NVIDIA Hash-Rate Limited GeForce RTX 3060 Graphics Cards Being Shipped To e-Cafes in China Instead of Gamers

Hassan Mujtaba
NVIDIA Confirms Mining Crippled GeForce RTX 3060 Graphics Cards Shipping in Mid-May, Will Reintroduce Cryptocurrency Hash Rate Limiter

New reports coming in from Asian tech outlets reveal that NVIDIA is supplying its latest GeForce RTX 3060 graphics cards to e-Cafes on a priority basis instead of gamers which they are designed for in the first place.

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Lite Hash Rate Graphics Cards Being Supplied To e-Cafes Instead of Gamers in China

We know that the first outing of the hash rate limiter failed spectacularly and NVIDIA decided to re-launch its entire GeForce RTX 30 series lineup with brand new GPU SKUs to tackle the cryptomining craze. The first graphics card to launch under this new lineup is the GeForce RTX 3060 but it looks like gamers would once again find it difficult to get the graphics card off retail shelves as e-cafes in China have bought large quantities of the GPUs, making the overall stock run dry once again.

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It is reported by ITHome & MyDrivers that the new NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 graphics card featuring the GA106-302 GPU (previously GA106-300), will be shipping next week but there's bad news for gamers in all this. Following are all the new NVIDIA Ampere GA**2 SKUs that you can expect:

  • NVIDIA RTX 3090 - GA102-300-A1 -> GA102-302-A1
  • NVIDIA RTX 3080 - GA102-200-A1 -> GA102-202-A1
  • NVIDIA RTX 3070 - GA104-300-A1 -> GA104-302-A1
  • NVIDIA RTX 3060 Ti - GA104-200-A1 -> GA104-202-A1
  • NVIDIA RTX 3060 - GA106-300-A1 -> GA106-302-A1

The report states that NVIDIA and its AIB partners have received a large number of orders from Internet Cafes (e-Cafes) in the Asian-Pacific region and it looks like they will be getting priority over gamers from May till June. NVIDIA themselves is stated to have recommended its AIC partners to prioritize GeForce RTX 3060 graphics card supply to internet cafes and will provide its partners with strategic support.

We have previously seen gaming and internet cafes being converted to cryptocurrency mining farms with several NVIDIA GeForce RTX graphics cards installed. NVIDIA will have the new mining hash rate limiter on the RTX 3060 graphics card but if miners are able to bypass it once again, then there's no stopping the same cafes from taking advantage of the situation and once again use the cards for mining purposes considering it lets them earn bigger profits.

This would leave little quantities for gamers which could be gobbled up by scalpers to sell them at obnoxious prices in the 3rd party resale market. What all of this means is that retail channels will be affected across the globe and gamers would have a hard time finding a card for themselves as it is being supplied to a different consumer segment. As of now, NVIDIA is only supplying the GeForce RTX 3060 with the new GPU SKUs while the rest of the SKU lineup is expected to start hitting retail shelves in the coming months, more on that here.

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