Bitcoin Forum

Was wondering if anyone can explain why a miner is so much more efficient at mining than a PC is.

A GPU is much more efficient at the process of mining than a CPU because if has many, Many, MANY circuits that are far more specialized than a CPU.  It can't do nearly as many things as a CPU can, but but what it gives up in versatility it gains in speed and efficiency.  Here's a great analogy:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-P28LKWTzrI

That being said, an ASIC (Application Specific Integrated Circuit) has even more circuits packed into the same space that are even more specialized than a GPU. They aren't capable of doing ANYTHING other than multiple simultaneous instances of completing the double SHA256 hash process on a half hashed bitcoin header with a different nonce on each instance.

Asic's have taken over in most all mining.  BTC mining and regular Scrypt mining you have to have asics.   Just so much more efficient this way and where that get's you is at electricity price.

The electricity costs of GPU/CPU most lose running.  And even if profit I don't see paying off a GPU these day's.  So only possibility is decent electricity and asics on mining to be able to do it now.  Without those two things you chances are will lose money. I should mention mining is no guaranteed ROI it takes smart/educated moves.   Selling gear anymore can make or break some people's ROI.

there is no explanation, because that statement is false if you are not asking to mine bitcoin only, since gpu can mine a vast range of algo, you can always find something profitable to mine on par with bitcoin at least

also gpu have warranty and a better resell cost

So we can use GPU to mine altcoin and sell for bitcoin? That is a very interesting idea.

Its not that easy. I mean you will mine with dedicated miner tons of altcoins which are worth each 0.0000001 bitcoin ;) so as you will calculate this, its still not good business :P

yeah and it's nothing new it has been this way since years, check the altcoin section, for more things about it

but keep in mind that it is more time consuming than mining bitcoin, you need to do your research costantly, to find the best altcoin

The main reason is that the entire miner is built around doing one job very good; mining. A pc, or the GPU you use to mine, is build to be able to handle a multitude of task for you.

Because of the difference in requirements, a GPU can never be as effective in one thing as something that is built to do only one thing.

Picture it like this.  A Bus is a miner and your car is your PC.  Would you take your car (PC) to go and pick up 100 people (calculations miners perform) to take them to the park?  It would be a lot easier to take your bus to do this.  You would waste more gas and wear on your car because a car is not met for that purpose.  Just like this a dedicated miner is the bus in this situation.  You will eb putting to much wear on your PC to do 1/100th of what the miner can do in 1/10th the time period.

I'm mining Ethernum and i use two AMD R9 270, in one month I get 57 US dollars

How much did you spend on electricity though?   Running two GPU's 24x7 seems like it would have a little bit of a bill to it.

I would love to be wrong.  I just have not seen a GPU rig that can ROI in quite a while.   Asics is what everything has pretty much moved to.

Because a dedicated miner is used for one purpose, and that is to mine bitcoins .
The parts of the hardware is made for that.

But PC in other hand not purposed for mining, soo efficiency will be lower and the risk of breaking will be higher

1 270 consume around 200w, if not overclocked, and not undervolted or something, so 5kw a day, which is nothing

even considering 0.2 cent per kw, he will end up with a mere $30 per month, still he made profit

Instead of being designed to handle several different sorts of code, an ASIC miner is optimised to handle one specific type of code.

 It's the difference between an old Eldorado (big engine back in the 500CI days) with a ton of "comfort features" and huge mass that isn't intended to help the car go fast or corner well, and comparing it to a Formula I racecar. The FI car is optimised for one specific function - racing - where the Eldorado isn't.



 The only reason coins using algorythms other than SHA256 (Bitcoin) and Scrypt (Litecoin) can be mined at a profit is because they are small enough market that nobody feels it is worth taking the $MILLIONS to design and build and try to sell an ASIC-type miner for those coins.

 (There was one company working on an X11-algorythm miner, but they didn't raise enough money to build the thing as of the last I have heard).

could you share your hash rates?

Dedicated miners has electronic circuits designed specially for the mining. It cannot do anything else. So it is more efficient.

PC cannot actually give you that much efficiency because it doesn't contain those special chips in itself that are installed in those miners to solve those genesis blocks, which heats up your PC a lot and which these miners are able to tackle...

Sometimes, your PC might just blast off if you mine a lot, but with miners, that won't happen with better cooling...

Your PC has a CPU. Your CPU can do a whole heap of things, but it isn't engineered to mine Bitcoin. Then Mr. GPU comes along. He can work faster and mine more Bitcoin, but he isn't designed to mine Bitcoin. Sir FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array) comes along. He can be programmed to mine Bitcoin. He can also be programmed to do other stuff. Then Lord ASIC (Application Specific Integrated Circuit) walks in on the party. He's built to mine Bitcoin. That's the only thing he can do, and he does it really fast. Much faster than everything else (so far), and more efficient.

Even with profit though I don't think he would ROI on a GPU been a long time since I have seen anyone post about doing that.   And that electricity number is pretty darn low.

It seems I had to quit GPU mining ages ago.  It's been a long time.

well one 270, cost nothing today, i believe you cna find one used, under $80 or less, so it is easy to roi, the problem is that i doot believe he is doing $57 with a signle 270

because i've used the etherum calculator, and 1 single 280 was doing only $30...

He said he was using two so that should be about right.