Workable AMD Architectures for GPU mining - a case study - 43rd entry
Hey guys and people of Steemit,
last summer I had the chance to get some hands on experience building Ethereum mining rigs. Plugging and tinkering I've gleaned a couple morsels of useful information for you guys from that time.
It's easy to get lost in the flood of different graphics card models out there, thus I've compiled a list of models which should work for the task of mining a GPU based coin like Ethereum or Monero. For easier comprehension I've sorted the hardware into the following categories:
Designation, Model and variant, Release, Memory, Power Consumption (in Watt) and Hashrate (in H/s).
I've opted against listing average prices as that is subject to too much fluctuation, but you can just look up what one of the cards goes for at your time of reading. Now then, let's have a look:
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I think the metric you should watch out for most is the ratio of Power Consumption to Hashrate. Remember, the hashrate determines how quickly/much you will mine crypto currency at and the power consumption over time dictates how much you are paying for electricity to run this whole shebang. Through this you can compare which GPUs have the most efficient power to mining ratio considering that you need a PSU with enough wattage to run the optimum of 6 graphics cards at a time.
Finally I leave you with a little exercise,
from the diagram below can you learn why "Rig 1" won't work properly even though it has only 5 GPUs out of a maximum of 6?
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If there is an interest for further ramblings in technology let me know :)
enjoy,
Nikki a.k.a ZeroOoC
resources:
AMD model list wiki
GPU Benchmarks
Thanks for providing me the insight that I should not take up mining. Great tech info.
Heh you are welcome.
Next time we are gonna look at actual mining viability and economies of scale.
There are some nice equations to figure out how many GPUs you need to run at the same time to "make sense"
A nice, short, and informative post about mining. I actually do a single GPU with an Nvidia Card. I make a decent return with my 1080 8GB card on a few algorithms. Zcash and VTC are my money makers right now.
Thanks for your reply!
Indeed the 1080 is quite the beast if you use it well and I prefer my Nvidia setup for streaming and gaming. Had some success using AMD GPUs for multi-camera video editing. I'm not really mining myself anymore, and when I was I was doing it for other people. Ah well, you never stop learning.