No, this is not clickbait. Yes, I am aware that there seems to be a consensus that the new RTX 2080 cards are not great for mining – many users have made their mining benchmarks public and the results were pretty underwhelming. There is a catch, though.

Some days ago, I have finally received my Gigabyte RTX 2080 Windforce OC and I have done my own tests. My results were way better, which is why I am writing this article. Maybe I was lucky enough to find the sweet spot for undervolting and OC – most of the existing reviews are based on stock voltage and clock settings, and hence do not show the full mining potential of the card.

Whatever is the case, I am impressed by the mining performance of the new RTX 2080. In this article, you will see my benchmarks, as well as the settings I am using.

Gigabyte RTX 2080 Windforce OC Specs

The RTX 2080 is the latest addition by Nvidia and it features better performance than the 1080Ti, as well as hardware support for Ray Tracing. This allows the RTX2080 to perform great both at gaming and mining.

The Gigabyte version of the card comes with the core overclocked from factory, three fans and a decent heatsink. Compared to an average 1080Ti, the Gigabyte RTX 2080 Windforce costs ~90 dollars more.

Specs: RTX 2080 vs. GTX 1080Ti vs. GTX 1080

 

	RTX 2080	GTX 1080Ti	GTX 1080
Memory	8 GB GDDR6	11 GB GDDR5X	8 GB GDDR5X
Memory Interface Width	256-bit	352-bit	256-bit
Memory Bandwidth	448 GB/s	484 GB/s	320 GB/s
CUDA Cores	2944	3584	2560
Boost  Clock	1830 MHz	1582 MHz	1733 MHz
Price	$ 790 USD	$ 700 USD*	$ 470 USD**

(*) For a Gigabyte OC 11GB card

(**) For a Gigabyte OC 8GB card

Unboxing Gigabyte RTX 2080 Windforce OC

Recommended Hardware for 6x Gigabyte RTX 2080 Mining Rig

On paper, the RTX 2080 not only loses to the GTX 1080Ti in four of the six listed categories, it also loses to the GTX 1080 when it comes to price/features ratio. The only innovations seem to be the new GDDR6 memory and higher boost clocks. Eventually though, this does not prevent the RTX 2080 from being a decent miner. Let me show you the benchmarks:

Gigabyte RTX 2080 Windforce OC Mining Benchmarks

The first thing that most reviewers stated is that the RTX 2080 is very power hungry. While this is true for a card with stock settings, I was able to undervolt my RTX 2080 without losing too much hashrate, to a point it now consumes 70% less power than a GTX 1080Ti.

In fact, this makes the RTX 2080 more power efficient than the GTX 1080/ GTX 1080Ti. The RTX 2080 contrasts the most with the GTX 1080Ti by featuring up to 57% more MH/s per Watt.

Below I have listed the card’s benchmarks with different coins and algos, as well as a comparison with two of its predecessors (GTX 1080 and 1080Ti):

Gigabyte RTX 2080 WF OC Ethereum Hashrate Stock Clocks (Micron)

system power draw: 35w

Ethereum Mining

Ethash Ethereum Classic (ETC), Ubiq (UBQ), Expanse (EXP), Soilcoin (SOIL), Pirl (PIRL), Ellaism (ELLA), Metaverse (ETP), Callisto (CLO) etc..

RTX 2080 VS GTX 1080 Ti

Ethereum Dual Mining Blake2s and Keccak

Verge (XVG), BlakeStar (BLAS) / Maxcoin (MAX), Creativecoin (CREA), SmartCash (SMART) etc..

