For the last 6 months, Nvidia cards have been nearly impossible to get. This is mainly the result of Covid and the impact it has had on the supply chain. The fact that the 3000 RTX series is a significant improvement over the 2000 RTX series has had a massive impact on demand.
There is a third factor that has had major impact on the supply of 3000 RTX cards, the crypto bull run. With crypto prices raising 3 digit percentage points has created a frenzy for modern GPUS.
NVidia's response to this is to enforce a bios limiter to reduce the effectiveness of 3000 RTX series GPUs for crypto mining. Selling customers a gimped product for the same price. On top of this, they are now splitting their production line to product Crypto GPUs and Gamer GPUs.
These "Crypto" GPUs have zero resale value as will never find their way in the hands of gamers looking for 2nd hand cards. A market that is a godsent to most gamers with limited budget. The reason for this is Crypto GPUs do not have outputs for monitors and are useless for gaming.
The first Nvidia card that was released with a bios limiter is the Nvidia 3060. This bios lock is considered "unhackable" according to Nvidia. The bios lock pairs hardware and software protection to make it unremovable by most people.
There is no doubt someone will find a way around it, but they don't have to. With the official release of 470.05 driver, the Crypto limiter was accidentally disabled in the driver set by Nvidia. It was quickly removed and Nvidia confirms it was an accident.
While this drive will unlock your card to the full potential you paid for, it only works for the first card in your system, all other 3060 RTX cards will be artificially limited.
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