The prospect of cryptocurrency mining often attracts those with older hardware looking to repurpose their machines. The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680, released in the early 2010s, was a formidable gaming GPU in its prime. However, when considering its viability for Ethereum mining, several critical factors come into play, ultimately leading to a definitive conclusion.
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GTX 680 Specifications Relevant to Mining
The GTX 680 features 2 GB or 4 GB of GDDR5 VRAM and 1536 CUDA cores. For its era, these were impressive numbers. However, the landscape of cryptocurrency mining, especially for Ethereum, evolved dramatically over time, making these specifications largely insufficient for profitable or even functional mining operations.
The Ethereum Mining Challenge: DAG Size
Ethereum’s mining algorithm, Ethash, relies on a Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG) file. This file, which is continuously growing, must be loaded into the GPU’s VRAM during the mining process. When Ethereum was minable via Proof-of-Work (PoW):
- The DAG file size quickly surpassed 2 GB, rendering GTX 680 cards with 2 GB VRAM completely incapable of mining Ethereum.
- Even 4 GB versions faced increasing difficulties as the DAG size approached and then exceeded their capacity. By the time Ethereum transitioned away from PoW, a 4 GB card would have been severely constrained, if not entirely obsolete, for ETH mining.
Hash Rate and Profitability
Even if the DAG size weren’t an issue, the GTX 680’s computational power would yield an extremely low hash rate compared to modern GPUs. This low hash rate, combined with the card’s relatively high power consumption for its output, would result in negligible, if any, profitability.
