A modern GPU box is a wall of numbers, and most of them are designed to make the card sound impressive rather than to help you predict how it will mine. Learning to read past the marketing is one of the most useful skills a home miner can develop, because it lets you spot value where others see only the headline figure.

Numbers that matter for mining

Memory bandwidth

Often buried below the fold, memory bandwidth in gigabytes per second is one of the best predictors of mining performance for memory-heavy work. It is the product of memory speed and bus width, and it frequently matters more than core count.

VRAM capacity and type

The amount of memory sets a floor on whether a card can mine at all, and the type (GDDR6, GDDR6X) influences bandwidth. Eight gigabytes is a sensible minimum.

Bus width

A 256-bit bus generally feeds the cores better than a 128-bit bus on memory-bound work, even when the narrower card has faster memory chips.

Board power

The real power draw under load determines your electricity cost and cooling needs. A card delivering the same work for less power wins over a year of mining.

Numbers that are mostly marketing

Headline core count

Shader or CUDA core counts make for big numbers on the box, but on memory-bound mining the cores often sit waiting for data. More cores do not help if memory cannot feed them.

Boost clock

Peak boost clocks are achieved briefly under ideal conditions. Sustained mining clocks are lower and more stable, so the boost figure tells you little about day-to-day performance.

Ray tracing and AI cores

These are genuine features for gaming and creative work, but they contribute nothing to Malairte mining. Do not pay a premium for them in a mining-focused build.

Putting it together

When you compare two cards, line up memory bandwidth, VRAM capacity and type, bus width, and real board power side by side. Set the core count and boost clock aside as secondary. The card that wins on the memory subsystem and efficiency, not the one with the biggest core number, is usually the better mining buy.

A practical habit

Before buying, write down the four numbers that matter for each candidate card and compare them on paper. Stripping away the marketing this way makes value obvious, and it protects you from paying extra for capabilities a mining rig will never use.