Bitcoin Forum

Alternate cryptocurrencies => Mining (Altcoins) => Topic started by: s1gs3gv on July 16, 2017, 01:36:28 PM



Title: FPGA or GPU for altcoin mining
Post by: s1gs3gv on July 16, 2017, 01:36:28 PM
Will a good FPGA based miner mine altcoins faster than a good GPU based miner ?


Title: Re: FPGA or GPU for altcoin mining
Post by: Ayers on July 16, 2017, 03:00:50 PM
probably but it require good skill in programming, and also fpga cost more than second hand gpu, but they must also be reprogrammed each time you want to change an algo, which is a pain in the ass but if you can do that i guess it's a good move to choose it over a gpu because they consume way less


Title: Re: FPGA or GPU for altcoin mining
Post by: Ambros on July 16, 2017, 03:02:57 PM
Even big farms are using pure GPU configurations, that being said I suppose that FPGA are just less profitable


Title: Re: FPGA or GPU for altcoin mining
Post by: grape_tectonics on July 16, 2017, 06:32:00 PM
Faster per watt? certainly. Faster per the cost of the device? No way in hell.

Due to the more popular altcoin algorithms being heavily memory dependent, FPGA's have no real advantage. Sure they can crunch whatever little there is to calculate more efficiently but they still have to be hooked to a gpu style memory controller with regular ddr memory.

There are some exotic FPGA's with more advanced memory tech than DDR too but when it comes down to random read bandwidth per dollar, you just can't beat a modern GPU.