NVIDIA LHR series

We received an update on the upcoming GAxx2 NVIDIA GPU series featuring a new cryptomining limiter.

NVIDIA has provided an update to its partners in regard to upcoming GAxx2 chips. Those GPUs will feature a new cryptocurrency mining limiter and most likely RezisableBAR support without a need for a vBIOS update.

NVIDIA is expecting GAxx2 chips to start shipping in the middle of May, which means that first customers may receive their cards in June. Our sources have been quite clear that NVIDIA has no plans to differentiate LHR chips from existing models. All cards will feature the same product names and the only way to distinguish LHR from non-LHR chips is by looking at the GPU. Eventually, graphics card monitoring tools should be able to recognize which version is used. After all, GAxx2 GPUs will have a different PCI Device ID and they will require a new driver. The tools should also report on ReBAR support.

It’s worth noting that Lite Hash Rate is not a marketing term, but rather a term used to describe new GPUs to board partners. NVIDIA has been quite clear that those chips will offer the exact same performance in games as the cards already on the market (that’s not taking ReBAR performance uplift into account).

With the ‘quiet launch’ of the RTX 30 LHR series, the supply of Ampere GPUs is expected to improve. NVIDIA has not yet provided an explanation of what exactly has been changed that would limit mining performance on the new chips. The previous attempt to introduce a software limiter with RTX 3060 has spectacularly failed after NVIDIA ‘accidentally released a driver without it. This SKU will also receive a new version with a reintroduced crypto limiter.

One of our sources says that RTX 3090 might be the only card that will not feature the crypto limiter, which is simply not needed as mining profitability on this SKU is low due to the high price of the card itself. However, this SKU is still expected to receive a new GA102-302 GPU, which suggests it might simply be a ReBAR update.