How To Choose Graphics Card For Mining In 2020

Unlike our other posts which are targeted at all types of audiences, this post is a bit on the advanced side. You have to have prior knowledge of mining to get the most help from this. If you believe you are not experienced enough, check our other posts.

As mentioned in the title this post is only going to cover the GPU mining scene. So you will not find mining information regarding ASICs or CPU. Without further ado let’s hop into it.

What Is The Best Graphics Card For Mining

Right now, the whole GPU mining sector is divided into three categories. You have the low budget AMD Radeon series cards. Alongside this, you have fairly similar but sometimes even more powerful Nvidia GeForce cards. Finally, you have the biggest and the most powerful of all, the AMD Vega cards.

But wait a minute, both Radeon and Vega are AMD products. So you might be wondering then why did I mention them separately. Well, there’s a method to my madness.

Actually, these two cards belong to two entirely different architecture and platform. Radeon cards have been AMD’s main workhorse in the GPU segment for more than a decade now. AMD Vega cards are fairly new and the series was launched just a few months back.

If you are looking for sub $200 GPUs for mining then AMD’s Radeon series RX 560, 570, etc is your best bet. If you are willing to go as high as $450 per GPU then Nvidia GeForce series cards are the best bang for your bucks. But if you are feeling a little more adventurous and consider yourself a pro, then go either with the $400 RX Vega 56 or with the $500 Vega 64.

Wait I’m Confused…

Which Graphics Card Should I Buy?

Currently, the cryptocurrency market is flooded with at least 1200 different cryptocurrencies. And these cryptocurrencies employ several different proofs and verification algorithms.

But the most popular ones are SHA256, DaggerHashimoto, Equihash, Cryptonight, etc. Bitcoin uses SHA256 and it is fairly difficult to mine nowadays, with the advent of ASICs and such. But mining the other three can still be profitable with the correct hardware.

These three algorithms favor different types of architecture and love some specific GPUs. And that’s what I am going to talk about now.

Best GPU For Mining Ethereum (Ethash)

DaggerHashimoto is a proof-of-work algorithm that is currently used in various different cryptocurrencies namely Ethereum, Ethereum Classic, MusicCoin, Expanse, SoilCoin, DubaiCoin, UBIQ, etc.

And the best card to mine the cryptocurrencies using this algorithm is AMD Radeon RX series graphics cards. You can get yourself an RX 560 for roughly about $100 while an RX 570 will set you back at least $200. But the prices of both of these cards fluctuate heavily as both of them are miners’ all-time favorites.

AMD RX 5700XT is the best Graphics card for mining Ethereum. It provides the most optimum ethereum hashrate of 51 Mh/s with power ussage of 140W. With 8GB GDDR6 memory it can truely shine with mining ethereum.

These low-cost cards are quite popular because they allow everyone to enter the mining market without burning a hole in the pocket. Plus the returns are good too.

You can also go with RX 480 or RX 580 for mining Ethereum.

Here is a list of AMD RX Series Graphics Cards which are good at mining ethereum with their hash rates –

AMD RX 5600XT & AMD RX 5700 made a huge leap in mining performance from their predecessors. We also have AMD RX 5700XT GPU for mining but it performs the same as AMD RX 5700, you can buy whichever is priced lower.

Best Graphics Card To Mine Zcash (Equihash)

If you didn’t know already cryptocurrencies like Zcash, Zcash Classic, Komodo, Hush, Zencash, etc currently use Equihash as their proof of work algorithm. Bitcoin Gold, a hard fork of the original Bitcoin is also using Equihash to block ASICs and only allows GPU mining.

In my opinion, the best cards to mine Equihash with are GeForce GTX 1070 and the newest release 1070 Ti. These two cards provide the most value for money when it comes to overall as well as mining performance. The Equihash mining market has a lot of potentials since most Equihash based coins have a strict policy against ASIC mining.

Here is Mining Guide –

• Most Profitable Zcash Mining Rig Build 2017.
• 8 GPU ZCash Mining Rig Build – Nvidia GTX 1080.
• 13 GPU Profitable ZCash Mining Rig.
• Build Profitable Hush Coin 8 GPU Mining Rig.

Best RX Vega GPU For Mining (Cryptonight)

I am still sticking to my opinion that RX Vega is the most powerful graphics card that I have ever seen. Well at least as far as the mining performance is considered.

Unlike most other graphics cards that use GDDR5 or GDDR5X, RX Vega uses HBM. HBM stands for High Bandwidth Memory. Both Vega 56 and Vega 64 use HBM2 which gives them an incredible advantage over other cards in mining.

But what should you mine? Currently, you can yield great results by mining any cryptocurrencies that use the Cryptonight algorithm. This includes but is not limited to popular cryptocurrencies like Monero, Digitalnote, Sumokoin, etc.

RX Vega 56 can cost as much as $400 while its big brother 64 is priced at about $500. But the price to performance ratio is mindblowing. You can reach up to 1950 H/s while mining with a single Vega 64. While with a Vega 56 running Vega 64 bios you can clock as high as 1850 H/s.

You can also configure the RX Vega 56 without tweaking the bios and achieve the same performance, but it’s a bit unstable. For comparison, a top of the line GeForce GTX 1080 Ti can achieve a hash rate of up to 900 H/s.

This kind of performance can only be achieved by using RX Vega’s HBCC or High Bandwidth Cache Controller technique. While the performance is beastly the power consumption remains quite under control. Each of the cards is expected to hog about 130W under full mining load.

Here is a mining build guide –

• 6 GPU Vega 64 Mining Rig Build – Monero (XMR)

Final Words

As you can see each card has its own strong point and only performs well in a certain mining environment. So it all comes down to which cryptocurrency you want to mine. If you want to mine Ethereum, go with a low-cost RX 570 build.

Or else if you want to mine Zcash, don’t waste your time looking any further because 1070 and 1070 Ti will always be the answer. But if you consider mining Monero then rest assured you will not get as much hash rate as an RX Vega card.

The newer cards from AMD can perform so much better. If you can grab RX 5700XT or any of the latest cards you will be able to mine ethereum with the best hashrates. The newer AMD 6000 Series graphics cards are currently not in stock if available are overly priced. If you can get them at their original/stock price grab them as well.

If you have any question you can let me know in the comments, I would be happy to help you out.

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