[DOUBT] Altcoins mining low GPUs

[cubpi]

Greetings. I'm not from registering a lot in forums. I usually use them more to obtain information, however I have a doubt that unfortunately I have not been able to find the answer in any forum, blog or videotutorial.

I am from Venezuela and I am interested in cryptocurrency mining, in fact I am registered in MinerGate where I am mining BCN which I almost charge. The question is this: A few days ago I found out that a co-worker has a computer with a GTX 970. My initial reaction was to ask him the favor of installing the MG miner to see how much power I have when mining cryptocurrencies. Effectively the power of mining went up from 5-7H / s of power that gives my computer (if it is quite slow) to almost 160H / s. For obvious reasons I can not keep using that computer so I uninstalled it.

Now I know that with a GPU of that "level" you can increase the power of mining, the problem is the cost of these GPU's. But I came up with something quite interesting and is that I could undermine ALTCOINS with a low-end GPU? and is that I was researching and there are GPUs at relatively affordable costs that will not be 4GB but are GPU's, and obviously would not increase the power to 160H / s but at about 40-50H / s per GPU which would be a difference quite remarkable to the current 5-7H / s I handle. The idea comes from wanting to assemble a dedicated rig.

The problem I see is that according to most of the forums and tutorials that I have seen (if not all) they point out that BTC mining is only possible if it has medium-high range GPUs, above 4GB of memory, etc. But the point is that I do not want to mine BTC if not an altcoin for example BCN or XMR call me a lot of attention. Could a low-end GPU have 1 or 2GB of memory to miner with alternative coins? Could the minergate program identify that GPU or would it have to go to miners by console?

I hope you can help me.

PS: if I have read it in many places that mining may not be profitable or that the cost of energy / benefit should be taken into account but if I am asking is because I am aware of it. From already thank you very much.

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[EthanB]

You do not mentioned which two GPUs you are comparing and simply mention that your friend's card is more powerful. You will have to calculate the costs yourself; I have heard that Venezuela does not charge for electricity costs and if this is the case then you are exclusively working with the amount of coin you are able to mine with a particular card. If your electricity is free, then it is simply a matter of how much stress you run on your card and the length of time that it will take to ROI. You simply need to find good deals on powerful GPUs, because in my experience running many lower-end GPUs comes with a lot more maintenance and work that doesn't appear to be worth it. A solid 1080TI for $700 would be a decent buy.

[Eternu]

First I wanted to say that its not profitable, because of electricity consumption of low end cards, but I see you know that already and are not interested in that part.
So I'll move on and try to answer your question. Short answer would be yes, it is possible. I came across a guy who wanted to mine some altcoins with GTX280 (XMR was the alt he mined I think), and he made it running. Tho he had some BIOS issues, but that is off topic here. He and many other can confirm to you that mining with low end GPUs is possible, as long as electricity is not the problem. And as far as I know, all miner software will automatically recognize your GPU, as long as requirements of that software are satisfied. I see not reason why mining software would forbid using of any type of GPU.

[EthanB]

First I wanted to say that its not profitable, because of electricity consumption of low end cards,

That is incorrect and misleading. The tier of the card doesn't necessarily correlate with the amount of electricity the card consumes. I have seen lower end cards use a very minimal amount of electricity, while providing a decent amount of mining profit; this turns out to be a very good ratio of Profit to Electricity cost. The higher end cards use an absurd amount of power, and you are just as likely to find a lower-end card that profits with electricity considered.

[bubaba]

It is possible of course.

You can always check google for benchmarks to calculate the outcome.

like "monero benchmark" "anycoin benchmark" "gtx 260 monero benchmark"


Keep in mind that as soon as an "Altcoin" gets attention that more people will mine it and difficulty will rise and your profitabilty will lower!

for example watch the difficulty graph for the last 6-12months of your favoured coins

[NiklasFalk]

I have a small test rig that have two leftover 1050 (2GB) cards in it now.
Using Minigpoolhub to autotrade to Litecoin, these two cards give about $0.9 per day now, alternating between Cryptonight7 (Monero) and swapping equihash (Zcach, ZenCash, Bitocoin-Gold, Zclassic). This when set at 50W each (combined about 320 Sol/s equihash and 630 kh/s Cryptonight7).
Ethash is not possible due to the DAG file size .
I use the minor heat generated (not Scandinavian summer yet) so I fool myself by disregarding the power cost.

1050 is low rate GPU, but much more power efficient than older midrange with same hashrates.

[edwardceng]

Could a low-end GPU have 1 or 2GB of memory to miner with alternative coins? Could the minergate program identify that GPU or would it have to go to miners by console?

You were in the right direction. You have to try it with whatever source you have at first. Then you can expand.

Almost all miner client software will recognize your cards, and you only need to find it, try it, do it. You could try to find GPU mining software list related to your cards,  you can explore this forum or google it. Try it one by one until you get the most suitable for you.

[EthanB]

Keep in mind that as soon as an "Altcoin" gets attention that more people will mine it and difficulty will rise and your profitabilty will lower!

for example watch the difficulty graph for the last 6-12months of your favoured coins

This is unfortunately a double-edged sword. If there are not many people that are aware of a coin then it is unlikely that it will increase in value or even maintain the value it already has. It's a guessing game sometimes, if you believe a coin is going to catch on then it would be wonderful to mine it before it gains attention. It's near impossible to tell which coins are going to maintain or increase in value, so I've seen too many people spend months mining a coin that becomes worthless before they get to sell it.