The infamous crypto market crash and the UST/Luna fall have completely outshadowed the great news for miners. NiceHash finally came up with the ultimate 100% LHR unlock for Nvidia GPUs.
Yet, miners still rejoice. The crypto crash have led to a spike in Ethereum mining. Not only because ETH owners were readily dropping their capitals, but also because popular Tether (USDT) stablecoin is mainly based on Ethereum blockchain.
And while USDT didn’t de-peg from US Dollar despite some gloomy predictions, the quantity of the USDT transactions have grown immensely in the past few days. So have the Ethereum mining operations that are verifying and validating those transactions.
Actually, miners could even compensate the falling outcomes (because the actual ETH was falling) just because of those mining spikes.
And that was the moment when NiceHash %100 LHR unlock was shining the most.
And it actually still is. So if you have got a Lite Hash Rate (yes, that’s what LHR stands for) Nvidia graphic card for mining it’s the best time to try the full unlock provided by NiceHash.
How to use NiceHash LHR unlock for Ethereum mining?
So, a new version of NiceHash Quick Miner (also known as Excavator) is able to fully unlock LHR Nvidia graphic cards. Fully means 100%. Which means that Nvidia LHR limitations lose sense.
No matter what kind of Nvidia GPU you have with NiceHash QuickMiner you will be able to mine Ethereum at 100% of the GPUs power.
Using NiceHash QuickMiner is easy. No settings or tweaks are needed.
Unlike many other mining software that requires tweaking the new version of NiceHash QuickMiner does the LHR unlock seamlessly and automatically.
What’s important, though, is that you have to pay attention to the version of NiceHash QuickMiner to download. There is a stable version 0.5.3.6 which still has no LHR Unlock. But the release candidate version NiceHash QuickMiner 0.5.4.0 RC is exactly what you need. It has an automatic full LHR unlock without any tweaks and settings.
NiceHash QuickMiner is a rather popular mining software for Ethereum, but the payments are done in Bitcoin. That’s why NiceHash cleverly calls its products “a Bitcoin mining software”.
It’s worth mentioning that the regular NiceHash Miner still has no full LHR Unlock.
NiceHash Miner is a much more user friendly but a bit less sophisticated mining tool. It has a convenient user friendly interface, but all the additional tweaking for GPUs has to be made through third-party software such as MSI Afterburner. NiceHash QuickMiner at the same time is a rather geeky looking piece of software clearly aimed at more savvy users. But it has a built-in GPU performance tweaking tool called OCTune which runs in a browser window.
What is LHR unlock and why is it important?
Basically LHR unlock means that you can fully utilize the power of your GPU to mine Ethereum.
Nvidia famously implemented LHR (Low Hash Rate) programmable limitation to its 30×0 generation of graphic cards in desperate effort to make top GPUs not that interesting for miners. Thus there would a slight opportunity for usual gamers to buy those GPUs.
Nice try, Nvidia. But the miners were able to find a solution rather quickly.
GPUs that were sold as LHR could be unlock with software to achieve approximately 70% of the mining potential. And that was enough for the global GPU shortage to continue. Miners know their math. Even with LHR limitations Ethereum mining was still profitable in 2021.
Despite the crypto prices falling in 2022, miners are still actively buying the Nvidia graphic cards for Ethereum mining. Even the inevitable Ethereum switch to Proof-of-Stake doesn’t seem to scare them off.
NiceHash QuickMiner 100% LHR unlock FAQ
Let’s summarize all we know about NiceHash 100% LHR unlock in a series of short questions and answers.
What GPUs are supported/are all LHR variants supported?
As of now, all LHR versions of Nvidia GPUs are supported except for the most recent but quite rare card with LHRv3 (3050 & 3080 12GB).
What GPU driver version should I use?
It makes no difference for the LHR unlock to work. Just use the generally recommended Nvidia drivers. It doesn’t even many if the drivers are DCH or non-DCH.
Does 100% unlock only work with NiceHash mining pools?
Yes, the 100% unlock only works on NiceHash network.
Are other algorithms also supported?
Basically, the whole point of LHR for Nvidia was to fight DaggerHashimoto (Ethash) algorithm. And now it is unlocked.
Can I use MSI Afterburner for overclocking?
No, you when you are using NiceHash QuickMiner you should use OCTune. Running MSI Afterburner on top of it will lead to malfunctions.
Can I run other 3rd party miners besides QuickMiner?
Running 3rd party miners besides QuickMiner will not work.
Source: NiceHash Blog
