The launch of Nvidia's 30-Series graphics cards has been an ordeal. Not only have component shortages led to the supply of 30-Series cards being limited, but a surge in cryptocurrency popularity has resulted in a inhospitable to Nvidia's target market. Now, Nvidia is choosing to make a larger effort to dissuade cryptocurrency mining on its 30-Series cards, extending features currently used with the 3060 to the 3060 Ti, 3070, and 3080.
On May 18, Nvidia issued a statement titled, "A Further Step to Getting GeForce Cards into the Hands of Gamers." The heart of the statement is that new cards in the 3060, 3060 Ti, 3070, and 3080 lines are going to have "additional measures" put in place to reduce their cryptocurrency mining capabilities. These cards will begin to be shipped to retailers in late May and will be labeled as "Lite Hash Rate," or "LHR," so that miners will avoid purchasing them.
The intention is to increase the available stock of Nvidia's 30-Series graphics cards for PC gamers. These cards may have reduced hash rates for cryptocurrency, but they're just as powerful as before when it comes to gaming performance. This is made explicitly clear by Nvidia in its statement, where it says the purpose of these changes is to allow "gamers" to "get more GeForce cards at better prices."
What's left unsaid is that Nvidia really can't guarantee something out of its control. All it can do is ship out the new LHR graphics cards and hope that cryptocurrency miners won't buy them. However, the issue isn't just cryptocurrency miners, cards are also being picked up by scalpers and have their prices raised on resale markets. Suffice to say, gamers probably shouldn't trust that Nvidia 30-Series cards will be more readily available even with these changes.
The elephant in the room is also the fact that the limitations placed on Nvidia's 3060 card which slowed mining before was easily removed with one of Nvidia's own patches. While preventing graphics cards intended for gamers from going to cryptocurrency miners sounds great, Nvidia can't even necessarily guarantee that.
Gamers are ultimately going to be left in the same situation they've been in since Nvidia's 30-Series cards started being released in 2020. That is, hoping that component shortages start drying up and Nvidia starts making more cards. That, unfortunately, probably isn't going to happen any time soon. Nvidia has already confirmed shortages are likely to last into 2022.