Bitcoin Forum

Hi everyone. I want to ask about Nvidia P104-100 4GB expected longevity in the mining space. I have been reading about how eventually older cards that have less VRAM such as Nvidia 1060 3GB will be unprofitable in the coming short run.

As the only P104-100 cards that I know of are all 4GB DDR5X VRAM only, would these cards eventually suffer the similar fate in the coming short term too? Or these purpose specific cards have a longer lifespan due to its specificity in function?

All advice and answers are welcome.

ETH implements a large size data set for your GPU to mine, so for this it uses your GPU's Vram. As the number of blocks increases, so does DAG size. Your Vram has to be higher than current DAG size to mine. It doesn't matters if GPU is specially made for mining or not if it has low Vram. Currently DAG size is 2.7GB which means you still can mine with 3Gb Vram GPU for a very short time, so 4GB Vram and models which you stated, are still usable and will be usable but can't say exactly for how much time.
Here is DAG size calculator to monitor yourself: https://investoon.com/tools/dag_size

You can use the data in the Ethereum wiki (see: https://github.com/ethereum/wiki/wiki/Ethash#parameters) , in the section titled "Data Sizes" where it gives a list of DAG sizes for 2048 epochs, to approximate the timeline when it will reach 4 GB in size.

Using the data from the wiki, this DAG size will be reached around block 11550000 (around epoch 385).

Assuming around 14.5 secs per block and the current block being 6568237, it will take around 836 days (~2.3 years) before the DAG size reaches and exceeds 4 GB.

Sincere apologies if I would sound like a newbie, but based on both your comments, does that mean that VRAM size is only relevant in relations to ETH or EtHash mining? What about other algorithms?

You are right, It's an Eth thing.
Other algo's you can even mine with a let's say a 1050.

Basically you are safe mining with that GPU because most likely ETH will finally switch to POS before you fill up your entire 4GB of memory.

If they don't come out with POS, then you got larger issues such as the ETH network being bombarded with ASICs which are 10x more efficent than your GPU.

These days people buy the 8GB GPUs because the ram speed is faster, especially with the RX series so they can mine at 31MHs instead of 29Mhs and they find its worth the extra cost. People don't worry about the 4GB DAG just now.

Oh man, no problem, you are welcome!
Yes, VRAM size is only relevant in relations to coins based on Ethash algorithm. You can even see that information on website which I already posted, here it's called DAG (Directed Acyclic Graph), it's current size is 2.71GB as for now, when I posted it was 2.70 :D The models you stated above will last for 2-3 years, you'll roi at that time and possibly sell them. For mining profitability, you can check whattomine.com and choose GPUs based on it, see GPU reviews for mining on 1stminingrig.com. Buy GPUs with Vram 4GB or higher. Btw 6GB Vram and up is ideal.

They will eventually be gone also but i think they will have some time to perform. And because there is so much going on against cryptos, that a lot of mining farms have been shut down so there is now lesser competition in mining now a days. Still its not less but comparitively lesser.

This is a great video card that is capable to mine not only coins for Ethash algorithm until significant increase of the DAG file. It has more performance than GTX1070Ti/1080 (for example, Equihash - 490 Sol, Ethash - 38 Mh, NeoScrypt - 950 kH).