Most nvidia consumer/desktop GPUs are crippled intentionally in various subtle ways - tensor cores for example are capped at half speed on all GeForce cards, which is why https://github.com/Zagitta/gpu-unlock exists. The intent is to force you to spend significantly more for the exact same silicon under commercial packaging if you want to do inference tasks.

NVidia has had encrypted/signed driver binaries on linux for ... forever?

I understand that their "secret sauce" might be exposed with open drivers, so I somewhat respect their right to intellectual property in this respect.

they have had encrypted firmware for a long time already, see the missing clock management in nouveau.