Galax RTX 3080, 3070 GPUs will limit hash rates to slow down crypto mining

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 reviewNVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 reviewNVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 (Image credit: Harish Jonnalagadda / Windows Central)

What you need to know

  • Galax will release NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 and RTX 3070 graphics cards with hash rate limiters.
  • The RTX 3080 and 3070 have hash rates of around 43MH/s and 25MH/s, respectively.
  • The lower hash rates should make the cards less alluring to miners while remaining viable options for gamers.

The latest move in the battle to make the best graphics cards less alluring to crypto miners is lowering hash rates. We've seen companies like NVIDIA try this in the past with little success, but Galax is the next company to try it. Galax will release variants of the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 and 3080 with anti-mining limiters.

Originally reported by VideoCardz, the Galax LHR (Lower Hash Rate) series GPUs will have a significantly lower hash rate than normal RTX 3070 and 3080 GPUs. These hash rate limiters should make the graphics cards less attractive to crypto miners but should still be able to power the best PC games. Details about the new GPUs appear on a Chinese website.

The LHR variants of the RTX 3070 and 3080 appear to have roughly half the hash rate of the standard models. The RTX 3070 has an Ethereum computing power of about 25MH/s, while the RTX 3080 hits about 43MH/s. For context, the AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT's hash rate is around 40MH/s. The RX 6700 XT is a more budget-friendly option for mining, but it doesn't stack up to the best mining GPUs.

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If Galax can successfully make its GPUs poor options for crypto mining, it could result in graphics cards being more available to gamers. It's almost impossible to purchase a high-end GPU at the moment, and that's in large part due to crypto mining.

Sean Endicott
News Writer

Sean Endicott is a News Writer at Windows Central, where he covers Windows 11, Surface hardware, Microsoft 365, AI, apps, and the broader PC ecosystem. Since joining the site in 2017, he has written well over a thousand articles across the Microsoft landscape, covering breaking news, analysis, and feature reporting.

He writes Windows Wrap, a weekly column covering the biggest stories in Windows and the PC industry, and what they mean for the platform going forward.

Before joining Windows Central full-time, Sean worked in journalism and media production after earning a First Class degree in Broadcast Journalism from Nottingham Trent University. Outside of tech, he is an award-winning American football coach based in Nottingham, England, and was named BAFCA Youth Coach of the Year in 2024.