Book Image

Bitcoin Essentials

By : Albert Szmigielski
Book Image

Bitcoin Essentials

By: Albert Szmigielski

Overview of this book

Blockchain is being billed as the technology of the future. Bitcoin is the first application of that technology. Mining is what makes it all possible. Exploring mining from a practical perspective will help you make informed decisions about your mining setup. Understanding what the future may hold for blockchains, and therefore for mining, will help you position yourself to take advantage of the impending changes. This practical guide starts with an introduction to Bitcoin wallets, as well as mining hardware and software. You will move on to learn about different mining techniques using the CPU, GPU, FPGA, and ultimately the ASIC as an example. After this, you will gain an insight into solo mining and pool mining, and see the differences between the two. The book will then walk you through large-scale mining and the challenges faced during such operations. Finally, you will take a look into the future to see a world where blockchain-based applications are commonplace and mining is ubiquitous.
Table of Contents (15 chapters)
Bitcoin Essentials
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewer
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Benchmarks of mining speeds with different GPUs


As we mentioned earlier, the Bitcoin network hash rate is really high now. Mining with GPUs is no longer guaranteed to bring profits. This is due to the fact that during the mining process you are competing with other miners to try to solve a block. If those other miners are running on faster hardware, you will be at a disadvantage, as your hardware can only make a certain number of guesses (hashes) in a given time frame.

To compare the mining speed of a few GPU's, look at the following table:

GPU

Mining speed (MH/s)

Power used (Watts)

AMD 4870

90

150

AMD 5770

240

100

AMD 5830

300

125

AMD 5850

400

180

AMD 5870

480

200

AMD 5970

800

350

AMD 6990

800

400

NVIDIA GT-210

4

30

NVIDIA GTX-280

60

230

NVIDIA GTX-480

140

250

NVIDIA Tesla S1070

155

800

NVIDIA Tesla S2070

750

900

Table: 3.1: Comparison of mining speed of GPUs