A software update released by Nvidia inadvertently bypassed the Ether (ETH) mining block the firm placed on its own GeForce RTX 3060 graphics card.

A spokesperson for Nvidia confirmed on Tuesday that the latest 470.05 driver update was mistakenly released with code intended for apply only by Nvidia developers, which allowed for the removal of the hash rate limiter.

"A programmer driver inadvertently included code used for internal evolution which removes the hash rate limiter on RTX 3060 in some configurations," said an Nvidia spokesperson, equally reported past The Verge.

In Feb, Nvidia decided to intentionally hamper the Ether-mining effectiveness of its RTX 3060 series graphics cards to forbid a demand-induced shortage caused by crypto miners. A 3-fashion handshake between the hardware, the software and the computer firmware was supposed to ensure that the carte du jour recognized when it was being used to mine Ether and cut its computational power in half, from 50 megahertz per 2nd to 25 MH/s.

But the back door that immune the card's hash rate limiter to exist bypassed came from the software side, and information technology was released by Nvidia itself. The offending beta update has since been pulled by the software company, only versions of it have already fabricated it out onto the internet.

Elsewhere on Tuesday, Andreas Schilling of tech website HardwareLuxx tested reports that custom edits to a computer'south BIOS were required to featherbed the hash charge per unit limiter. After testing driver 470.05 with a custom and standard BIOS, Schilling confirmed that no special modifications were required and that Nvidia'south driver removed the hash rate limiter itself.

While the news only compounds the misery of gamers waiting to upgrade their graphics cards, the gaffe by Nvidia might non necessarily result in Ether miners eating up the next supply of GPU shipments. Co-ordinate to Hexus, the latest reports advise that the affected commuter can just unlock one RTX 3060 at a fourth dimension, rendering it unsuitable for utilise in large mining-farms, for the fourth dimension being at least.

Initial rumors suggested a custom modification had bypassed the RTX 3060's hash rate limiter last Wednesday, allowing it to mine Ether at total capacity. It was afterward revealed that the mod had not enabled the carte du jour to mine Ether specifically but had been rigged to enable the mining of another GPU-mineable cryptocurrency, Ravencoin (RVN).