The popularity of mining is growing, increasing people’s interest in the issues of cryptocurrency mining and the necessary equipment with which this process occurs. In our article we will try to cover all the issues related to video cards. We will review and recommend the best video cards for mining, and tell you about the parameters you need to pay attention to in order to independently choose a good device for your farm.
Is it relevant to mine bitcoin on video cards?
At the very beginning of the history of crypto mining, almost all components of a computer could be used: a microprocessor, a video card, and even a hard drive. Gradually, the complexity of hash sum calculations increased, which required more hardware power. At the same time, the miners' reward decreased. All these changes have made mining on a video card the most popular and profitable way to mine many virtual currencies. Except, unfortunately, Bitcoin.
Bitcoin, like all PoW cryptocurrencies (read more about PoW and PoS in our article), was mined by entire farms from video cards, which were built by enthusiasts - the pioneers of mining. But all this is in the past. These farms have given way to special-purpose integrated circuits, which, apart from calculating hash sums, can do nothing else, but do it several hundred times faster, consuming significantly less electricity. Bitcoins are now mined by the largest ASIC hangars, more than 70% of which are concentrated in China. There is nothing for beginner crypto miners to do there. Thus, mining bitcoins in 2022 using a video card is not economically feasible.
However, cryptocurrency is not limited to Bitcoin, and video cards are still sold in regular stores, unlike integrated circuits. They still do a fairly good job of calculating hashes of other cryptocurrencies. For example, Ethereum. Mining ether on video cards, depending on the price of electricity and the exchange rate, according to experienced miners, pays off on average in 4–6 months. This period is quite enough to have time to mine ETH before the creators transfer it from PoW to PoS.
Radeon HD7990
- ETH/ETC hashrate : 36 Mh/sec
- Memory capacity : 2x 3072 GB
- Memory frequency : 6000 MHz
- Core frequency : 1000 MHz
- Power consumption : 375 W
Probably at that age it was the dream of any gamer, since it allowed you to run any game. Now, thanks to the fact that it is two-chip, it produces as much as 36 Mh/sec, while the power consumption is 375 W, which actually means that it is very hot. It has long been impossible to find a new one, but you can still look at it in good condition.
Features of algorithms in mining using video cards
The profitability of mining on video cards (profitable video cards - later in the article) depends on the cryptocurrency, since each electronic cash has its own algorithm for creating new blocks.
- The most famous algorithm is SHA256. This is the algorithm for Bitcoin (BTC, XBT), Bitcoin Cash (BCH, BCC), Namecoin (NMC), SwiftCoin (STC). This algorithm is the least cost-effective due to the fact that it allows for the presence of high-power computing devices such as ASICs on the market, which reduces the struggle for remuneration to the game of several large investors (ASICs are usually very expensive).
- The next most common algorithm is Scrypt. Its main feature is the complexity of calculating the hash sum, which requires a larger amount of RAM. Scrypt hosts such cryptocurrencies as Litecoin (LTC), Dogecoin (DOGE, XDG), BlackCoin (BC), PotCoin (POT), BitConnect (BCC) and others.
- Ethereum (ETH), as well as its fork Ethereum classic (ETC), are mined using the Ethash algorithm, which was created as an ASIC-resistant analogue of SHA256. Ethash is the main mining competitor of Equihash.
- The latter is based on a concept in computer science and cryptography called the Generalized Birthday Problem. Equihash defines the algorithm for the following cryptocurrencies: Zcash (ZEC), Zcash Classic (ZCL), Zencash (ZEN) and Hush (HUSH). Like Scrypt, the number of coins mined in Equihash depends on how much RAM you have.
Wait, something will happen!
In the last article, I already noted the planned new products from Nvidia specifically for mining P104-100 and P106-100. According to my assumptions, the first one will produce approximately 10000
rubles, while the second one costs
7,000
rubles. Is it worth waiting for them? It’s definitely up to you to decide here, just count on the fact that you buy them forever, because I’m sure it will be impossible to sell them later (the lack of video outputs, poor cooling and a limited warranty will play a role). And you will only want to sell it in one case - if it stops bringing in money, and if this happens, then there is nothing more to do with it. This is the advantage of regular cards, that they can always be sold at a third of the price to gamers.
What criteria should you use to choose a video card?
The list of PoW cryptocurrencies that can be profitably mined on GPU devices and their corresponding algorithms are grouped in our table.
