There are many memory intensive hashing algorithms so it’s very important that you check the memory type before buying GPUs for your mining rig. Everyone knows that Ethereum ethhash is memory hard hashing algorithm. AMD RX 470 and AMD RX 570, 580s are known to hash better. Compared to AMD RX470 and RX570; NVIDIA GTX 1070 is known to perform equally better in ethhash. However the hashrate is not going to be the same for all GTX 1070, RX 470, 570 and 580 series cards. The performance greatly depends on their memory type. Here we’ll show you how to spot the memory type of your GPU.
There are several GPU manufacturers like ASUS, Gigabyte, Gainward, EVGA, MSI, Palit, Zotak etc. However they do not manufacture memory chips for their GPUs, instead they buy VRAM chips from vendors who mass produce it. Some of the most popular memory manufacturers of GPU are Samsung, Micron, Elpida and Hynix. Among them; cards that have Samsung memory are known to hash better than Micron memory. In RX 470 and RX 480 Hynix memory seems to have the highest hashrate of 31.5 Mh/s followed by Elpida 31 Mh/s, followed by Samsung 28 Mh/s and Micron 22 Mh/s. In Geforce GTX 1070 Samsung memory has the highest hashrate of 32 Mh/s and Micron only gets you 27 Mh/s.
Here is a quick tip to find out the GPU memory type.
Checking the Graphic Card specifications on your Computer
Brought a Graphic card already for your pc and don’t know where to find its specs? Here is how you check the GPU specs in your Windows 10 PC. Right click on your desktop and click on display settings which should open a popup. Now open Display adapter settings which will display your GPU adapter specifications. It shows the GPU chip type, DAC type, BIOS information, dedicated video memory and system memory.
On Windows 7 PC go to Windows >> Control Panel. Now navigate to Appearance and personalization where you’ll find display adapter settings.
This only displays the basic information of your GPU and it doesn’t shows the memory type or memory manufacturer. To check the memory type you’ll need GPU Z utility
TechPowerUp GPU-Z to find out memory manufacturer
GPU-Z is a free, light weight software  that provides vital information about your graphic processor and video cards. It supports, AMD, NVIDIA, ATI and Intel graphic cards. It displays clock information, memory type, bandwidth, BIOS version, driver version and much more. Here is how you check the GPU memory type using GPU-Z.
First download the GPU-Z utility from here. Setup the utility and run it. It will now display the complete information about your GPU. You can also run this utility on your mining rigs to check out the memory manufacturer of all your GPUs. If your GPU has Samsung GDDR5 memory then you won the lottery, if it has Micron memory then either return it or let it mine algorithms that utilizes GPU core and not memory.
This works only for those who have already purchased the GPU, but what if you want to check the memory manufacturer of the GPU before purchasing it.
Finding GPU memory manufacturer using serial number
Note: we have not researched this part. The information below is taken from several online sources. Also this applies only to Sapphire RX 470, 480 models and MSI Geforce GTX 1070 units. Using the serial number from the box you can check its memory type. Or else you can directly call the GPU manufacturer and seek for tech help to know the memory type.
Sapphire GPU RX 470 and RX 480 Memory type:
Hynix: A1630, A1637, A1640, A1648,  A1715, A1718, A1721
Samsung: A1636, A1639, A1644, A1645, A1647, A1650, A1700, A1706
Elpida: A1637, A1638, A1641, A1643, A1712
Micron: A1610, A1701, A1702, A1707
Sapphire RX 500 Series
Hynix: A1714
Micron: A1718
MSI GEFORCE NVIDIA GTX 1070 – Micron vs Samsung memory – how to find out manufacturer
It is well know that owners of GTX 1070, especially the one with Micron memory has some serious overclocking issues. So it is worth to check out the memory type before overclocking or mining memory intensive algorithms.
Rather than we reposting the details it’s better that we link to the actual source. A user from Reddit has made a post where he has shared the spreadsheet to find out the memory vendor of MSI 1070 GPUs.
It’s worth checking out. There is no use of this article for GTX 1080 and GTX 1080TI users as it comes with GDDR5X memory which only Micron builds so far.
