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Hi guys,

I`m new to mining, been reading a lot lately to get understanding how it works. I have spare money to invest, looking to build a rig. But my problem is - AMD or nvidia GPU`s? As per current pricing/availability looking at 1060 or RX580 cards - about 15 in total. Why these? To me they look best price/performance/payback time ratio. Which GPU is able to mine wider range of coins? As coin I`m mining increases in difficulty, I would like to switch to other one. But apparently some coins are mined much better on AMD, some on nvidia. Dilemma.

Thanks

Since this is the bitcoin section, this: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2017600.0

Could mod please move my thread to correct area. Sorry for a mistake. Thanks.

AMDs good for eth and cryptonight algos
Nvidia good for equihash , cryptonight (bit lower than AMDs but still ok) and may be lyra/neoscrypt but has specific tweaking for those 2 algos.

Nvidia I think could be configured easier to consume less Watts, if you care.  Usually Nvidia's needs some tweaking to find the sweet spot. May be a bit more versatile in terms of algorithms.
AMD is easier. Mod bios , start and forget but based on my experience consumes a bit more power.

Get whichever is cheapest GPU :)  Either AMD or Nvidia would work out.
Invest in good PSU i my advice.

By no means do I want to hijack your thread, but I've had the similar question. I'm personally not looking to make huge profits and get rich quick but mining as a hobby and hitting ROI would be nice.

I've seen some speak about increase in difficulty in some common alt coins that could phase out AMD cards. I'm still doing a lot of research if it will be all AMD cards or just the lower end cards with low memory (i.e. 3 gig cards). This same logic could be true about NVIDIA cards as well that have 3 gigs.

I'm interested in seeing others responses but wanted to throw in another way to look at the AMD versus NVIDIA angle.

Don't save your money on PSU. About GPUs. Buy the cheapest and the best, but nobody knows which GPU this is :)

Bimmber:  Another suggestion that comes to my mind since you want to get 15 cars.

get half AMDs, half Nvidia :)   
You would have to decide how many per rig, calculate Power supply specs/power needed etc. and go for it.

Try to find the best price: nVidia 1060(6GB) or AMD RX470, RX570 (4GB)

I guess you've done some part of your reading assignments


Nvidia could be a plus when it comes to wide range of coin mining, however it may seems so pricey compared to AMD.

as what other suggested, you may get both, its a wise choice for me as you may consider or foreseen future difficulties, you still have your trump cards waiting for you just in case you may need to switch coins.

Get AMD cards, all my rigs are AMD cards RX 580 and VEGA 64. All perfect.

I have all the RX 580 cards with ETHOS.

RX VEGA 64 cards with Windows 10.

Go for amd if you want to just plug and mine ethereum almost all the time and you are relatively new
Go for nvidia if you want to have better profits at the expense of researching niche coins and holding coins till better price for selling
I my self have gone both since on some days nvidia gives better profit and on others its amd , I mostly sell eth mined by amd to pay for bills or to add more cards , sell only coins mined by nvidia when I gain a reasonable profit from them

Sell the ETH for paying the bills.. This reminds me to my yougner days when i sold 50 ETH just to pay the electric bill.. Imagine if I hold this ammount of ETH until today.. ;)

This would be the optimal solution.  You would be able to compare your cards side by side and gain more insight this way.  If you decide you want to go all in on one or the other you could sell and buy what you want.  For now the cards hold their price pretty well.  No telling how long that will last though.

I'd say the best choice now is amd vega - and a rig with four of them. It is hard to make it work really stable if there would more vegas then four, though it is possible.  You can mine any cryptonight based coins - monero, electroneum and still get like $5-7 per card a day.

NVIDIA 1060 or RX580, If I choose RX580, U can search for information and compare the hashrate, power consumption and more. Although both have their respective advantages on specific algorithms.

Hash rate RX580 is better than 1060 in monero, zcash but power consumption 1060 lower than RX580.

I have checked prices in newegg and amazon right now the AMD RX 580 8gb and GTX 1060 6gb is around the same price(around $280 to $330). So if you want to have a better hash rate go for the RX 580 8gb since they are the better performers in mining but if you really want to save electricity (which I doubt you would unless electricity in your area has a high cost) then buy the GTX 1060 6gb. I would suggest to get the RX 580 because of the hash rate if it is cheap or in stock if you could only get a few of it the go for a GTX 1060 6gb but you might want to have a separate rig for it since you might end up having trouble if you will mix cards.

Why you don't buy 1070 cards? I think they are best bang for a buck overall.
But that is just my two cents

First of all, you have to choose between AMD GPU and nVidia GPU or red team and green team in short

nvidia cards generally more user friendly to beginners, imho!
so that is why I would recommend take gtx1060 3gb and mine ZEC or btcGold   - any equihash coins
if you have more budget - try to find 1060 6gb with samsung memory - then ETH mining is open for you as well

Seems like it will be two rigs - one AMD, one Nvidia. Each can mine some coins better than other. Thank you for all your help.