Diagram. The most profitable algorithms for GPU mining* (as of September 2017):
*for NVIDIA GTX 1080 Ti.
Equihash is the most profitable algorithm in terms of mining time today for mining cryptocurrency on video cards. This statement is also true for the following TOP 5 GPU devices as of 10/04/2017:
- NVIDIA GTX 1080 Ti.
- NVIDIA GTX 1080.
- NVIDIA GTX 980 Ti.
- AMD R9 Fury Nano.
- NVIDIA GTX 1070.
So, the best way to choose the right graphics card is to determine its yield (profitability). The following services will help you with this:
- Determine the device hashrate using the table.
- Go to the profitability calculator for mining on video cards, select the cryptocurrency corresponding to the algorithm. Specify hashrate, GPU power and electricity cost. Click Calculate.
For example, mining a GTX 960 using the NeoScrypt algorithm will bring its owner 0.00460810 BTC per month or ~ 1,149.25 RUB per month (at the rate of 249398.7 RUB/BTC). The average price of GTX 960 on Yandex.Market is ~16,000 RUB. Thus, the payback on your card without taking into account electricity and exchange rate volatility will be 16,000 RUB / 1,149.25 RUB ~ 14 months.
Mining calculators
Graphic cards support any of the possible mining algorithms, and therefore you can mine hundreds of different coins with their help. The most common coins mined using GPUs are those powered by Equihash, Ethash, Zcash, and CryptoNight.
There are calculators online that can calculate the profitability of mining any coin. You just need to indicate the model of your video card so that the program will instantly calculate the profitability and recommend the most profitable cryptocurrency at the moment.
The best calculators are:
- WhatToMine is the most accurate and reliable mining calculator. You can specify the model and number of video cards, after which the site will calculate their computing power for certain algorithms class=”aligncenter” width=”969″ height=”479″[/img]
- NiceHash ranks second in accuracy among similar services. It also differs from them in the ability to make forecasts on payback for the coming days, in addition to profitability for the current day. This forecast is based on the average cost of equipment on the market, the specified hashrate and the current cryptocurrency rate.
- Cryptocompare. A simple calculator for calculating mining of cryptocurrencies: BTC, ETH, XMR, ZEC, DASH, ETC, LTC.
mining calculator Cryptocompare - Coinwarz. Calculator with good functionality. You can set the parameters yourself: network complexity, exchange rate, reward, hashrate, equipment cost, pool commission, electricity cost.
How technical characteristics affect payback
Technical parameters affecting the payback of video cards:
- video card memory capacity, Mb;
- GPU frequency, MHz;
- memory frequency, MHz;
- energy consumption, W.
The first 3 indicators will affect the hashrate (mining speed). 4th – for energy costs.
Let's look at the top 5 video cards mentioned earlier. All parameters are aggregated from Yandex Market. Additionally, the cost of components in the computeruniverse online store is reflected (purchase with promotional code FWBFBDF will be cheaper).
Table of video cards for mining with comparison of characteristics (when you hover over the parameter, a description pops up):
| Video card name | NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti | NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 | NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti | AMD Radeon R9 Fury X | NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 |
| Specifications | |||||
| Technical process | 16 nm | 16 nm | 28 nm | 28 nm | 16 nm |
| Memory | 11,264 MB | 8 192 MB | 6 144 MB | 4,096 MB | 8 192 MB |
| GPU frequency | 1632 MHz | 1607 MHz | 1025 MHz | 1050 MHz | 1607 MHz |
| Memory type | GDDR5X | GDDR5X | GDDR5 | H.B.M. | GDDR5 |
| Memory frequency | 11 448 MHz | 10,000 MHz | 7010 MHz | 1,000 MHz | 8 108 MHz |
| Memory bus | 352 bit | 256 bit | 384 bit | 4096 bit | 256 bit |
| Math block | |||||
| Number of universal processors | 3584 | 2560 | 2816 | 4096 | 1920 |
| Number of texture units | 224 | 160 | 176 | 256 | 120 |
| Number of rasterization blocks | 88 | 64 | 96 | 64 | 64 |
| additional characteristics | |||||
| CUDA support | YES | YES | YES | — | YES |
| AMD APP (ATI Stream) support | — | — | — | YES | — |
| Auxiliary power connector | 8 pin + 8 pin | 8 pin + 6 pin | 8 pin + 6 pin | 8 pin + 8 pin | 8 pin + 6 pin |
| Recommended power supply power | 600 W | 500 W | no data | no data | 500 W |
| TDP | 250 W | 180 W | 250 W | 275 W | 150 W |
| Cooling system design | custom | custom | custom | reference | custom |
| Price, rub (October 2017) | from 59 728 | from 33 365 | 50997 | 27404 | from 31 988 |
| Computeruniverse price as of 10/04/2017 | 50,616 + delivery 2,045 | 30,678 + delivery 2,045 | — | — | 31,192 + delivery 2,045 |
As you can see, only cards with GPUs from different manufacturers differ technologically. The main competitors of standard configurations are known to everyone - AMD and NVIDIA. Otherwise, the hashrate will, by and large, be determined by the parameters mentioned above. The higher these indicators, the higher the hashrate.
Best ASIC miners for Bitcoin
Bitcoins are one of the few cryptocurrencies that, due to the ever-increasing complexity of calculations, are unprofitable to mine on video cards. To mine these coins, specially created equipment is used - ASIC miners or “ASICs”. Compared to video cards, they have significantly more computing power and at the same time consume much less energy. In addition, an ASIC is a ready-made device, often with its own power supply, network controller, etc. Nothing needs to be assembled, just connect and configure.
Mining chips on an ASIC board
The disadvantage of ASIC-based solutions is their narrow scope of application, or rather, support for only one calculation algorithm (very rarely - two), in particular, SHA-256. If a video card is relatively easy to repurpose for another currency, then such a trick will not work with an ASIC. If it is for Bitcoin (and other SHA-256 currencies), Ether, Litecoin, Zcash, Monero, etc. will not be mined on it.
When choosing ASIC miners for Bitcoin, they adhere to the same criteria as when selecting types, the main one of which is the ratio of hash cost and energy efficiency. Today, 3 models demonstrate the best results in this indicator.
AntMiner S7
Characteristics
- Hash rate – 4.73TH/s.
- Technological process – 28 nm.
- Mining chip – BM1385 (total quantity – 162 pieces).
- Energy consumption – 1210 W.
- The number of hashes per 1 W of electricity is 0.25 W/Gh.
- Price – $480-490.
On it, your earnings for 1 month will be 0.1645 BTC.
AntMiner S9
Characteristics
- Hash rate – 13.5 TH/s.
- Technological process – 16 nm.
- Mining chip – BM1387 (total quantity – 189 pieces).
- Energy consumption – 1475 W.
- The number of hashes per 1 W of electricity is 0.098 W/Gh.
- Price – $2000-2100.
On it, your earnings for 1 month will be 0.3603 BTC.
Payback of video cards
We know the best devices, now we need to calculate their payback periods. The table below shows the same top 5 video cards with the payback calculation for each as of October 2022. The algorithm column shows the most profitable algorithm in terms of mining time for a specific video card for the month (September).
Table calculating the payback period:
| Video card name | GeForce GTX 1080 Ti | GeForce GTX 1080 | GeForce GTX 980 Ti | AMD Radeon R9 Fury X | GeForce GTX 1070 |
| Price (minimum), rub | 52 661 | 32 723 | 50 997 | 27 404 | 31 988 |
| Algorithm | Equihash | Lyra2Rev2 | Equihash | Equihash | NeoSkrypt |
| Hashrate | 630 Sol/s | 49.11 MH/s | 461 Sol/s | 450 Sol/s | 1.01 MH/s |
| Income per month, rub | 4 513 | 3 453 | 3 209 | 3 092 | 3 085 |
| Payback (excluding electricity costs and exchange rate changes) | 12 months | 10 months | 16 months | 9 months | 11 months |
The most profitable card in the rating was AMD Radeon R9 Fury X – 9 months. Of course, you must take into account electricity costs, changes in network speed and the volatility of the exchange rate of the currencies you are going to mine. But nevertheless, we saw the general picture of the payback of top video cards.
GeForce GTX 1050 Ti
GeForce GTX 1050 Ti is ranked ninth among the best. This is one of the most budget-friendly accelerators on the list, with which you can try to earn extra money. However, you shouldn't place high hopes on this graphics adapter. The output speed of the video card is only 14 megahash per second. However, this also has its advantages. The power consumption of the graphics adapter is only 75 watts. The RAM is quite small and is only 4 gigabytes. But the low cost of this piece of hardware justifies everything.
