The AMD Radeon RX 470 based video cards are already on the market and if you are considering to buy one of these for mining Ethereum (ETH) you are probably going to be interested in what these GPUs are capable of delivering as hashrate. As you probably know the Ethash algorithm used by the Ethereum (ETH) crypto currency is very memory intensive and the operating frequency is very important. So for the best performance you would want to go for a video card with a faster video memory operating frequency in order to get a better hashrate when mining.

The 4GB vs the 8GB RX 470s

There are two different variants of the Radeon RX 480 video cards, one with 4 GB video memory and another one with 8 GB video memory. For Ethereum mining or other crypto currency mining the amount of video memory is not going to be important when you have 4 or more gigabytes. What is important for Ethereum mining as already mentioned is the operating frequency of the memory used on the video card.

As one would expect the 4 GB models being with a cheaper price also come with slower memory chips, chips that operate at 6.6 GHz (1650 MHz) while the larger 8 GB models should come with faster video memory running at 8 GHz (2000 MHz). So obviously the 8 GB models with faster video memory would be the preferred choice for miners that are going to be purchasing the Radeon RX 470 for mining Ethereum (ETH) or another crypto currency that relies on the same memory intensive algorithm used by it.

Ethereum mining hashrate from Radeon RX 470 4GB

Here is the hashrate that a MSI Radeon RX 470 video card with 4GB video memory running at 6.6 GHz (1650 MHz) is capable of giving you when mining Ethereum (ETH) with the Claymore Dual Miner - about 20.6 MH/s. With some overclock of the video memory to 7 GHz (1750 MHz) you should be able to increase that hashrate to about 22 MH/s, but that is pretty much it.

Ethereum mining hashrate from Radeon RX 470 8GB

Here is the hashrate that a Sapphire Nitro+ Radeon RX 470 video card with 8GB video memory running at 8 GHz (2000 MHz) is capable of giving you when mining Ethereum (ETH) with the Claymore Dual Miner - about 24.5 MH/s. With some overclock of the video memory to 8.4 GHz (2100 MHz) you should be able to squeeze some extra performance and get hashrate of almost 26 MH/s, but that is pretty much it.

The Conclusion

If you are looking at RX 470 for Ethereum (ETH) GPU mining rig, then the 8GB models from Sapphire and more specifically the Nitro+ series are the better choice for sure when compared to the models with only 4GB slower video memory. For mining other crypto algorithms however you should not expect that much of performance difference between the two versions of RX 470. The only thing that you may not like with the Sapphire Nitro+ Radeon RX 470 8GB video cards is the fact that they are priced pretty much the same as a reference design Radeon RX 480 GPUs that are most likely be able to provide a higher hashrate for Ethereum as well as other crypto mining algorithms. So a hard choice to make, though the aftermarket RX 470s are with better cooling designs that keep them cooler and without issues regarding power usage over the PCI-E slot that the reference design RX 480 had initially.