These Are The Cards To Buy Today
At present, mining Ethereum remains attractive on GeForces and Radeons. But the right card choice depends on whether you're looking for maximum hash rates or optimized efficiency, and therefore profitability.
Of the mainstream graphics cards we tested, AMD's Radeon RX 480 and 580 remain the fastest once they are overclocked and dialed in with optimized timings.
That said, try to choose a model that comes with GDDR5 memory operating at 2000 MHz or more. And don't forget to use AMD's ReLive Edition Beta for Blockchain Compute drivers. They facilitate higher performance and solve the problem caused by more recent DAG Epochs.
On the other hand, don't mess with Radeon R9 390 cards. Even though they're relatively fast at stock settings, our results show that high power consumption wrecks efficiency.
The opposite is true of Nvidia's GeForce GTX 1060 6GB, the best choice if you are searching for peak efficiency. Take care, however, to select a model that allows you to dial back the GPU's frequency and voltage to a sufficiently low threshold. It's a real bummer that Nvidia doesn't allow the modification of its BIOSes. This would have allowed us to optimize our samples even more, further improving their efficiency.
Sapphire's RX 470 Mining board deserves a special mention. It's loaded with a mining-optimized BIOS and equipped with high-quality GDDR5. No additional modifications are necessary for this card to demonstrate its best (and most efficient) performance.
Finally, the Radeon RX 560 hits us with love at first sight. Behind their fragile appearance, these graphics cards are diabolically effective, managing to rival Nvidia's GeForce GTX 1060 once you get them set up with mining-oriented BIOS modifications.
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