Where is the best place to buy video cards?
In the second quarter of 2022, NVIDIA increased revenue by more than 50% compared to the second quarter of 2016 - $251 million. AMD's revenue for the same period was 18% more - $1.2 billion. Do you understand what we mean?
The main manufacturers of GPU chips are breaking revenue records and, most likely, cannot keep up with demand. Manufacturers, and after them retailers, not being able to satisfy demand, begin to raise prices. In Russia, the situation is aggravated by a weak national currency, which is why the cost of cards can be 1.5–2 times more expensive.
Perhaps that’s why ordering video cards in foreign stores will be a little more profitable than buying them in Russia. On online forums you can find people who will deliver components from abroad to you for 500–1000 rubles. The only problem will be to find a reliable intermediary. Don't forget about customs duties. In Russia, the customs payment is 30% of the value of goods when imported for more than $1,000.
If we talk about online stores, video cards are bought on the foreign computeruniverse (5 euro discount using promotional code FWBFBDF ) or the Russian onlinetrade (+ 150 bonuses for registration).
GeForce GTX 1060
GeForce GTX 1060 is considered one of the best video accelerators, so it takes a worthy place in the list of leaders in 2022. This video card boasts quite good speed indicators, which amount to 20 Mh per second. The graphics adapter performs quite well in Ethereum mining. Electricity consumption is minimal and is at the level of 120 watts. This is a completely budget video adapter that is in good standing with Mainers. However, the amount of memory here is not very large - only 6 gigabytes. Payback on energy costs occurs quite quickly and is about 6.5 months.
Mining on old devices
Buying devices on the secondary market is always a risk. It is important to know how carefully the old card was used, overclocked or repaired. You should check the used device on site before purchasing. Mining involves overclocking the device to its maximum limits. Many miners take advantage of this opportunity to quickly pay back an expensive purchase. This may result in loss of performance due to elevated temperatures and improper operation.
Try to use new video cards or new models that already have a reliable cooling system built into them. Such a system will prevent overheating during overclocking. As a rule, the later the card's release date, the more stable and efficient its operation under maximum loads. Which is exactly what is required in mining.
Is it possible to mine on cheap GPUs?
If the goal is profitable mining, when the income received will cover all the costs of paying for electricity, the characteristics of the video card must be higher than the minimum level. Cryptocurrency mining on cheap cards will not be economically feasible if the performance of video adapters does not provide this condition.
This method is suitable if you are a system administrator with access to a large computer network in which you can organize hidden mining. But this is already illegal activity. On the forums, miners say that per month, with an average load of several dozen PCs during the working day, they can mine up to $150.
What digital coins should I mine?
Having purchased video cards for mining, the user asks a completely logical question, what kind of electronic currency to mine. Those who want to receive stable profits should turn their attention to Ethereum. It is resistant to overloads, the complexity of calculations will increase only after six months, in addition, it has the highest profitability compared to other sites. It is also worth mentioning the cryptocurrencies Dash and Zcash.
You can forget about Bitcoin. It is simply impossible to mine it yourself, and turning to the services of pools is unprofitable. Their masternodes will take a significant part of the profit, depriving the user of what they earned.
Mining on special video cards
Some video card manufacturers, predicting continued high demand for their products, are planning to release special mining devices in the near future. Such devices will be intended only for crypto mining, and their price will be significantly lower than for gaming GPUs.
ASUS has already presented the Mining-RX470-4G model on its website. Its characteristics:
- AMD Radeon RX 470;
- 7000 MHz (1750 MHz GDDR5);
- 256-bit;
- GDDR5 4GB.
Specialized cards do not have video outputs.
They are not on sale yet, but we are confident that they will be in demand and, most importantly, will free up the market for gaming cards.
Advantages and disadvantages
pros
- You can mine any coins if their complexity allows it.
- Easy to adapt to market changes.
- GPU mining, unlike ASIC mining, does not interfere with decentralization.
- Video cards are liquid; if you no longer need them, you can always sell them.
Minuses
- You need to buy and configure many components and understand the intricacies of overclocking.
- The design takes up more space.
- Mining efficiency is lower than that of ASICs.
- Higher energy consumption.
