Anyone looking to buy a graphics card has surely come across LHR. But what is LHR, and is it important for me as a gamer? MeinMMO explains what it’s all about.
Graphics cards currently not only cost a lot of money, but can also be confusing with many abbreviations. One of them is LHR, which you can find on some graphics cards for a few months now. But what does LHR mean, and should it play a role in your purchasing decision?
MeinMMO explains what LHR is all about.
Currently, only Nvidia offers LHR graphics cards
What does “LHR” mean? LHR is an abbreviation that stands for Lite Hash Rate. LHR graphics cards are supposed to recognize when you are using the graphics card for cryptocurrency mining. The technology then reduces the hash rate of the graphics card by 50%, according to Nvidia.
LHR graphics cards are therefore supposed to be significantly less profitable for miners. In this way, Nvidia allegedly aims to ensure that more graphics cards can be sold to gamers.
Where can you find “LHR”? Currently, you can find LHR graphics cards only at Nvidia. Nvidia introduced the LHR technology to make its graphics cards less attractive to miners. The first card with LHR was the GeForce RTX 3060. AMD currently does not have any graphics cards with LHR, and AMD has also stated that it has no plans to implement such a crypto-restriction (via hardwareluxx.de).
Since May 2021, almost all RTX 3000 graphics cards have been switched to LHR. Currently, you can only get the following graphics cards with LHR:
- Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060
- Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 Ti
- Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070
- Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 Ti
- Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080
- Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 Ti
Graphics cards before this date are exempt. Also not equipped with LHR are all “Founders Editions” from Nvidia and the GeForce RTX 3090.
What does this mean in practice? If you primarily want to game with your graphics card, you don’t have to worry about whether you buy a graphics card with or without LHR. Because performance in games is not affected by it.
If you instead want to do mining, your mining rate will noticeably drop with LHR cards. However, you should also not download random software from the internet, as alleged software against the mining restriction is often infected with malware.
Currently, graphics cards without LHR are even being sold at significantly higher prices on eBay, as the graphics cards for miners are more exciting than the LHR cards. Many miners consider Nvidia’s crypto restriction to be pointless.
AMD’s graphics cards are said to be unattractive for miners due to low video memory
In early 2022, AMD introduced the RX 6500 XT as a hope for gamers. Since AMD deliberately limited the memory of the graphics card to 4 GB, it is so little that it is hardly profitable for miners to collect crypto currencies with such a graphics card. However, the problem is that 4 GB of video memory is also hardly sufficient for many modern top titles.
The graphics card, however, was not able to convince anyone. You can read a detailed report on the situation and the tests here on MeinMMO:
The tests of the Radeon RX 6500 XT show how broken the graphics card market is
