It turns out that ZOTAC has been selling both its RTX 3060 cards before NVIDIA's release embargo on February 25. Now, the ZOTAC GeForce RTX 3060 Twin Edge OC Edition has popped up in a video about mining Ethereum. However, it seems that the RTX 3060 can tell that it is mining cryptocurrencies even without software drivers being installed, which points to NVIDIA having baked something within the BIOS, not just its drivers.
https://www.notebookcheck.net/ZOTAC-GeForce-RTX-3060-showed-off-by-crypto-miner-on-YouTube-hash-rate-limitations-may-be-linked-to-the-BIOS-not-just-to-software-drivers.522758.0.html
Bad bad zotac. I will not buy products after we done with this GPU panademic shortage.
I hope Nvidia will fine them for non-compliance with the contract between these 2 companies
It's like they can't win. People complain that they can't get a card due to miners then nVidia tries to do something about it so gamers have a chance to get cards and people complain that nVidia is restricting hardware usage freedom.