Definition
Every ASIC ships with a nominal hashrate — the manufacturer's nameplate figure, usually quoted with a tolerance band such as "335 TH/s ±5%." The actual hashrate is what the machine truly sustains in your environment, measured either locally or, more honestly, at the pool against accepted shares. The two rarely match exactly, and understanding why is essential to judging whether a unit is healthy or quietly bleeding revenue.
Why the two figures diverge
Nameplate numbers are produced under ideal lab conditions: cool intake air, fresh thermal interface material, and firmware tuned for the test. In the field, intake temperature, altitude, voltage sag, ageing thermal paste, dust-clogged heatsinks, and firmware tuning all pull the real number down. A healthy miner typically lands within roughly ±5% of spec; a persistent shortfall of more than that points to overheating, a weak hashboard, bad chips, or a tuning problem worth investigating.
Why the pool number is the one that pays
The figure shown on a miner's own dashboard is an instantaneous local estimate. The pool reports a smoothed average derived from valid shares actually submitted over hours — that is the hashrate you get paid on. Rejected and stale shares, network latency, and brief dropouts all widen the gap between the local display and pool-side reality. When auditing a fleet, always trust the pool's multi-hour average over any single local reading.
Tracking the spread between rated and realized hashrate is one of the cheapest health checks in mining: a slow downward drift is an early warning of degradation. To dig into the failure modes behind a shortfall, see thermal throttling, and learn how chip quality sets the ceiling in chip binning.
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In Simple Terms
Every ASIC ships with a nominal hashrate — the manufacturer’s nameplate figure, usually quoted with a tolerance band such as “335 TH/s ±5%.” The actual…