Which GPU Is Best for Mining Ethereum? AMD and Nvidia Cards, Tested
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Page 1:Ethereum: A Bitcoin Killer?
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Page 2:The Graphics Cards We Tested
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Page 3:Modifying A Radeon's BIOS
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Page 4:Results: Modifying GPU Frequency
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Page 5:Results: Modifying GDDR5 Frequency
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Page 6:Tom's Hardware's Optimized GPU/GDDR5 Settings
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Page 7:Results: MH/s Performance
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Page 8:The Holy Grail: The Most Efficient Cards For Mining
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Page 9:What Does The Future Hold?
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Page 10:These Are The Cards To Buy Today
Results: Modifying GPU Frequency
While the Ethash algorithm is more sensitive to graphics memory performance than GPU clock rate, a certain amount of compute power is still necessary. Therefore, we thought it would be interesting to measure how the GPU's frequency affects hash rate, and, by consequence, the graphics card's power consumption. After all, with GPU voltage tied directly to each chip's clock rate, reducing both generally facilitates a nice savings in power. That might not mean much in a gaming PC, but mining rigs with lots of graphics cards under full load are particularly sensitive to power, heat, and cooling.
Power measurements were taken at the wall outlet by subtracting the rest of the system's consumption (observed to be 45W) under load. By maintaining the same scale on different charts, we're able to draw comparisons between cards.
- GPUFreq_msi-rx580-8g
- GPUFreq_sapphire-rx560-4g
- GPUFreq_Sapphire-rx470-mining
- GPUFreq_Asus-gtx1060-6g
- GPUFreq_sapphire-rx550-4g
- GPUFreq_XFX-r9-390
- GPUFreq_XFX-RX480
- GPUFreq_asus-rx570-4g
- GPUFreq_gigabyte-gtx1060-3g
- GPUFreq_Asus-rx580-4g
- GPUFreq_msi-gtx1050ti-4g
- GPUFreq_msi-gtx1060-6g
- GPUFreq_MSI-rx470
- GPUFreq_msi-rx560-4g
Preliminary Observations
- Even reduced to a minimum of ~400 MHz, the GeForce GTX 1060's GPU frequency is still higher than the point at which hashing performance starts dropping. To further improve performance/watt, you'd probably need to manipulate the card's power target.
- The consumption of MSI's GeForce GTX 1060 6GB doesn't vary much at all. This can be blamed on the GPU's voltage, which remains constant regardless of the GP106's clock rate.
Analysis
- The hash rate does not drop as GPU frequency is lowered. This holds true up to a certain point, after which the processor's compute performance cannot keep up. From there, it becomes possible to dial in an optimal clock rate (and optimal voltage) for each card's GPU, minimizing power consumption as much as possible and maximizing efficiency.
Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to find a GeForce GTX 1060 6GB that'll take an aggressive GPU underclock and bring its voltage down as far as possible. If you pick a Radeon card instead, manually set the GPU frequency to ~1 GHz, though it may be necessary to aim higher if you choose to overclock the graphics memory.
MORE: The Ethereum Effect: Graphics Card Price Watch
MORE: How To Mine Ethereum Now
MORE: Experiment: Build a (Profitable) Ethereum Mining Rig From Spare Parts
MORE: Top 25 Cryptocurrencies By Market Cap
MORE: Best Graphics Cards
- Ethereum: A Bitcoin Killer?
- The Graphics Cards We Tested
- Modifying A Radeon's BIOS
- Results: Modifying GPU Frequency
- Results: Modifying GDDR5 Frequency
- Tom's Hardware's Optimized GPU/GDDR5 Settings
- Results: MH/s Performance
- The Holy Grail: The Most Efficient Cards For Mining
- What Does The Future Hold?
- These Are The Cards To Buy Today
If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.
If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat.
If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.
fat chance.
A titan V would have handily crushed any of the cards here with its 70+ MH/s Eth rate.
https://hothardware.com/reviews/nvidia-titan-v-volta-gv100-gpu-review?page=5
But when it comes to making your money back you use:
Cost of graphics card / Megahashes per second (Easy to understand formula, real formula at the bottom)
For the Geforce 1060 that comes out to roughly
$400 / 25MH/s or 16 dollars per megahash (I was able to buy 4 1060s for about $300 each a few months ago. Score!!!)
For the Geforce Titan V that comes out to roughly
$5000 / 82MH/s or 61 dollars per megahash.
As you can see it would take at least 3.8 times as long for a Titan V to pay itself off, not including the power cost.
This isn't the most true comparison due to not taking power into account, but still gives an easily understandable way of seeing why a $5000 GPU isn't worth mining with.
You could have simply bought 3 Geforce 1060s and had a similar hash rate for cheaper.
The goal here being to make back the price of the graphics cards, then everything else is gravy.
Ideally I would have used the formula of
Cost of graphics card / Spreadsheet calculated monthly income taking power and other fluctuations into account.
to calculate on average how long a graphics card would take to pay itself off.
You can also use the calculator on https://whattomine.com/ to quickly calculate the "Spreadsheet calculated monthly income"
Tom's gave you all the information needed for you to decide whether to mine or not.
Let me paint it a bit simpler.
Lets assume you believe the price of Ethereum is going to stay at what it is today, currently $709, forever.
Plugging in all that information into whattomine.com gives us:
https://whattomine.com/coins/151-eth-ethash?utf8=%E2%9C%93&hr=22.5&p=90.0&fee=1.0&cost=0.06&hcost=400&commit=Calculate
(0.06$/kWh is my power cost in my area)
Or $38.78 monthly profit or a 309 day repayment.
If you are confident that Ethereum's price will stay the same or maybe even rise then you could expect to recoup your $400 purchase in at max 309 days.
If 309 days is too long to wait or you are unsure about cryptocurrencies then stay out of the water.
I don't think that Tom's is going to advance mining much; our longtime enthusiast members mostly won't get into it and it's widely enough known already. A little extra knowledge for those of us on the sidelines and, who knows, maybe miners will concentrate on the most efficient cards and the price of the rest will go down. Not an issue for me, I'm running a fanless GT430, so what do I care about current prices?
Just seemed inappropriate is all. But it is trendy as all get out. i know Tom has to be unbiased so even if the miners have single-handedly ruined pricing, put most GFX cards out of reach of many users and basically just bleeped things up Tom's can't get personal. They are earning money. Putting food in their kid's tummies and all that. Who wouldn't like a little extra on the side. My 1080 Ti was purchased at($10 less) than MSRP back in January.
Talk about big, bad and beautiful, not to mention cool. I considered mining for a short period of time, but I didn't go to the darkside. Gaming with my GPU in the 30's and 40's took some time to get used to.
Not at all. Top end gaming can exceed 3.5GB of VRAM.
The 1060 6GB is a mid-range card. Ditto with the 4/580 8GB. Then we go to look at better cards and they only have 3.5GB of VRAM. Not going to work.
Quite the opposite I'd think. Gamers purchasing high end cards wouldn't want them to be hamstrung by a lack of VRAM to play at higher resolutions, whereas I don't think most mining algorithms would be significantly affected. The only concern would be Eth DAG size reaching 3.5 GB, but it's entirely possible it'll go PoS and end eth mining before then anyway. And regardless, you can always mine a different coin.
Also, this calculator shows that DAG size will only reach the point to render 3GB unusable around the end of this year (block ~6.9 million, epoch 231), not epoch 180 like shown in the article. Not sure which to trust...
https://investoon.com/tools/dag_size
From what I've heard you can't mod the BIOS on GTX 10 series cards, which are the only Nvidia cards worth using for eth mining anyway. Do you have a source showing otherwise?
I'm wondering why EVGA's 1080 Ti FTW3(both air and air and water cooled) have a dual BIOS if that is the case which I am fairly positive it is. I guess we just have an extra level of protection if we update the BIOS incorrectly.
Not sure. From a bit of googling, it sounds like you can still flash your BIOS with another signed BIOS, but you are unable to flashed a modded BIOS (due to it having an invalid signature). Maybe the dual BIOS is just to protect against a botched flash, or maybe there exist signed BIOSs out there that you can download and flash. Maybe the dual BIOS is just a standard feature for FTWs that got left on despite not being applicable. All I know is that I can't find any results when I search something like "GTX 1060 BIOS mod" (other than people saying you can't), and given how popular eth mining is you really think it wouldn't be hard to find results if that was a thing.
Salty.