The new “Lite Hash Rate”, or LHR, models of their RTX 30 series will start shipping in late May, according to a new blog post from Nvidia. Graphics card manufacturers will also be labeling these new cards as “Lite Hash Rate” or “LHR” on their box and retail product listings online to help make it clear which version you’re actually buying. The hash rate is what miners use to measure the speed of any cryptocurrency mining device, so reducing this figure will make these GPUs a lot less efficient when it comes to doing the actual mining. This reduction in hash rate only applies to newly manufactured versions of these cards, though, so any RTX 30 cards already out in the wild will still have a full-fat hash rate. “We believe this additional step will get more GeForce cards at better prices into the hands of gamers everywhere,” Nvidia’s vice president of global GeForce marketing Matt Wuebbling said. It’s definitely a welcome step in the right direction, but whether these new LHR models will actually alleviate the current graphics card shortage remains to be seen. It certainly didn’t stop the RTX 3060 from selling out in minutes when it launched back in February, and Nvidia themselves aren’t expecting things to return to normal until 2022 at the very earliest. That’s potentially another seven months of price hikes and stock shortages for some of today’s best graphics cards, which will be small comfort to anyone who was hoping to upgrade their PC this year.