Ethereum Dual Mining LBRY and Pascal

ZCash (Equihash) Mining Performance

Gigabyte RTX 2080 Equihash Mining Hashrate Performance & Power Consumption

Equihash coins algorithm: Bitcoin Gold (BTG), Zencash (ZEN), Zclassic (ZCL), Hush (HUSH), Komodo (KMD), BitcoinPrivate (BTCP)

Hashrate 680 Sol/s

BitcoinGold (Equihash 144,5) Mining Performance

Gigabyte RTX 2080 Equihash 144,5 Mining Hashrate Performance & Power Consumption

Hashrate 60 Sol/s

Monero (CryptoNight V7) Mining Performance

Gigabyte RTX 2080 CryptoNight V7 Mining Hashrate Performance & Power Consumption

CryptoNight coins algorithm: Monero (XMR), Electroneum (ETN), Karbo (KRB), DigitalNote (XDN), MoneroOriginal (XMO), Dinastycoin (DCY)

Hashrate 893 H/s

RTX 2080 VS GTX 1080 Ti

Ravencoin (X16r) Mining Performance

Gigabyte RTX 2080 x16r Mining Hashrate Performance & Power Consumption

X16R coins algorithm: Ravencoin (RVN), Motion (XMN)

Hashrate 26 MH/s

Nexus (SHA3) Mining Performance

Gigabyte RTX 2080 SHA3 Mining Hashrate Performance & Power Consumption

Hashrate 255 Mh/s

Luxcoin PHI Mining Performance

Gigabyte RTX 2080 PHI2 Mining Hashrate Performance & Power Consumption

PHI1612 coins algorithm: Folm (FLM), Seraph (SERA)

Hashrate 9.4 Mh/s

Verge Lyra2REv2 Mining Performance

Gigabyte RTX 2080 Lyra2REv2 Mining Hashrate Performance & Power Consumption

LyraREv2 coins algorithm: Vertcoin (VTC), Verge (XVG), Straks (STAK), Galactrum (ORE), Monacoin (MONA), Hanacoin (HANA)

Hashrate 69 Mh/s

ZCoin Lyra2z Mining Performance

Gigabyte RTX 2080 Lyra2z Mining Hashrate Performance & Power Consumption

LyraREv2 coins algorithm: ZCoin (XZC), Gincoin (GIN), MCT+ (MCT), Gentarium (GTM), Vertical (VTL), Mano (MANO)

Hashrate 3.3 Mh/s

Aeon CryptoNight Lite Mining Performance

Gigabyte RTX 2080 CryptoNight Lite Mining Hashrate Performance & Power Consumption

CryptoNight Lite algorithm coins : Petcoin (XPET), Aeon (AEON)

Hashrate 1,285 Mh/s

Xdna HEX Mining Performance

Gigabyte RTX 2080 HEX Mining Hashrate Performance & Power Consumption

Hashrate 19 Mh/s

Aion Equihash 210,9 Mining Performance

Gigabyte RTX 2080 Equihash 210,9 Mining Hashrate Performance & Power Consumption

Hashrate 320 Sol/s

Bitcoin Interest ProgPow Mining Performance

Gigabyte RTX 2080 ProgPow Mining Hashrate Performance & Power Consumption

Hashrate 22.5 Mh/s

NiceHash Mining Performance

Gigabyte RTX 2080 Nicehash Mining Profitability

NiceHash algorithms: Keccak, NeoScrypt, Lyra2REv2 (not working), DaggerHashimoto, DaggerHashimoto/Decred,Pascal, Decred, Equihash (not working), Pascal, Blake2s, CryptoNightV7, Lyra2Z (not working), X16r

In Conclusion

Yeah, crypto mining is going through some pretty dark days and not all of you feel like investing in new mining rigs for now. Those of you who do plan on expanding your farms might find a new friend in RTX 2080 cards. The low power consumption makes up for the extra price in the long run, unless you have free electricity.

Here’s another thing to keep in mind. The gaming community seems a bit unimpressed with the new RTX 20xx. Many gamers bought the RTX 2080/2080Ti in hopes to enjoy the new Ray Tracing technology but guess what: as for today, there is no game that would support Ray Tracing. This is one of the reasons why there seems to be little demand for RTX 20xx cards for now.

If you want to add some of those to your rig, this might be the right time to stock up on them, before gaming companies start to implement the new technology in their games.

I would also keep in mind that the driver and miner support for the card is still not optimal. As always, I expect improvements and tweaks in the near future.

Thank you for reading. As always, your comments, suggestions and questions are welcome.

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