When we get asked what the best GPU is here at ISITRATED.com, we most often hear from dedicated or curious gamers looking to create their perfect rig (or at least the best rig for their budget). But a GPU isn’t just useful for gaming or for creative work like graphic design. As cryptocurrency mining begins to enter the popular imagination, more users are looking for information on how to build a killer machine that can produce efficient results.
A GPU is arguably the most important key to creating a great PC for mining Bitcoin, Ethereum, or other cryptocurrencies. We’re going to run you through 10 of the best models and then help you understand what you should be paying attention to when shopping for the best GPU for mining.
- The 10 Best GPUs for Mining
- AMD Radeon RX580
- NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti
- NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 Ti
- NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070
- Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060
- AMD Radeon VII
- AMD Radeon RX Vega 56
- Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Ti
- Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060
- AMD Radeon RX570
- GPU for Mining Buyer’s Guide
- How Cryptocurrency Mining Works
- Hash Rate
- Power Usage
- Cryptocurrency
- Considering Use Factors
- Frequently Asked Questions
- Which GPU is Best for Bitcoin Mining?
- How Many GPUs Do I Need for Mining?
- Is GPU Mining Profitable in 2022?
The 10 Best GPUs for Mining
| Award | Design | Graphic Cards | Retailer |
|---|---|---|---|
| Serious Savings for Mighty Mining |  | Check Price | |
| Simply the Best Option Around<br> |  | Check Price | |
| Stellar Performance and Efficiency |  | Check Price | |
| Our Go-To Recommendation for Most Miners |  | Check Price | |
| Easy On Your Wallet and Your Bills |  | Check Price | |
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AMD Radeon RX580
Serious Savings for Mighty Mining
AMD is known for their ability to produce quality mining GPUs at a price well below what NVIDIA offers. If you’re seeking out the best GPU for mining on a budget, the AMD Radeon RX580 is definitely a contender. You can pick up this GPU for right around $200, and those savings will continue in the long term since this GPU can run at peak capacity even at low temperatures.
ASUS has made some smart decisions that put this model among the best mining GPUs too. The dual-fan cooling keeps things running cool and quietly, while GPU Tweak II allows you to optimize your performance without causing long-term harm to your GPU.
| Manufacturer | AMD |
| Hash Rate | 29 mh/s |
| Core Clock | 1150 MHz |
| Power Draw | 90 watts |
| Memory | 4 GB GDDR5 |
Pros
- One of the cheapest models around
- Impressive dual-fan cooling
- GPU Tweak II for optimization
- Great for a multi-rig setup
Cons
- Runs a bit hotter than comparable models
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti
Simply the Best Option Around
If price is no object for you, the single best GPU for mining in terms of sheer performance is the upgraded Ti version of the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080. Just keep in mind that you can’t just calculate the overhead cost here. The power consumption on this GPU is through the roof. But with a little tweaking, the NVIDIA GTX 1080 Ti can clear a hash rate significantly over 30 mh/s, which is otherwise unheard of.
Because of that, this GPU is best used by people who know what they’re doing. If you know you’re serious about mining Ethereum or another cryptocurrency and you have a cool enough space that you don’t have to worry about overheating, this is going to be the best mining GPU around.
| Manufacturer | NVIDIA |
| Hash Rate | 32.2 mh/s |
| Core Clock | 1582 MHz |
| Power Draw | 250 watts |
| Memory | 11 GB GDDR5X |
Pros
- Seriously unmatched hash rate
- Absurd level of next-gen memory
- Great for gaming too
- Built for the needs of pros
Cons
- Uses a ton of power
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 Ti
Stellar Performance and Efficiency
The GTX 1070 Ti is an improved version of the standard GTX 1070 from NVIDIA, and while it can’t hit the frankly absurd hash rates of the 1080 Ti, it hits a nice sweet spot in terms of overall performance. That’s because it bears a price tag that’s more than $200 cheaper than its big brother and offers some great efficiency.
