In addition to announcing its new Cryptocurrency Mining Processors (CMPs), dedicated GPUs for professional mining, Nvidia plans to implement mining performance limitations to its Geforce series graphics cards, starting with the upcoming Geforce RTX 3060, which should officially launch on the 25th of February.

According to Nvidia, the same limitations will be implemented on both Windows and Linux drivers, While it initially sounded like a simple driver lock, which will also mean that miners could use older drivers to bypass the performance limitations, Nvidia's own Global Director of PR for GeForce, Bryan Del Rizzo, suggests that there is a "secure handshake between the driver, the RTX 3060 GPU, and the BIOS, that will prevent removal of the hash rate limiter".

A few more details on NVIDIA's Ethereum rate limiter, straight from NV PR: https://t.co/XGnXKCaIG6

— Ryan Smith (@RyanSmithAT) February 19, 2021

It is left to be seen if such limitations will hold, and if it will actually have any impact on the limited supply of graphics cards on the market, but so far, we can't see that happening anytime soon.