A hot potato: We at present know that while the RTX 3060 will doubtlessly feel the effects of the semiconductor shortage, Ethereum miners won't be lining up to grab it. Simply will the limitations Nvidia is imposing extend to previous entries in the Ampere line? No, says the visitor.

Yesterday brought news that the new release drivers for the RTX 3060, which arrives on February 25, can notice "specific attributes of the Ethereum cryptocurrency mining algorithm, and limit the hash rate, or cryptocurrency mining efficiency, by around 50 percent."

Questions were raised over whether this supposedly unhackable limiter would besides affect other Ampere-based cards running the same driver, merely the visitor has confirmed information technology is not limiting the functioning of GPUs already sold.

While some gamers might have welcomed a limiter being placed on all Ampere cards, such a move is both morally and perhaps legally questionable. It'due south too worth remembering that some gamers are too miners and vice versa, so information technology's not a black and white question of 'us versus them.'

Rather than nerfing the entire Ampere line, Nvidia hopes to ease the pressure of unprecedented demand past restarting its Cryptocurrency Mining Processor (CMP) line—a motility that visitor CFO Colette Kress in January suggested could happen.

The CMP line lacks display outputs and comes with lower frequency and voltage settings than the gaming equivalents. Nvidia says as they don't meet the specifications of a GeForce GPU, they won't bear upon the supply of GeForce graphics cards—apparently. Information technology's suspected that all the cards with the possible exception of the the top 90HX are based on Turning chips, helping minimize the impact on new GeForce card production.

With so many people sick of waiting for new stock of RTX 3000 cards, crypto mining has become an increasingly contentious subject. Zotac recently incurred the wrath of gamers when it posted a pro-mining tweet. On the other side of the coin, the rising price of crypto has helped some businesses stay afloat during the pandemic.