The hashing here is actually pretty impressive. It won’t hit the peak that you’d find in the 1080 Ti, but it does come close to 30 mh/s. Combine that with the pretty impressive power usage and you’re left with one of the most well-balanced pro-level mining GPUs on the market.
| Manufacturer | NVIDIA |
| Hash Rate | 28.3 mh/s |
| Core Clock | 1607 MHz |
| Power Draw | 180 watts |
| Memory | 8GB GDDR5 |
Pros
- Great efficiency for the power
- Above-average hash rate
- 8 GB of memory built-in
- Wide variety of tweaking options
Cons
- Experiences bugs in the driver software
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070
Our Go-To Recommendation for Most Miners
If you want the best value from a GPU card, the NVIDIA 1070 is a worthy choice. In most of the key categories, this GPU actually comes close to the 1070 Ti in terms of performance, and it manages to do so at a much cheaper price point. You won’t get quite the same level of performance in the long term, but it’s certainly close, and the barrier to entry is much lower.
This is an instance where the improvements made to the Ti don’t add a whole lot in terms of mining – an indication that a good mining GPU isn’t always directly proportionate to the price. For most miners, we’d recommend this more basic GPU over its more powerful Ti edition.
| Manufacturer | NVIDIA |
| Hash Rate | 28.1 mh/s |
| Core Clock | 1607 MHz |
| Power Draw | 180 watts |
| Memory | 8GB GDDR5 |
Pros
- Incredible value for the price
- Hashrate just below the Ti
- Packed with tons of CUDA cores
- Decent power consumption level
Cons
- Somewhat finicky clock speed
Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060
Easy On Your Wallet and Your Bills
If your biggest concern is how much of a toll GPU mining is going to have on your energy bills, your best choice for mining may be the NVIDIA GTX 1060. It promises power consumption levels of just 160 watts, and you can pick it up for just a little over $200, so you can more easily get a return on your investment even if you’re in an area with high bills for power consumption.
Gigabyte has improved on the core features of this GPU with the smart design of this graphics card. You can achieve overclocking with a single click (meaning it can double pretty effectively as a gaming graphics card), and it makes use of a 3D active fan to make sure your GPU doesn’t overheat even in extreme conditions.
| Manufacturer | NVIDIA |
| Hash Rate | 19.8 mh/s |
| Core Clock | 1506 MHz |
| Power Draw | 160 watts |
| Memory | 3/6 GB GDDR5 |
Pros
- Available as 3GB and 6GB graphics cards
- Super Overclocking with one click
- Very low power consumption
- Available for a very reasonable price
Cons
- The lowest hash rate for a GTX
AMD Radeon VII
Are you looking for the best of the best mining GPUs? The best case is made for the AMD Radeon VII. For many major cryptocurrencies – and Ethereum in particular – it blows all of the competition out of the water, offering double or even greater the hash rate of what you’d find in lesser mining GPUs. And while power consumption is high, it’s not nearly as high as you’d expect for such a powerful GPU.
And to their credit, PowerColor has done a great job of making the most of what this GPU has to offer when transforming it into a graphics card. This graphics card comes with three dedicated fans to make sure that extra power draw doesn’t burn like an oven and potentially fry your hardware.
| Manufacturer | AMD |
| Hash Rate | 92.3 mh/s |
| Core Clock | 1506 MHz |
| Power Draw | 240 watts |
| Memory | 16 GB HBM2 |
Pros
- The best performance around
- Three powerful graphics card fans
- Relatively reasonable power draw
- Available for under $1000
Cons
- Still one of the more expensive models
AMD Radeon RX Vega 56
The AMD Radeon RX Vega is easily one of the best AMD cards on the market. While it can’t keep pace with the truly best-in-class Radeon VII above, it still manages to outperform practically all the competition for Ethereum mining and cryptocurrency mining in general, and it delivers that without you having to pay an arm and a leg for the privilege. The efficiency of the RX Vega 56 is some of the best around – boasting a low wattage for some of the best performance available.
