Nvidia has been struggling to keep its RTX graphics cards in stock for months, but thanks to a new Lite Hash Rate feature coming soon, the company is taking one step forward in trying to address the situation. Even if this doesn’t completely fix the inventory debacle for the RTX 30 GPUs, any progress being made on this front is good to see.
The RTX 30 series GPUs were first launched in September 2020, and ever since then, buying one has been all but impossible. Inventory is depleted the second more come in stock, and for the cards that do remain available to purchase, they’re sold at exorbitantly high markups. This is the result of a couple of things, including the ongoing chip shortage and many people buying Nvidia’s cards for crypto mining. Soon, Nvidia will be addressing one of those issues head-on.
According to a report from Videocardz, Nvidia is working on a new batch of its RTX 30 GPUs with upgraded GA1XX-xx2 chips. While these refreshed versions of the cards won’t come with any technical improvements, they will add a new Lite Hash Rate feature that limits the cards’ performance when used for cryptocurrency mining. The new video cards will perform just as fast as the existing RTX 30 series models, but their horsepower is greatly decreased when crypto mining is detected. It’s expected that Lite Hash Rate will be nearly impossible for users to bypass, unlike Nvidia’s previous attempt that the company itself accidentally broke with a software update.
RTX 30 Series Cards With Lite Hash Rate Will Start Shipping In May
Even better is that Nvidia is expected to start shipping its Lite Hash Rate cards quite soon. Videocardz reports that the new xx2 chips will ship out in mid-May, meaning the refreshed RTX 30 cards will start going on sale at some point in June. It’s also expected that Nvidia won’t differentiate the Lite Hash Rate cards from the current models, meaning that if someone buys an RTX 3080 in the next couple of months, they may or may not get one with Lite Hash Rate.
While this is all good news on the surface, it remains to be seen if it has any noticeable impact on RTX 30 series’ availability. While crypto miners have contributed to the limited supply, the bigger overarching issue is the chip shortage. Nvidia has previously said the shortage could last until 2022, with other industry experts warning it could go until 2023. Adding a more secure crypto performance limiter is a step in the right direction. Still, it also seems naive to believe this will instantly make RTX 30 GPUs readily available for everyone to buy.
For now, it’s a matter of wait and see. The Lite Hash Rate cards should be part of Nvidia’s inventory within the next couple of months, so by the end of June or July, there should be evidence of whether or not it worked. Here’s to hoping Nvidia has the right idea with this one.
