seemed to lift at least some of the restrictions, though it's not quite top-form. 

A post on Cryptomining Blog outlines their having achieved similar numbers—47 MH/s Ethash with PhoenixMiner—and expands a little on the drawbacks. For one thing, the driver is only available for Windows, and it requires miners to register on the Nvidia website as a developer.

The post continues, speculating around the fact this is only replicable with a single GPU hooked up to a x16 PCIe slot, with no extenders, and a monitor. This points to the limiters still mainly being subject to the card's physical conditions. 

So it may not be that Nvidia simply forgot to implement the limiters with certain drivers, but instead goes to show how deep into the hardware the limiters actually run.

Thankfully due to the physical restrictions, no one has managed to get it working with a full-blown mining rig yet. But perhaps it's only a matter of time.

Katie Wickens
Hardware Writer

Screw sports, Katie would rather watch Intel, AMD and Nvidia go at it. Having been obsessed with computers and graphics for three long decades, she took Game Art and Design up to Masters level at uni, and has been rambling about games, tech and science—rather sarcastically—for four years since. She can be found admiring technological advancements, scrambling for scintillating Raspberry Pi projects, preaching cybersecurity awareness, sighing over semiconductors, and gawping at the latest GPU upgrades. Right now she's waiting patiently for her chance to upload her consciousness into the cloud.

Read more
MSI RTX 5090 Suprim in an open test bench
The unwelcome workaround for Nvidia's RTX 50-series black screen issues is to hobble your gaming monitor with a 60 Hz refresh rate
MSI RTX 5070 Ti Gaming Trio OC Plus graphics card under a red light
This MSI Afterburner file unlocks 36 Gbps RTX 50-series memory overclocks for, y'know, the few people that actually own a card
Nvidia RTX 4090 Founders Edition graphics card
A single RTX 4090 managed to brute force crack an Akira ransomware attack in just 7 days
Nvidia RTX 5080 Founders Edition graphics card from different angles
I'm genuinely stunned by the overclocking performance of the RTX 5080, and curious as to why Nvidia left so much headroom
Nvidia RTX 5090 Founders Edition graphics card on different backgrounds
MSI says that the supply of its RTX 5090 cards will be very tight, due to a limited supply of GPUs from Nvidia
Jensen Huang, co-founder and chief executive officer of Nvidia Corp., speaks while holding the company's new GeForce RTX 50 series graphics cards and a Thor Blackwell robotics processor during the 2025 CES event in Las Vegas, Nevada, US, on Monday, Jan. 6, 2025. Huang announced a raft of new chips, software and services, aiming to stay at the forefront of artificial intelligence computing. Photographer: Bridget Bennett/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Big AI beasts reportedly delay Nvidia Blackwell orders due to GPU overheating but it doesn't worry us for RTX 50 gaming cards
Latest in Graphics Cards
Nvidia App
Hmmm, upgrades: Nvidia App gets an optional AI assistant and custom DLSS resolution scaling
A close-up photo of an Nvidia RTX 4070, with its heatsink removed, showing the AD104 GPU die and the surrounding Micron GDDR6X VRAM chips
With Nvidia Ace taking up 1 GB of VRAM in Inzoi, Team Green will need to up its memory game if AI NPCs take off in PC gaming
A collage of Radeon RX 9000 series graphics cards, as shown in AMD's promotional video for the launch of RDNA 4 at CES 2025
AMD's CEO claims 9070 XT sales are 10x higher than all previous Radeon generations but that's just for the first week of availability
Colorful iGame RTX 5070 Ti Vulcan OC graphics card from various angles
The RTX 5060 and RTX 5060 Ti are rumoured to be mere weeks away, with board partners reportedly required to ensure at least one MSRP model at launch
Nvidia headquarters
Nvidia CEO sets sights on making 'several hundred billion' dollars worth of electronics in the USA over the next four years, increasing the chance of your next GPU being made in America
The Asus ROG Astral GeForce RTX 5090 Dhahab Edition, a gold-plated graphics card on a sand dune background
A Jensen Huang-signed version of this golden Asus RTX 5090 will be auctioned off to support relief efforts for the California wildfires
Latest in News
Assassin's Creed Shadows promo image
Ubisoft scores a legendary ratio against Elon Musk on his own platform—which hopefully marks a final end to all the Assassin's Creed Shadows' culture war nonsense
Tzarina Katarin Bokha, the Ice Queen of Kislev
Total War: Warhammer 3 rolls out a cool Kislev overhaul, changes befitting Tzeench’s magic, new projectile units and creakier skeletal horses
An image of a golden first place award from Geoguessr
'We're actually getting GeoGuessr on Steam before GTA 6': the Google Street View puzzler arrives on Valve's platform this April
Napster client circa 1999
Former music-pirating platform Napster to be reborn rather ironically as a metaverse for musicians to connect with their fans after $207 million deal
The snazzy red and black HyperX Cloud Alpha wireless headphones float in a teal void. The microphone is attached to the headset.
The best wireless gaming headset is now even better in the Amazon Big Spring Sale, boasting a more than $50 discount
A chip being held up in an Intel fab
Intel is reportedly 'working to finalize commitments from Nvidia' as a foundry partner, suggesting gaming potential for the 18A node