And the AMD cards these GPUs are packed into are pretty impressive as well. MSI has blessed this graphics card with Air Boost technology and a pretty meaningful cooling system, allowing for greater efficiency not just for mining but for gaming as well.
| Manufacturer | AMD |
| Hash Rate | 39.72 mh/s |
| Core Clock | 1156 MHz |
| Power Draw | 132 watts |
| Memory | 8 GB HBM2 |
Pros
- Aggressive Air Boost overclocking
- Great turnaround value for the price
- 8 GB of video memory
- Simple plug-and-play design
Cons
- Fairly rare, can be hard to find
Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Ti
Given the reputation NVIDIA has in the graphics card market, it’s interesting to see it play a distant second fiddle to the Radeon VII. Not only does the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti not offer hash rates that can compete with the Radeon VII, but it also carries a higher price tag. While there’s no doubt that the Radeon is probably your best choice for a pure mining rig, the RTX 2080 easily offers some of the best performance for other GPU applications.
ASUS’s ROG brand has definitely pulled out all the stops with the design of these graphics cards. The built-in RGB lighting can fully be controlled with free accompanying software, while the GPU Tweak II software gives you a lot of options to customize it to the specifications of your mining operation (or even your favorite games).
| Manufacturer | NVIDIA |
| Hash Rate | 52.94 mh/s |
| Core Clock | 1350 MHz |
| Power Draw | 191 watts |
| Memory | 11 GB DDR5 |
Pros
- Control lighting with Aura Sync
- Sports IP5X dust resistance
- Aerospace-grade alloy components
- 11 GB of fully overclocked memory
Cons
- Very exorbitant asking price
Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060
The RTX 2060 continues to boast the reputation for performance of the GeForce RTX series. It’s designed specifically to be comparable with the RX Vega 56, and it mostly succeeds in that respect: with both the pricing and hash rates coming within a very small ballpark of one another.
This is another GPU that’s a very viable solution for mixed use. When you aren’t looking to mine, there’s a bevy of cool gaming features to take advantage of. MSI has also packed in both a traditional fan and a dispersion fan blade in conjunction with a heat sink for some of the best heat dispersion around.
| Manufacturer | NVIDIA |
| Hash Rate | 36.95 mh/s |
| Core Clock | 1365 MHz |
| Power Draw | 160 watts |
| Memory | 6 GB GDDR6 |
Pros
- Smart and effective cooling
- OC utility with wireless control
- Variety of gaming features
- Includes an HDMI output
Cons
- Drivers can be a hassle to manage
AMD Radeon RX570
The Radeon RX 570 may just offer the best value for a gaming card for mining, at least for now. The listing price has been more than slashed in half on Amazon. In more analytic terms, that means a GPU that can compete with much higher priced cards for only $150. It’s still a bargain without the deal, but it’s a steal on sale.
As for performance, it’s about what you can expect from AMD’s offerings: a high ratio of value to cost but without the sort of gaming and productivity features that NVIDIA chips offer. This particular card is produced by MSI, and that means that you can expect some of the most efficient and well-built designs around.
| Manufacturer | AMD |
| Hash Rate | 30.77 mh/s |
| Core Clock | 1168 MHz |
| Power Draw | 84 watts |
| Memory | 8 GB GDDR5 |
Pros
- Available at a stunning price
- Offered in other configurations as well
- Competes with higher-level GTX cards
- Made by MSI
Cons
- Fan can run very loud
GPU for Mining Buyer’s Guide
Cryptocurrency mining can be a complicated process, and there are a lot of parts to consider. The features that make a great gaming GPU aren’t always going to be great for GPU miners, and the type of currency you’re looking to mine can have a definitive impact on how successful a certain GPU is going to be. But whether you’re looking to mine Ethereum or another cryptocurrency, we’re here to cover the fundamentals concerning GPUs for mining.
How Cryptocurrency Mining Works
There are whole websites devoted to explaining the process of cryptocurrency mining, but we want to run you through the basics before you invest in a mining rig. In essence, when you mine for cryptocurrency, you’re both creating that currency and making sure that it’s secure. Mining rigs accomplish that process by guessing a series of randomized numbers. This serves the purpose of both encrypting and expanding that currency.
GPUs for mining are typically used for that role because their process makes them better than CPUs (which serve as the brains of a more traditional computer) at the sort of raw, numerical computing that constitutes the totality of the mining process. But complicating things is the fact that graphics cards and GPU manufacturers are in an arms race with the very nature of how most cryptocurrencies are fundamentally built to work.
