Why Nvidia's cards so poor at mining?

[MikkisJ]

Can someone give a short explanation on why Nvididia's cards are so poor at mining compared to ATI's?

[teamnigel]

Because the GPUs' archictectures are different. ATI/AMD GPUs have a lot more tiny, stupid cores, while Nvidia GPUs have fewer cores but they are more powerful. Hashing is fast and stupid, so AMD and its stupid cores do better here.

[vlees]

Because the GPUs' archictectures are different. ATI/AMD GPUs have a lot more tiny, stupid cores, while Nvidia GPUs have fewer cores but they are more powerful. Hashing is fast and stupid, so AMD and its stupid cores do better here.

Thansk, but if NVidia utilizes powerful cores wouldn't those be able to calculate more hashes simultaneously per chip than the "stupid AMD cores"? (well, we know the rate is much lower so it apparently isn't but where is mistake in this logic?)

[esenminer]

see this article:

http://www.extremetech.com/computing/153467-amd-destroys-nvidia-bitcoin-mining

it seems to come down to the fact hashing requires a certain operation (integer rotate right) which the AMD cards can do in a single step while NVIDIA cards require 3 steps.

[nottm28]

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Why_a_GPU_mines_faster_than_a_CPU

and this

http://www.itproportal.com/2013/04/17/amd-thrashes-nvidia-at-bitcoin-mining--will-the-gap-ever-be-closed/

Basically - a cpu (or nvidia) is very fast at saying "if this then do that" - whereas an amd is very fast at saying "let's all do this"

[vlees]

Thanks for the links.

EDIT: Well, people laughed at me when I bought a 6950 2 years ago. It was dirt cheap and it gives me 330MH/s, unlike Nvidia cards friends of mine have that cost way more.