01-05-2015, 03:59 AM
(This post was last modified: 04-11-2016, 07:17 PM by epixoip.
Edit Reason: Remove VLIW cards
)
Just because a card is more expensive does not mean it will be better for hash cracking. Graphics cards are designed for graphics, and just because a card is better than another at pushing pixels, doesn't mean it will be better for compute. With Nvidia GPUs, you have to ignore everything prior to the Maxwell microarchitecture, as they are not good for hash cracking. The GTX 980 is the first Nvidia card in 6+ years that is actually good at hash cracking, and in fact slaughters AMD in anything that involves memory.
Bus width matters, but it's not what you should be primarily looking at. What matters most is the instruction set and the number of instructions that can be executed per second, neither of which you will find in the marketing docs. Power consumption and cooling capabilities are important as well. We always buy reference design cards when possible as OEM-design cards are designed for gaming workloads and cannot keep up with compute workloads, especially in multi-GPU setups.
The best cards for hash cracking are, in order of performance & preference:
01. Nvidia GTX Titan X reference design
02. Nvidia GTX 980 Ti reference design
03. Nvidia GTX 980 reference design
04. Nvidia GTX 970 "reference design"
05. AMD R9 290X reference design
06. AMD Radeon HD 7970 reference design
07. AMD Radeon HD 7950 "reference design"
08. Nvidia GTX 960 (any)
09. Nvidia GTX 750Ti (any)
The 7990 is omitted from this list because it is a nightmare to deal with (too much heat and power, insufficient cooling.) The R9 295X2 is omitted from this list because it is a wretched abomination. The R9 280X is omitted from this list because a 280X is just a re-badged 7970, and there are no reference design cards marketed as a 280X. And as we all know, buying non-reference cards for hash cracking is a really bad idea.
Bus width matters, but it's not what you should be primarily looking at. What matters most is the instruction set and the number of instructions that can be executed per second, neither of which you will find in the marketing docs. Power consumption and cooling capabilities are important as well. We always buy reference design cards when possible as OEM-design cards are designed for gaming workloads and cannot keep up with compute workloads, especially in multi-GPU setups.
The best cards for hash cracking are, in order of performance & preference:
01. Nvidia GTX Titan X reference design
02. Nvidia GTX 980 Ti reference design
03. Nvidia GTX 980 reference design
04. Nvidia GTX 970 "reference design"
05. AMD R9 290X reference design
06. AMD Radeon HD 7970 reference design
07. AMD Radeon HD 7950 "reference design"
08. Nvidia GTX 960 (any)
09. Nvidia GTX 750Ti (any)
The 7990 is omitted from this list because it is a nightmare to deal with (too much heat and power, insufficient cooling.) The R9 295X2 is omitted from this list because it is a wretched abomination. The R9 280X is omitted from this list because a 280X is just a re-badged 7970, and there are no reference design cards marketed as a 280X. And as we all know, buying non-reference cards for hash cracking is a really bad idea.