Which is stronger, wire rope or chain? Assume they are the same material with the same weight, which is stronger?
 A: A wire rope is stronger, because the material that makes it is continuous, i.e. without joins. In a chain, individual links must be closed by joining their ends, and that reduces the tension it can handle. The weakest bits in a chain are these joints.
A: wire rope is stronger the cross sectional area of a wire is usually greater than that of the links in a chain. Therefore, more pressure is exerted on a chain than on a wire if each are holding the same weight.
A: It depends on the material, but in most practical cases the wire rope will be stronger.
Assuming both the chain and wire rope are being used for lifting, and the cross-sectional area of the wire rope and chain are the same, in general the wire rope will have the larger yield strength, unless both are made out of a material with greater shear strength than tensile strength.
This is because the wire rope's yield strength is dominated by its tensile strength, whereas the chain has shear forces being exerted on one link by another. If the shear strength of the material is less than tensile strength, the overall tensile strength of the chain would be weaker than a wire rope of equal cross sectional area.
This would change if the material had greater shear strength than tensile strength (like cast iron), but it's difficult to manufacture a wire rope out of such material, because it's  difficult to form non-ductile material into a wire to begin with.
A: I need to read all the other answers to be sure this has not already been said but, by the measure specified it will unquestionably be rope, for an interesting reason: they said BY WEIGHT.
Since chain has to loop around each link, it basically gets half the strength an identical piece of wire would get that hadn’t been cut into teeny circles.
So even though one solid big wire is generally much stronger than a bundled bunch of little ones of the same overall diameter (which I’m almost certain is true, because it contains more metal), a chain of ANY material is going to be much less strong per unit weight than a straight line of that same material.
On the other hand, it’s complicated because a chain is effectively TWO wires holding a load simultaneously, with single-wire-thick linkages between the sets of double wires. This might in fact reverse our answer, and I’d love to know more about the physics of those curved linkages if anyone can explain.
At the end of the day, my guess is that, per unit weight, wire rope and solid wire are about the same strength when they’re made of the same material, or that wire rope is stronger because of the cross-sectional area, but only per unit weight. And that both are somewhere between 1.1 and 1.9 times as efficient as chain, which was clearly designed for superior durability and flexibility and handleability at larger scales where wire gets unwieldy.
A: Wire rope is stronger at any given diameter. A 3/8 diameter cable will hold more weight than a 3/8 diameter chain.. The load distribution on a cable takes place along the entire length, in a chain,each link acts as an individual support and the possibility of failure of say. One link in 250 is greater than along the length of a cable. Chain is more rugged than a cable..so in rough use a chain is a better choice but for safety sake and pure strength a cable is stronger.
A: You could answer this easily by comparing similar lb/ft vs load rating. However, which is stronger is really only a concern if your governing factor is the weight.  Application would usually determine whether a chain or cable should be used, and you pick the dia/type needed to meet the load.  
For example:  Cable gives more safety (if a few strands break the others may be able to pick up the load).  Cables give better strength per unit weight. Chains fairs better for corrosion due to less contact surface area.  Chains can make tighter turns and are less susceptible to cutting edges.
A: i think it's chain because of the crystal struture