Currencies like Ethereum and Bitcoin are trustworthy because of both the high level of security that the mining process instills and because of the consistency of its release. Bitcoin is designed to generate on a global level at a consistent rate, and as the power of each mining graphics card becomes more sophisticated, the computational technicality of the mining process becomes more difficult as well.
As cryptocurrency mining becomes increasingly difficult as time goes on, the standards for what constitutes the best mining GPU are constantly changing. While the graphics card and mining GPU models we’ve highlighted should continue to be the best around for some time, there will naturally be some fluctuation.
Hash Rate
The hash rate is the most important spec to pay attention to when shopping for the best mining GPU, but it’s also one of the hardest to actually determine. There are quite a few reasons for that, and understanding hash rate – and how it works in relation to other factors like the type of cryptocurrency you’re mining and power consumption – is at the heart of understanding how to build your mining rig.
The hash rate is essentially the speed at which a GPU can mine, but things are made trickier by the vast number of cryptocurrencies out there and the fact that mining becomes more difficult the larger the market for that cryptocurrency is. We’ve kept things consistent among our products by listing the hash rates at the time of publication for each GPU on the Ethereum marketplace. Using Ethereum as a control variable allows us some level of consistency, but we highly recommend that you check out the markets and the individual hash rates yourself before making a purchase, as they can fluctuate.
Power Usage
The amount of power a card uses is integral to understanding its value. But complicating things is the fact that higher power usage means higher power bills. Breaking even on your Ethereum or other cryptocurrency investment is a matter of factoring in the profit from your hash rate versus the upfront and power cost of your GPU. Fortunately, resources like Minerstat can help you calculate your return based on your power costs and current market trends.
Cryptocurrency
We chose to use Ethereum as the standard for our hash rates for a reason; it’s one of the largest and most stabilized markets around. That doesn’t mean that Ethereum is the market you should necessarily pursue. Investing in cryptocurrency is a lot like investing in the stock market in that regard. Investing in established markets like Ethereum usually promises steady but diminishing returns, while investing in less crowded cryptocurrencies means higher risk but higher reward.
The markets themselves are too wide a subject to cover sweepingly here, but plenty of writers are out there providing in-depth coverage of cryptocurrencies that are up to date. Just like with any investment, you’ll want to do your research before investing in any mining hardware.
Considering Use Factors
Are you looking to find a graphics card that can just serve as a dedicated mining device day through and through, or do you want one that you can use with your regular PC and mine on the side? The factors that matter for the best mining card are going to be very different from what matters for a gaming PC, but features that are positives for both appear in most cards, and they scale with price.
In general, we recommend AMD cards for dedicated and exclusive mining efforts and NVIDIA GPUs if you want something that will work for both mining and gaming. Although we generally recommend AMD GPUs for cheap gaming and NVIDIA for higher-end gaming rigs, AMD’s current generation of GPUs blows everything out of the water in terms of mining. And they manage to do so while keeping their prices almost ridiculously low. But if you don’t want your GPU to be devoted exclusively to mining, you might be best suited with an NVIDIA card.
Frequently Asked Questions
Which GPU is Best for Bitcoin Mining?
We find it hard to argue against the Radeon VII for Bitcoin mining. This monster of a mining GPU offers hash rates that blow all of the competition out of the water. And while it’s one of the most expensive graphics cards around, it offers a more than generous return on investment for a lot of miners.
How Many GPUs Do I Need for Mining?
This depends on a lot of factors. How much money do you want to make? How much can you afford to invest? What sort of turnaround do you need, and how much power can you afford to use? Perhaps most importantly, what currency are you mining? Fortunately, our guide above can help you learn to calculate your situation.
Is GPU Mining Profitable in 2022?
GPU mining can certainly still be profitable, but that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t require a lot of work. With the variety of blockchain currencies on the market, success often means figuring out which one to invest in and finding a GPU that will maximize the performance in that particular cryptocurrency market.
Wrapping Up
If you’re looking to buy your first GPU for mining, there’s no need to be intimidated by the sheer volume of options available to you. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do your research. Our guide should answer most of your important questions, and our review list should remain relevant for a while to come (and we’ll be sure to update it as necessary). With that information in hand, you can use the resources linked throughout our guide to figure out the cost and return that work for you.
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