Another new high-end card produced by AMD, it is priced at $540 it has a hash rate of 30 MH/s which gives it an impressive performance at an affordable price. Due to this, it may lack in availability.
This card has a power draw of 235W and was built using older yet upgraded hardware, it can prove to stand its own ground when compared to the NVIDIA Geforce GTX 980 series and is also less expensive. This makes a suitable and viable option for miners. A key feature of the 390X is that it uses Graphics Core Next architecture which has been used by AMD since 2011.
The Hawaii core that was the base of the R9 290X series has been renamed as Grenada to build the R9 390X series. It has a staggering 2816 stream processors that are split into units with 64 individual processors inside. It is a big GPU that may require 6 and eight-pin power connectors.
The card is fixed with three fans which produce a considerable amount of noise. However, it is automatically turned off at a low load, which was a recently implemented feature.
These cards use a Graphics Core Next architecture which makes it fall behind NVIDIA’s Maxwell designs. It is a highly conventional card with the option of tweaking if you want to do something different. The R9 390X is competitive in terms of price, speed, and memory but falls behind NVIDIA in areas such as power consumption, noise generated, heat and overclocking.
Pros
Ahead of GTX 980 in terms of performance. Cheaper than NVIDIA versions. Board partner versions are also available.
Cons
More power consumption Less versatile architecture Many R9 390X models are bulky and heavy requiring both 6 and eight-pin power connectors.
Purpose of mining ETH
Most bank customers trust their services because they are known to keep an accurate record of all transactions to prevent fraudulent activity. Blockchains, however, work in slightly different ways. The entire network verifies and adds transactions to their public ledger, instead of control is in the hands of a sole intermediary. Although the whole purpose for the absence of an intermediary is for trust minimizing, there still needs to be a physical entity that secures all financial records to make sure no one cheats.
Mining is one such innovation that makes decentralized record keeping a legitimate option. Mining keeps track of transaction history while preventing fraud.
How does mining work?
The consensus is reached by selecting a block of the highest level of difficulty. Miners produce blocks which the others check for validity. A block is considered to be valid only is it contains Proof of Work (PoW). But Ethereum 1.1 is likely to be replaced with Proof of Stake model.
Miners engage in a quiz by trying to assess and guess the right answer to the puzzle until one of them wins. Primarily, the miners run the transaction block’s unique header data which includes details like time-stamp and software version through a hash function. A hash function is used for indexing and identifying items in a huge database of information because it is easier to find a short hash value than a long string or text. While mining, a hash returns a series of random letters and numbers of a fixed length. The miner finds a hash that matches with the target and is thereby awarded ether and the block is broadcasted over the network for each node to add to their own copy of the ledger.
Any miner participating in the network is referred to as a node and each node’s expected value from mining is likely to proportional to their mining power or hash rate.
When a miner finds the hash, the second miner will stop working on that block and proceed to the next. The puzzle solving method is called ‘ proof of work ‘ because there is no chance of cheating and guessing the right answer. Every 12-15 seconds a miner finds a block and the algorithm shifts its difficulty level according to the miner’s speed in order to provide the 12 second solution time. Miners earn these ether which primarily depends on luck and the amount of computing power put into it. The proof of work algorithm that ethereum uses is called ethash that are designed to require more memory to make it difficult to mine using expensive ASIC’s. ASIC’s are mining chips which is the only profitable way of mining Bitcoin.
Requirements of Ethereum mining
Software Requirements for ETH Mining
Depending on the GPU selected, you will need the latest drivers. If your driver doesn’t include features to monitor overclocking and temperature rise, you will need to find a separate utility to provide the needs. Make sure to have proper Ethereum mining software.
Hardware Requirements for Ether Mining
A reliable and cost-friendly power supply. At least 4 GB of system RAM. If you wish to use multiple GPUs, make sure to have well-ventilated situations. Reasonably fast internet supply.
ETH Mining rewards
A successful PoW miner of the winning block will be awarded the following : A reward for the winning block consisting of exactly 3.0 ether. All the gas that was consumed during the execution of transactions made by the winning block will be compensated. The gas cost incurred is transferred to the miner’s account. ‘Uncles‘ are stale blocks which were the parent blocks or ancestors of the including blocks. An extra reward is allotted for using Uncles for using Uncles in the block in the form of 1/32 of the number of Uncles used. The user receives 7/8th of the static block reward.
Eth Mining Hardware: What to Consider?
Miners look for efficient ethereum miner hardware to reduce electricity bills and cut down costs.
Remember before getting hardware, make sure to have ethereum mining software, an ether mining pool as well as an ethereum hardware wallet for the storage of ether. To mine ethereum, a hardware called Graphics Processing Unit ( GPU ) is required. Originally intended to use computer CPUs, miners later found that GPUs gave them more hashing power.
In order to select the best GPU for your eth mining hardware, one must decide how powerful you want your rig to be and how much you are willing to spend on electricity and the GPU itself.
While some GPUs have more hashing rate, they also consume a huge amount of electricity. Miners often buy the best ethereum miner hardware from Amazon or eBay and depending on whether your retailers can ship it to your country, buying GPUs will be an easier task. The cost of electricity varies with different countries and miners from countries like China and Iceland often have an advantage over their counterparts owing to the cheap electricity costs.
Before buying a mining card, you must be aware of overall income and Return on Investment also known ROI. With an ethereum mining calculator, these values can be calculated by considering energy accounts and possible fees. A mining calculator can give a better assessment of the different graphics cards. More popularly used calculators are Ethereum Mining calculator and Coinwarz’s profit calculator.
For mining, AMD ( Radeon ) or Nvidia ( Geforce ) graphics cards are preferred. In earlier days, AMD cards had better performance but the recent Nvidia cards outshine them in terms of performance. While AMD cards are cheaper and offer more potential for modification, Nvidia has better overclocking support within Windows. Due to the popularity of GPU based mining for cryptocurrencies, the costs of mining has shot through the roof which has further lead to shortage of cards with efficient quality and manufacturers find it hard to create cards to meet the demands of miners.
The initial price paid for your mining card is the amount that the card will pay for itself, based on your mining profits. Hashrate of a card is the rate the card achieves under ideal mining conditions with Claymore 9.6 but without any overclocking. A card draws a viable amount of energy while mining and is indicated by power draw and measured at the outlet.
Efficiency can be determined by dividing hash rate with power consumption and for all obvious reasons, newer cards are more efficient. The rate of efficiency is an important factor because the greater the efficiency the more profit is made after calculating the ROI. We have listed the best cards for ethereum mining so that you can choose from the list.