Why two separate rigs? Get a Biostar Motherboard TB250-BTC PRO and go 6 Nvidia/6AMD

The best GPUs for cryptocurrency mining 2018

http://digitalbodha.com/the-best-gpus-for-cryptocurrency-mining-2018.html

No issues with drivers/mining software when mixing cards?

Sooooooo much easier and less headaches with nvidia cards. It wasn't always the case. I used to prefer AMD, and I wish it was still the case but it's now a breeze with Nvidia. I wouldn't buy any new AMD cards unless it was the deal of the a lifetime.

Yes bro you no need to worry about the mixing cards in the one mother board. You can add the Nividia cards and Rx series cards together. Personally I did not tried about this but my friend who is mining with the GPU rig is doing that. I only mine the ethereum with the 6 numbers of rx470 cards.
It gives around 130+ MH for mining the ethereum. Cards will differs and give the hash power according to the coin you choose for mining.

I would keep them separate as well.  NVIDIA is always less of a headache than AMD cards.  While AMD can mine ETH and Cryptonight better than NVIDIA, I still prefer to use NVIDIA cards to mine all the other options that are out there.  I would set up two rigs if you want to have both cards and save yourself the hardware troubles.

RX480 not available for sale any more, at least in UK. Shame.

Yes, read that so many times. Some advise to even use server PSU`s, they are much better quality. But I`m not sure they would have connectors for let`s say 4 Vega or Ti cards.

i would buy both nvidia and amd instead of just buying one of them. why?there's ton of possibility out there. at one point you will experience high diff situation, which lessen your income. with rigs from both amd and nvidia you'll have plenty of choice to survive, find another coin that still give you maximum profits.

Based on that website. The 1080ti is the best card to mine with.

the 'best' most expensive probably. Lots of coins to mine on this one.
I would say Vega 56 and the 1070s follow next, then RX5xx.

That website is a joke - no facts presented, just blurbs.

 The "best" card depends a lot on what you want to mine - and which has the best ROI varies, often day to day and sometimes hour to hour as difficulties and prices change on the various coins.

 RX 470/480 pricing of late when you can find them at ALL have tended to be higher than pricing on the newer RX 570/580 - performance is more or less a tossup between them, depending on the coin and memory size as much as the model in some cases.
 Outside of Ethash (ETC/ETH/related) mining and POSSIBLY Monero mining, they're only so-so on hash/watt and hash/$ - but they've VERY GOOD at Ethash mining and fairly good at Monero.
 Might be some other "small niche" coins they rock that I don't know about, but when you're talking altcoin GPU mining ETH and ZEC are the BIG TWO - all others are small in comparison.

 Vega - outside of Monero and EVEN THEN only if you can get them at fairly close to MSRP on the reference cards, they're beat badly on hash/$ on everything else I've seen hashrates posted for.
 On Monero though they are the current KING if you don't get gouged badly by the price killing your hash/$.

 GTX 1080 ti - is the highest hashrate on a lot of coins, but is often beat on hash/watt and hash/$ by lower-end Nvidia cards like the 1070 ti - though it's usually CLOSE, and it can make rig management easier to have fewer cards.
 Not a BAD choice, just not always the best depending on your goals.

 GTX 1070 - it's flexable and can mine a lot of different coins well, but almost never the best by any measure.
 Call it the "Utility Infielder" of mining - good at many things, but not a star at any of them.

 That site doesn't even mention the GTX 1070 ti - the current KING on mining Equihash coins (ZEC/ZCL/ZEN/related) efficiently (Titan V beats it on hash/watt but is HORRIBLE on hash/$) and quite good at the other members of the list of "Nvidia friendly coins".


 Then there is the issue of "the next generation" tending to shake things up - right now, that's the upcomming NVidia 20xx "Volta" cards, due out in a few months (one comment by an EVGA employee in their forums I remember was talking about "Feb/March" as a timeframe for the first consumer Volta cards).
 Based on published mining tests on the Titan V, it looks like the Volta cards are going to be roughly 25% more efficient than the current Pascal line - and AMD isn't going to have an answer to them at all for months after THAT.

What about mining with a stack of old generation GPU's?
I have a bunch of 7950's laying around which I used to mine litecoins way back in 2012.
Are they still good to use or will elecricity fuck me over and I am better of buying a few rx 480 / 580 ones?

It depends on how long do you want to mine with them... Measure how much power they need to mine equihash algorithm. The speed is almost the same as the rx 470/570.. Mine 7950's are doing arround 240 on equihash... I got them for free, so i only pay for electricity :D

7970 = R9 280x as I recall.

 They're so-so ETH miners, ballpark 14 Mhash as I recall, with "proper" overclock settings.
 Fair ZEC miners, I want to say ballpark 300 sol/s

 Power cost IS an issue with older cards like that, but they should be profitable as long as you're not paying crazy-high rates like Hawaii or much of Southern California.

 Might also look into using them on the Milkyway BOINC project to earn Gridcoin with - Tahiti has VERY good FP64 performance that project needs.