Over the past year, the pandemic has caused a global shortage of silicon chips and with a rising demand of consumer electronics, GPUs have skyrocketed in price. Furthermore, a new boom in cryptocurrency mining has magnified the problem and it's been nearly impossible for PC users to find a video card at a reasonable price. Recently, Nvidia announced a cryptocurrency mining limit on their newest RTX 3060, 3070, and 3080 cards.
In an effort to tackle the GPU shortages, Nvidia has divided its cards into separate categories for cryptocurrency mining and regular graphical use. Nvidia has also attempted to ensure that its video cards are reaching actual customers instead of bots by manually reviewing orders. Though the shortage is expected to last throughout the year, hopefully these measures from Nvidia will help get more video cards into the hands of PC enthusiasts.
What Nvidia is Doing About The Shortage
Earlier in February this year, Nvidia announced that they would limit the hash rate of RTX 3060 GPUs by 50% so they would be less appealing to cryptocurrency miners. Instead, they would release the Cryptocurrency Mining Processor (CMP) line which wouldn't handle graphics at all and are optimized for mining performance and efficiency. Unfortunately, Nvidia also accidentally released a beta driver which unlocked performance for RTX 3060 cards. Though they removed the link, the damage was done and the download was quickly mirrored throughout the Internet.
Nonetheless, Nvidia has begun labelling new cards with the Lite Hash Rate (LHR) identifier which means that their Ethereum mining power will be reduced. These identifiers will appear on the newest RTX 3060, 3070, and 3080 cards which likely means that the regular line of video cards will be less appealing for cryptocurrency miners. Of course, this will inevitably increase the prices of existing RTX 3000 series cards without the restrictions but hopefully, this will alleviate some of the stock problems of GPUs over the past year.
What Nvidia is Doing About Bots and Resellers
On the other hand, cryptocurrency mining isn't the only thing that's affecting the GPU shortage. Resellers have picked up on GPUs being a lucrative aftermarket so bots have also become a major issue for actual PC gamers looking for an upgrade. In the span of a few months, over 50,000 Nvidia GPUs were sold on eBay and StockX and there are no signs of scalpers slowing down. Nvidia has attempted to address this issue by manually reviewing orders and restructuring their store to try and get the GPUs into the hands of actual customers.
Following an exposed API for Nvidia's online store during the RTX 3080 launch, they attempted to add safeguards to the store for the RTX 3090 launch but unfortunately, bots continued to clear the stock well before regular users had a chance to snag them. It appears that Nvidia can do little to stop bots and resellers apart from manually cancelling orders and this will likely remain a problem in the foreseeable future. While the new LHR cards might help the shortage a little bit, it's unclear how much of a difference this will make especially with scalpers remaining a problem for Nvidia. Nonetheless, Nvidia has minimized incentive for miners to pick up regular GPUs and this should make help customers a little more.