GPUs and hunting speed: honest numbers
How many keys per second a GPU really does hunting Bitcoin Puzzle #71, why a top-end card gives no proportional boost, and why the software matters more than the hardware.
01Speeds by card
| GPU | Speed |
|---|---|
| RTX 4090 | ~3.0 bn keys/s |
| RTX 5070 Ti | ~2.9 bn keys/s |
| RTX 3090 | ~2.3 bn keys/s |
| RTX 3070 | ~1.6 bn keys/s |
| RTX 4070 | ~1.4 bn keys/s |
| RTX 2080 Ti | ~1.2 bn keys/s |
| RTX 4060 | ~1.1 bn keys/s |
| RTX 2070 Super | ~0.8 bn keys/s |
Sustained speed, not peak.
02Why a top card gives no threefold boost
Key search is not games and not neural nets. All the work is 256-bit integer math on the secp256k1 elliptic curve. Newer GPU generations crush older ones in graphics and tensor work, but in integer math the generational gain is modest. That is why an RTX 4070 beats an RTX 2080 Ti by only ~13%, not several times over.
Practical takeaway: you do not need to chase a flagship for the hunt. A mid-range card from the previous generation is a full participant.
In the hunt software matters more than hardware.
03The same RTX 4070: 0.74 versus 1.36
The most common reason for a slow card is not the card. Popular public search builds are compiled for decade-old architectures, and a modern card runs them through a translation layer, losing up to half the speed. We built the Galaxy 71 client natively for modern generations: on the very same RTX 4070, with the same parameters, the speed rose from 0.74 to 1.36 billion keys per second - by 83%.
Plugging your card into the hunt with our client, you get its honest ceiling, not half of it.
Got an NVIDIA card? Plug it into the shared hunt: the client hands out free ranges that never overlap with anyone, everything you clear lands on the map as your trail, and a key found in your patch is yours alone.
Become a hunter04Questions people ask
My card is not in the table. How fast will it be?
The client will show the exact figure after a couple of minutes of work. As a rule of thumb: in integer search, cards of the same class across generations run close, and flagships give less of a boost than in games.
Will AMD or a CPU work?
The hunt client runs on CUDA, so an NVIDIA card is required. CPU search is technically possible but hundreds of times slower - no practical point.
What do I need to start?
An NVIDIA card, the Galaxy 71 client and a Hunter subscription - symbolic, for the map and coordination, so nobody checks the same ground twice.
Read more: How Galaxy 71 works What is Bitcoin Puzzle #71 Hunt progress All 160 puzzles How Puzzle 66 was solved How much you can get Odds of finding the key
Galaxy 71 · Bitcoin Puzzle #71 · blockchain.