Ethereum mining has proven to be quite profitable when the miner uses high-end GPUs. However, enthusiasts are struggling to get more GPUs as the availability has been getting even more scarce. With cryptocurrency on the rise, miners have discovered that there is actually another option as to GPUs which is the new Apple M1 chip. Nvidia, on the other hand, has still shown itself useful to crypto miners.
Apple M1 crypto mining
Zensors very own software engineer by the name of Yifan Gu has reportedly found a way to make the ethminer utility be able to run on the MacBook Air equipped with the brand new M1 processor. Despite still requiring quite a setup, Gu has actually made the code available for cryptocurrency miners available on GitHub. This way, curious Mac owners will be able to check everything out themselves.
This actually isn't the very first time that someone has decided to utilize the Apple M1 for crypto mining. In fact, a report from CryptoAge in December 2020, just a month after the initial release of the Apple M1 macs with the chip debuted, XMRig's particular developers had actually experimented with mining the known Monero cryptocurrency.
Apple M1 hash rate
The experiments were actually able to yield some similar results. Gu even noted that the MacBook Air could actually only mine Ethereum at a speed of 2MH/s. CryptoAge, on the other hand noted that the M1 was able to offer some similar performance with Monero mining. This led to profits of just $0.14 with either of the coins.
Ethereum hash rate and rated power.
Apple M1 chip is capable of 2 MH/s hash rate at ~17W to 20W (GPU only) rated power
Nvidia 30HX chip is capable of 26 MH/s at 125W rated power
Nvidia 40HX chip is capable of 36 MH/s at 185W rated power
Nvidia 50HX chip is capable of 46 MH/s at 250W rated power
Nvidia 90HX chip is capable of 86 MH/s at 320W rated power
Read Also: Strategies for Crypto Investment
Apple M1 Eth mining
Although the futures drastically point in favor of Nvidia for optimization. It can still be said that it is still possible for Apple M1 chips to mine cryptocurrency. However, in order to make a profit, the Apple M1 chips might not be as efficient as the ones from Nvidia. Since Nvidia's GPU has a higher performance for a relatively lower budget, it might be safe to say that if the user is focusing on crypto mining alone, getting a Nvidia build would be a wiser choice.
According to the article by TomsHardware, Apple is capable of working on 128-core GPUs in order for it to be able to replace the AMD GPUs within the system. This means it might not be too long before crypto miners might be able to use Apple M1 more efficiently for crypto mining.
Related Article: Purchasing Crypto with a Credit Card
This article is owned by Tech Times
Written by Urian Buenconsejo
