Why use ATI cards for GPU mining?

[ol92]

Well yeah, modding AMD cards is a breeze really. Hence when I hear people say "nVidia performs same as AMD with less wattage", I always wonder if they are saying this at default stock settings. But once you optimize an AMD card, my guess is it performs about as well as an nvidia in terms of wattage no?

Depends on the hash algo. There is no definite answer. It depends also on you electricity cost and the card price in you country/provider.

On zcash nvidia is now better. Nvidia is better on spreadcoin, nexus, lbry, neoscrypt... On xmr, amd is better ...
On pascalcoin amd is far better...

[smaxz]

ATI was acquired by AMD in 2006 and the branding of ATI has not been used since 2010.

I remember my default system datasheet back in the day with a Trident 512k ISA video card and the possibility to upgrade to an ATI MACH series card with some super exotic name. It had DRAM standard, VRAM as an option, and a price point just as exotic as its name.

I went with the Cirrus Logic card instead.

Shaking off the memberberries, the main reason you see AMD as the prevalent GPU brand here is cheaper entry into the mining market.

more of the mining software devs tend to focus on AMD as well.

[fullzero]

IMO the most applicable generalization here is:

     AMD is better for those with very cheap power; and Nvidia is better for those with very expensive power.

This is a generalization; it is not always true.

[shield132]

Well, it seems it's still popular question. As it was said and as I know, AMD’s better performance is due to having far more shader cores than the equivalent Nvidia cards. If we would say it in more easier way, Nvidia GPUs are more like CPUs, in that they have only a few processors that do work, but faster. ATI GPUs have slower processors, but a lot more of them. So that's why amd is better for mining but not in gaming.

[Amph]

Well yeah, modding AMD cards is a breeze really. Hence when I hear people say "nVidia performs same as AMD with less wattage", I always wonder if they are saying this at default stock settings. But once you optimize an AMD card, my guess is it performs about as well as an nvidia in terms of wattage no?

Depends on the hash algo. There is no definite answer. It depends also on you electricity cost and the card price in you country/provider.

On zcash nvidia is now better. Nvidia is better on spreadcoin, nexus, lbry, neoscrypt... On xmr, amd is better ...
On pascalcoin amd is far better...

on pascal is yet to be seen i saw a 1070 with 850MH easily, current miner is not optimized at all

[Ambros]

Well, it seems it's still popular question. As it was said and as I know, AMD’s better performance is due to having far more shader cores than the equivalent Nvidia cards. If we would say it in more easier way, Nvidia GPUs are more like CPUs, in that they have only a few processors that do work, but faster. ATI GPUs have slower processors, but a lot more of them. So that's why amd is better for mining but not in gaming.

Are you sure about that?
IMHO the main difference is not about hardware, but about software!
Historically mining software have been developed for AMD cards, things are now slowly changing.

[the.jack20]

As far as I understand, amd cards are preferred in bitcoin mining due to reasons such as optimization, price and mining performances.
At present, however, mining is not done with video cards anymore. But the opposite is the case in sub-mining. I heard that nvidia cards are preferred to amd cards in Altcoin mining.

Is this true?

[shield132]

Well, it seems it's still popular question. As it was said and as I know, AMD’s better performance is due to having far more shader cores than the equivalent Nvidia cards. If we would say it in more easier way, Nvidia GPUs are more like CPUs, in that they have only a few processors that do work, but faster. ATI GPUs have slower processors, but a lot more of them. So that's why amd is better for mining but not in gaming.

Are you sure about that?
IMHO the main difference is not about hardware, but about software!
Historically mining software have been developed for AMD cards, things are now slowly changing.

The arcitecture of the two type of cards is absolutely different. Nvidia is mostly better in aspect of driver and software, I want to say that better side of nvidia is more optimized software for gaming. ATI is more better in hardware side and when we are mining, we need better hardware specifications. At last, Nvidia is mostly for gaming and ATI for othet job and in this situation, ATI is better for mining, plus it's more cheap than nvidia and that's why most mining softs were for ati at the begining but now simply many nvidia user wants to start mining and that's why nowdays we have some mining software for nvidia.

[eckmar]

As far as I understand, amd cards are preferred in bitcoin mining due to reasons such as optimization, price and mining performances.
At present, however, mining is not done with video cards anymore. But the opposite is the case in sub-mining. I heard that nvidia cards are preferred to amd cards in Altcoin mining.

Is this true?

Bitcoin mining with graphics card stopped when ASIC miners appeared. Now you can still min altcoins(sub-coins lol) with them and it's not true that nvidia cards are preferred. They are better only in Zcash mining, for everything else AMD cards are better

[BTCwriter]

As far as I know, Nvidia cards are not preferred in GPU mining. ATI cards are being used more often than Nvidia cards. Is there a particular reason for this?
Why do you prefer ATI cards?

Because ATI are the best.