.jpg?width=1200&height=630&fit=crop&enable=upscale&auto=webp)
EVGA releases vBIOS to improve RTX 3080 Ti mining performance
If you are looking for RTX 3080 Ti, your search may become more difficult. EVGA has released a firmware update, which seems to have greatly improved the mining hash rate of its RTX 3080 Ti. Sadly, you may be able to deduce what this means. The attractiveness of EVGA 3080 Ti to miners suddenly becomes greater. The more cards in the hands of miners, the fewer cards in the hands of gamers.
The graphics card market has become its own meme. The shortage of key components that cause manufacturing bottlenecks is one thing, but when you increase extreme mining demand, we get a double punch that leads to where we are today. The release of a number of Light Hash Rate (LHR) GPUs, including RTX 3080 Ti, aims to reduce mining performance without affecting game performance. This is popular with gamers, but miners are always looking for ways to unlock the hash rate of the LHR card to provide better mining performance.
Initially, a Reddit user @bravo_char pass through Tom’s hardware A hidden power limit was discovered in the vBIOS of the EVGA RTX 3080 Ti XC3, which can cause the GPU to drop in frequency when subjected to a large amount of memory load (this is the load you get while digging).
The problem is that mining is not the only memory-intensive task. EVGA believes that an update is needed to solve this problem. If you use GPU for rendering or encoding, this will help you, but it also means that the EVGA card has improved mining efficiency, from 66 MH/s to 80 MH /s or higher. It seems that gamers don’t have enough trouble finding reasonably priced cards for certain holiday games.
Tips and suggestions
How to buy a graphics card: Tips for buying graphics cards in the barren silicon environment in 2021
Other miners are trying to use the new firmware on other cards with some success, despite the risk of cross-flashing cards from other vendors. Red panda mining Use EVGA XC3 BIOS and flash it to Inno3D 3080 Ti iChill X3 and get up to 91 MH/s speed from their card. This is not far from what the full hash rate RTX 3080 can achieve. Miners are attracted by the high performance of cards such as the 3080 (now 3080 Ti), because it means they can get higher performance from a single system, even if the power efficiency is not as good as other models such as the RTX 3060 Ti FHR.
It remains to be seen whether other manufacturers will follow suit and release BIOS upgrades. Nvidia may also intervene and stop it, but if the power limit “wrong” is hurting legitimate users who are not involved in mining, it is hard to imagine it will do so. If you have used the RTX 3080 Ti for some holiday games, then you might want a plan B in case the 3080 Ti suddenly becomes a bit (more) scarce.