This will make it less economical for miners to use the card for mining Ethereum. Nvidia said it had focused on Ethereum because it "has the highest global mining yield for any GPU-mineable coin at the moment and thus is likely the main demand driver for GPUs in mining".
However, it has also decided to sell a range of crypto-currency mining processors CMPs. Nvidia said the production of its CMPs would not impact the availability of its graphics cards. But critics of crypto-currencies such as Bitcoin say the energy they consume is wasteful.
Bitcoin consumes 'more electricity than Argentina'. The great graphics card shortage of and We're not here to encourage people to start mining, and we're definitely not suggesting you should mortgage your house or take out a big loan to try and become the next big mining sensation. Mostly, we're looking at the data based on current market conditions. Predicting where cryptocurrencies will go next is even more difficult than predicting the weather, politics, or the next big meme.
If you don't already have the hardware required to get started on mining today or really, about eight months ago , you're late to the party. Like the old gold rush, the ones most likely to strike it rich are those selling equipment to the miners rather than the miners themselves.
If you've looked for a new or used graphics card lately, the current going prices probably caused at least a raised eyebrow, maybe even three! Our GPU pricing index has additional details, but the market had a perfect storm of pandemic induced shortages and increased demand, and mining only made a bad situation worse. Then I looked at prices and realized my old card is selling for as much as I paid over three years ago!
Pascal and Vega cards from three or four years ago are currently selling at close to their original launch prices — sometimes more. If you've got an old graphics card sitting around, you might even consider selling it yourself though finding a replacement could prove difficult. The good news for those not interested in mining is that profitability has dropped, thanks in part to China's crackdown on cryptocurrency miners.
Now more than ever, we strongly discourage people from trying to strike it rich with crypto mining. Even with reduced GPU prices, it could take more than a year to break even, and Ethereum will switch to proof of stake some time around December or January — plus there's the environmental cost to consider.
But the cryptocurrency market is nothing if not extremely volatile, and many are willing to take a risk now in hopes of scoring a big payoff later. Ultimately, we know many gamers and PC enthusiasts are upset at the lack of availability for graphics cards, but we cover all aspects of PC hardware — not just gaming.
We've looked at GPU mining many times over the years, including back in , , and Those are all times when the price of Bitcoin shot up, driving interest and demand. The only prediction we're willing to make is a lovely tautology: Prices on Bitcoin and Ethereum will change in the months and years ahead — sometimes up, and sometimes down.
And just like we've seen so many times before, the impact on graphics card pricing and availability will continue to exist. Proceed at your own risk. With that preamble out of the way, let's get to the main point: What are the best mining GPUs? This is somewhat on a theoretical level, as you can't actually buy the cards at retail for the most part, but we have a solution for that as well. We're going to use eBay pricing — on sold listings — taken from our GPU pricing index.
How much can you make by mining Ethereum with a graphics card, and how long will it take to recover the cost of the card using the currently inflated eBay prices?
Let's take a look. For this chart, we've used the current difficulty combined with the average price of Ethereum over the past week — because nothing else is coming close to GPU Ethereum for mining profitability right now. We've optimized Ethereum mining performance , with an eye toward minimizing power consumption while maximizing hash rates.
Also note that we're using real-world in-line power measurements for the GPUs, collected using our Powenetics hardware and software solution , so our power figures are not relying on software data, which can be off by anywhere from a few watts to over 50W, depending on the GPU.
Taking the hash rate and current difficulty, we subtract the power cost to come up with daily profits. Then we used the approximate eBay price divided by the current daily profits to come up with a time to repay the cost of the graphics card. The following table is sorted by time to break even assuming price and difficulty don't change, which they absolutely will. Bear in mind that prices can and will fluctuate, a lot, so this is at best a snapshot in time of current profitability for GPU mining of Ethereum.
The delay in rolling out proof of stake certainly seems to have helped. Last time we updated this list, the best-case scenario for breaking even required about days.
Increased Ethereum prices and perhaps slightly lower GPU prices have reduced that to as few as days at current rates — which will of course change, because cryptocurrencies are nothing if not volatile. Keep in mind that Ethereum is still supposed to transition to proof of stake no mining That transition has been delayed a couple of years now, though, so who knows when or even if it will ever happen?
Six months from now we could see substantially lower profitability, if GPU miners are forced to find alternatives to Ethereum. Or perhaps some other coin will take off and replace Ethereum.
One interesting point is that the LHR cards could actually end up being more desirable if a non-Ethash coin becomes the best option. Still, that's a big risk, far bigger than if you started mining several months back.
Also note that finding some of the older model cards in sufficient quantities may be more difficult, and running multiple GPUs off a single PC requires PCIe riser cards and other extras that add to the total cost. Not surprisingly, Nvidia's LHR model cards tend to do far worse overall, though even those still break even in under days at current rates. They cost less as well, so if you're not interested in mining, saving a bit of money by option for an LHR model is a reasonable choice.
For pure graphics card power, you should divide the numbers in the table by your PSU's efficiency rating e. If you're running multiple GPUs off a single PC, total waste power would be somewhat lower, though it really doesn't impact things that much.
If you take the worst-case scenario and add 60W to every GPU, the time to break even increases by days. It's also fair to say that our test results are not representative of all graphics cards of a particular model. VBIOS mods may help use at your own risk , and some models simply run better and faster.
It's also quite good in terms of power efficiency, and it's the fastest GPU around. There's certainly something to be said for mining with fewer higher efficiency GPUs if you can acquire them. February 26, That's why cryptomining can daunt newcomers—rumors about hardware degradation have made them fearful of killing their darlings. Lucky for them, mining doesn't degrade your GPU any more than a lifetime of l33t gaming.
If you're totally new to blockchain, get good with our Gamer's Guide to Blockchain and Crypto. If you're not sure you're ready for the rigors of mining, we think the best way to get started is by using Salad , our free app that turns idle PC resources into rewards value for games, gift cards, subscriptions and more. It's the one-click way to profit from your PC.
Since the crypto gold rush , miners and gamers have butted heads over their predilection for the most performant GPUs. High demand led to shortages and price gouging, making an expensive hobby even more dear. As the crypto craze cooled—and desktop miners got muscled out by huge ASICs farms —the market flooded with cheap, second-hand GPUs from remorseful investors.
Despite the newfound surplus, gamers got wary that those cards might be practically worthless due to hardware degradation. Cryptomining isn't the first cottage industry to turn to GPUs for processing. Their aptitude for parallelized computation makes them equally useful for more rendering particle effects in Far Cry, solving cryptographic equations , and hunting E.
Mining isn't a danger to your hardware if done properly— and there's hard evidence from objective research to back that up. Researchers from UFD Tech produced a lengthy video that does a thorough job debunking some of the rumors. Their experiment benchmarked GPUs from very different walks of life: one that mined for two years straight, and another used for gaming here and there.
They found little difference between the two in terms of performance.
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