hashcat Forum

Hi everyone!

I'm thinking of these laptop options... as cheap ones but with amd graphics... what would you say?

Of course that hashcat performance is of interest, but the first two are really low in price, and I cannot figure out HOW MUCH difference in performance there will be, because obviously prefer to spend the little as possible to save for beer, although not the super better ultra megahashes.


1) RADEON R5:
https://www.bestbuy.com/site/toshiba-sate...Id=8790174

2) RADEON R4:
https://www.bestbuy.com/site/lenovo-15-6-...Id=1576208

3) RADEON R5:
https://www.bestbuy.com/site/dell-inspiro...Id=9463444

4) AMD Radeon HD 8650G:
https://www.bestbuy.com/site/hp-envy-touc...Id=5342009

5) RADEON R7:
https://www.bestbuy.com/site/hp-envy-touc...Id=8825037

6) RADEON R6:
https://www.bestbuy.com/site/dell-inspiro...Id=9463453

Thanks!!

You're facing two problems here. First a notebook is not made for high performance tasks like hashcat. If they are not especially made for gaming stuff they will usually tend to overheat. Second those "graphic cards" are AMD APUs, so the graphics unit is build into the CPU. That does not guarantee the highest performance like a dedicated GPU. I have a Kaveri A10-7850 desktop system which I use from time to time with oclhashcat. I delivers 1900 MH/s in MD5, check out the performance table on oclhashcat, that's not too shabby but then it's also not very much compared to dedicated GPUs. And it's a) overclocked, b) a smoothly cooled desktop system and c) a Kaveri A10. All your notebooks above will only deliver a fraction of its performance. And that's really poor.

So if you really want to do hashcat with a laptop, you should go with a dedicated GPU und the thing should have a sufficient cooling system. But that's the problem, cause you won't know it until you've tried it out and no hasrdware test stresses notebooks like hashcat does. So if you read in a review a notebook is already getting warm and/or noisy, it'll not be your favorite.

That said, this is no easy call to decide. I would not buy any of those above if oclhashcat should be one application target.

Mobile GPUs typically do not show good performance for hash cracking, especially if you're looking at R4 & R5 GPUs. The R5 from that first laptop you linked to would be about 24x slower than a 290X.

Further, consumer laptops do not have the cooling capabilities to handle compute workloads. In these small consumer laptops the GPU and CPU share a common heatpipe and are cooled with the chassis fan. They really can't handle much load or much heat, and regularly cracking on such a laptop will ensure its untimely demise.

IF you're intent on using a laptop for hash cracking, you'd probably want to look at a high-end gaming laptop or desktop replacement notebook that has multiple dedicated GPU fans. Seems like that would be way outside of your budget though based on the laptops you've linked to here.

Personally I just bought a Clevo P650se with a GTX 970M that I intend to use for occasional hash cracking. It has a discrete mobile GPU with a dedicated cooling solution (three heatpipes into two fans). Benchmarks show that it runs 60C under stress tests, so I'm hoping it will run around 70C for hash cracking. Performance should be pretty good for a mobile chipset as well, back-of-napkin math shows it should only be about 40% slower than a 290X.

Thank you both! greatly appreciated responses.

I've read them carefully and will take them on consideration to then perhaps buy a laptop for general use and dedicated newer gpus than mines for my desktop (I already use two 9800GTX).

Regards,

You also can choose laptop with NVIDIA GeForce GTX 860M (only GM107 chip). I been surprise then try it for hashcat ~48kH/s WPA/WPA2 (only 4 times slower 290X)
Full benchmark in attach.
I think two 9800GTX is slower by one GTX 860M, because new Maxwell architecture is real hash killer!

Thanks! I found this 840M, I think it's worth the price:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/huc/view.html?i...DJ3YNC%2C1

About a year ago I explored the possibility of a DIY external GPU setup. I had an ATI HD 5770, a 1000 watt PSU and a 7 year old Dell laptop all collecting dust and thought it would be a fun little project.

Long story short it was extremely easy to setup and performance was the same as having the card in a desktop. All I needed was a ExpressCard Bus to PCIe-x1 cable (part# PE4L-EC060A), install the GPU drivers (my case the AMD drivers) and had hashcat up and running in no time.

I did have reliability issues where the driver would crash on certain hash types forcing a restart of the laptop. Will have to fire it up again to see if reliability has improved with newer drivers and hashcat but for the most part it worked really good.

I mentioned above that I had just bought a Sager NP8651 (Clevo P650se). Finally got around to getting it all set up and run some benchmarks. This thing did not disappoint! Hands-down best laptop I've ever owned.

Benchmarks confirm that GTX 970M is about the same speed as a GTX 960, or about half the speed of a GTX 980. The cooling solution is incredibly well designed, it never broke 61C during benchmarking!





Full benchmarks: