Topic: Mining bitcoin with GTX 960M is ok or not, help me plz (Read 8339 times)

The original poster has not returned and the correct answer, "no" has been done to death making this thread now pointless and since GPU mining has nothing to do with bitcoin mining I'm locking this thread. Start another one in the correct place if you wish to continue discussing this please.

Whoops, misworded that. Thanks for catching that one. There's even a dual R9 390 if I'm not mistaken, I had one for about 3 months and it ran pretty well; sold it later because of money issues. The nvidia card you were referring to was probably the Titan Pascal that's supposed to come out pretty soon iirc, or the Titan Z. Neither was really made for gaming except the latter.

I actually still run a GTX 690 in my computer, it runs like a charm and plays CSGO at 4k pretty well, although it does struggle a bit.

The fast internet speed is not required but that is optional, even with a S9 i doubt people can make profit of 0.2-0.3 per month
But with your Laptop (based on the M on the GPU) I would suggest you to not start mining but use for other things.

Actually, the reason is that for most cryptocoin algorythms the AMD stream processors are EQUALLY effective as the NVidia CUDA cores - but AMD cards of the "same class" have MORE stream processors.

 I don't think I've seen ANY CUDA card (possible exception for one of the Titans) that had 3000 CUDA cores - but AMD has put up to 4096 on cards (FuryX and Nano specifically) - NOT counting "dual GPU chip" cards like the Duo or the R9 295X.

 Clock rate is also a factor where the core count matters, but that's usually been quite close between the two manufacturers at any given time.

The GTX 960 is the Maxwell mobile version of the Gtx960, with pretty low performance compared to many other desktop gpus. Not sure why people try mining with mobile gpus, they have worse cooling than their desktop counterparts and lower performance, and the fact that you can't replace most mobile gpus once they break. Most laptop components are soldered on, with the exception of some customizable laptops that allow replacement of parts.


The reason why AMD is better than Nvidia for most mining applications is that their stream processors are much more effective than nvidia's CUDA cores. That being said, don't mine anything with a laptop, not even gpu coins or Ether. You run the risk of bricking a laptop, and once that happens, the resale value of the laptop is pretty much zero.

I normally repeat this but I'm only going to say it once:  DO NOT MINE WITH A LAPTOP.

Mobile processor variants are low power.  Not designed to be run at max TDP for extended periods.  I have killed many laptops learning this and confirming my suspicion.

They are simply not designed to take that kind of load.

You are required to have a full nvidia driver as well, so if your manufacturer has an issue with their implementation, usually they never fix the driver in the end.  Keep that in mind as well.  Most M variants require a manufacturer and model specific driver because of chip lane addressing between different mobile manufacturer designs.

You would eat any profit by trying to cool the power supply and machine enough for it to maybe be reliable and last longer than a few months.

Exactly. Fire hazard due to lithium batteries. If you do, remove that battery and run on wall socket.
Regarding the outcome some allready mentioned Altcoins. If you want to mine, take a glance at Ebay for some used ASIC parts.

Please don't mine with your laptop, you may end up burning it..

GTX 960 (no M, not sure if that's the "MOBILE" version or something else?) is good for around 11Mh/s on Ethereum at fairly low wattage without pushing the memory clocks to unstable levels.


Forget trying to mine Bitcoin (or ANY OTHER SHA256-based coin, any Scrypt-based coin like Litecoin and Doge, or any X11-based coin like DASH) on a GPU, as ASIC have taken all of those over and are a TON more efficient, having bumped difficulty on ALL of those so high you can't break even on a GPU even with super cheap electric. On Scrypt and probably on X11, you won't make enough to pay for the card before it dies on FREE electric. On SHA256, you won't even get CLOSE - if you can mine $1/YEAR worth of Bitcoin on any GPU available today I'd be supprised.

 For perspective - best GPUs mining on Bitcoin before the first FPGA and ASIC units were introduced mined at ballpark 1 GH/s - might manage 2-3 GH/s on the best cards available today - and you'd be eating well over 100 watts to achieve that.
 The S9 (current best-efficiency ASCI miner) manages appx 14 THOUSAND GH/s - on about 1300 watts power usage. Over 1000 times as efficient.
 Even the 2 generation old S5 units (that are no longer MADE 'cause they aren't efficient enough) managed over 1100 GH/s on appx. 550 watts power usage, still over 200 times the efficiency.


 "A few decades ago" even on Bitcoin though isn't right - for X11 more like early THIS year, for Scrypt about 3 years back, 5-6 for SHA256.


 FREE electric isn't a requirement to mine profitably, though very very LOW cost electric is a major factor in being able to achieve ROI on any piece of mining gear.


 Additionally, NVidia cards aren't particularly good on most cryptocoin mining algorythms.
 They're closer on the memory-intensive ones like ETH/ETC but tend to cost more for the same hashrate vs AMD cards even there, and on many algorythms AMD cards blow away NVidia on hashrate entirely.
 There are a few algorythms the NVidia cards are competative on in a Hash/Watt basis, but on hash/$ they're not competative even on THOSE algorythms.


 I won't say GPU mining is AMD-specific - but it's strongly AMDcentric.

Plus eth and other coins like it are quite popular right now.... All on GPU rigs.

Also as posted earlier, any chip be it CPU or GPU with a prominent 'M' as part of it number is typically for mobile or low power applications. Of course fully capable of hitting full speed but not intended to do that 24x7x365 and their cooling methods reflect that.

BTC Genesis block: January 3rd, 2009

Dramatic much?

GPU mining has ended few decades ago. You better go and buy some antminers or don't think mining ever again. That's not only it. You need free electricity. (or near free, very cheap) If you don't have this, your ROI will take ages. And while you mine day after day just to get your ROI, your hardware will became wothless.

The nicehash calculator is a good way of learning what you can do with your GPU. Head over to: https://www.nicehash.com/?p=calc

Basically select your card from the list and enter your power cost.

Here you sit at +0.00081301 BTC/Day (+0.51 USD/Day) profit a day with 0.1 USD/kWh. You need to point your miner to nicehash multi-algo. If you scroll through the site you will find the neccasary information.

As the moe7865 said, you'll get a few satoshi. You get more from faucets in a few days.

I would advise you to mine altcoins (ETC/ETH/XMR) but there's something more.
I had a hunch on the M at the end of the name. "GeForce GTX 960M Dedicated Graphics for Laptops".
No. Don't mine with that. Mining with laptop is the safe way to burn it quick. Laptops are not designed for such lengthily heavy use.

Lol it's an ASIC game.
With that speed you looking more at
0.0000003 BTC per a month

I am a newbie in mining bitcoin, please give me some advices.
Here is my computer configuration :
- Core I7 6700 HQ 2.60 Ghz
- GTX 960M 4 Gb graphic card.
- Ram 8 Gb DDR3
- Internet 25 Mb ( test at speedtest.net )

Could I mine 0.2 - 0.3 bitcoin per month ?