AMD vs Nvidia: which mines better?

• AMD vs. Nvidia: which mines better?

At one stage or another, most likely, every miner is faced with a difficult choice - on which cards to build a farm AMD or Nvidia? In this article, we will share a few tips on how to choose video cards and what a particular brand of the device affects.

• AMD OR NVIDIA: ALGORITHM

Choosing a particular brand of the video card, you should, first of all, be guided by the algorithm on which the cryptocurrency functions. This is due to the fact that they differently show themselves in the work with different coins.

For example, AMD cards cope better with DaggerHashimoto and CryptoNight algorithms, while Equihash and NeoScrypt are more suitable for Nvidia. But this kind of correlation does not work 100%. The best - to determine the performance in practice or by using special calculators for mining profits.

To better understand which card, AMD or Nvidia, to choose, we offer you a comparison table, where we look at the hash rates for two different cards - NVIDIA GTX 1060 and AMD R9 380. They have roughly the same claimed performance.

• AMD OR NVIDIA: POWER CONSUMPTION

Another no less important indicator for graphics cards is the power consumption indicator. In addition to the hash rate, it should definitely be taken into account. For example, let's take those NVIDIA GTX 1060 and AMD R9 380 cards. The first one consumes about 120W at standby, and the second one is about 190W. We get that, in addition to the gain in hashrate on Nvidia cards, we also get a gain in power consumption.

It is worth noting that older AMD models have always consumed much more power than cards from Nvidia, but with the latest series the situation has changed - the existing models have equalized with the competitors, and in some cases even surpassed them for the better.

• AMD OR NVIDIA: MEMORY

For mining most coins it does not matter the amount of memory of the video card, but, for example, for mining cryptocurrencies on DaggerHashimoto, it plays one of the most important roles. Therefore, we will definitely compare this characteristic as well. The NVIDIA GTX 1060 in question has 3 GB on board, and the AMD R9 380 has 2 GB. Again the cards from Nvidia are in the lead.

• SUMMARY

All of the above data allows only a general assessment of the situation, but in fact, it is impossible to absolutely protect yourself from using AMD or Nvidia cards. Although Nvidia products are more versatile and efficient, they have a higher cost. In turn, some AMD models are not inferior to their competitors, for example, Radeon Vega 64 is able to mine coins using any algorithm with a high hash rate. In addition, the vast majority of cards from this manufacturer are more affordable.

The ideal option for the arrangement of the farm is the scheme - 50/50. You should run two farms at once with different card companies. This will allow you to be ready for new coins on different algorithms at once. But you should not put cards of different types in one farm - this can lead to frequent bugs and equipment conflicts, which will have a negative impact on performance.