Ethereum GPU mining?

[[DHT]Osiris]

What's the Mh/s? I'm getting about 14 on my OCed 280x and if the 960 does at least that I'll be fine with it.

Using CCminer, it's getting about 14MH/s, unsure if that's mining Eth though. It's whatever nicehash is assigning it.

Honestly, I'd just buy a new PSU rather than build an entirely new rig for this. Get a nice new PSU (the Seasonic PRIME psu's are very nice) in the 500-750W range and you'll be golden.

 

[DrMrLordX]

Assuming he has the space for it in his case.

 

[Raduque]

There's room physically but I have no idea thermally.

I thought nVidia cards were supposed to be good for mining now? 14Mh/s? The 960 destroys the 280x in gaming, and my laptop's 970m is even better, but I ran claymore for ~30 minutes on my laptop and it was doing 2Mh/s.

 

[DrMrLordX]

I'm not sure, but you might have had thermal or power throttling on the lappie. Things get funky in that form factor. Have you tried mining ZEC on the 970m using EWBF's miner?

 

[[DHT]Osiris]

There's room physically but I have no idea thermally.

I thought nVidia cards were supposed to be good for mining now? 14Mh/s? The 960 destroys the 280x in gaming, and my laptop's 970m is even better, but I ran claymore for ~30 minutes on my laptop and it was doing 2Mh/s.

NV cards aren't bad perse, they just aren't generally as good perf/watt as AMD cards are for various reasons. NV cards can, however, brute force their way through as long as you've got the circuit power for it. If AMD had a true competitor right now at the upper-end scene, it'd probably wreck NV's better offerings (1070-1080ti) assuming the architecture (primarily VRAM) was in any way comparable to the existing 4x0/5x0 cards.

Something's wrong with that 970m though I imagine, it should get way more than that, even as a mobile chip. Could be an issue with shared memory, if it's using system RAM for the card (laptops like to do janky stuff like that). Try benching nicehash with it and see what kinds of numbers it gets, it might do better mining a specific currency, as @DrMrLordX stated.

 

[Raduque]

Something's wrong with that 970m though I imagine, it should get way more than that, even as a mobile chip. Could be an issue with shared memory, if it's using system RAM for the card (laptops like to do janky stuff like that). Try benching nicehash with it and see what kinds of numbers it gets, it might do better mining a specific currency, as @DrMrLordX stated.

This laptop has a dedicated 3gb for the GPU. It doesn't even have an Intel IGP, it doesn't use Optimus technology. It has Gsync, which I think is incompatible with Optimus and the Intel IGP switching, so Asus simply disabled the IGP all together. I'll try the Nicehash benchmark, because I absolutely wouldn't mind letting it mine from around 9pm to 7am and again from 9am to 6pm.

 

[[DHT]Osiris]

This laptop has a dedicated 3gb for the GPU. It doesn't even have an Intel IGP, it doesn't use Optimus technology. It has Gsync, which I think is incompatible with Optimus and the Intel IGP switching, so Asus simply disabled the IGP all together. I'll try the Nicehash benchmark, because I absolutely wouldn't mind letting it mine from around 9pm to 7am and again from 9am to 6pm.

You just have to make sure it's not trying to state '3GB for GPU!' when it's actually carving out 3GB of the 16GB of system memory for the GPU. Mining is *very* sensitive to memory latency, and I wouldn't be surprised if it suffered massively by having to hit system mem to do its calculations.

 

[Raduque]

You just have to make sure it's not trying to state '3GB for GPU!' when it's actually carving out 3GB of the 16GB of system memory for the GPU. Mining is *very* sensitive to memory latency, and I wouldn't be surprised if it suffered massively by having to hit system mem to do its calculations.

No, it's absolutely a dedicated 3gb. Saw the Micron GDDR5 chips myself when I repasted earlier this year. Trust me, I know my machine!

Nicehash is broken though, it hands on "Checking AMD OpenCL GPUs". I have to kill the process. Even after a reboot.

 

[[DHT]Osiris]

No, it's absolutely a dedicated 3gb. Saw the Micron GDDR5 chips myself when I repasted earlier this year. Trust me, I know my machine!

Nicehash is broken though, it hands on "Checking AMD OpenCL GPUs". I have to kill the process. Even after a reboot.

Disable the AMD check. If it's the old 1.7.x miner it's in the options, if it's the new 2.0.x miner, open the advanced config (a text file) and false the AMD line.

 

[Raduque]

Disable the AMD check. If it's the old 1.7.x miner it's in the options, if it's the new 2.0.x miner, open the advanced config (a text file) and false the AMD line.

It's 1.7.5.13, and it's hanging before miner even loads. I went into the config and changed DisableDetectionAMD from false to true, but it's still hanging. Now it just says "Skip check for AMD OpenCL GPUs" on the "Loading Please wait" box.

 

[[DHT]Osiris]

It's 1.7.5.13, and it's hanging before miner even loads. I went into the config and changed DisableDetectionAMD from false to true, but it's still hanging. Now it just says "Skip check for AMD OpenCL GPUs" on the "Loading Please wait" box.

Weird, I've had zero issues on 4 systems involving a 960, 970, 1080, 1080ti, and a bootcamp'd Mac with whatever garbage pro card they ship with it. Could be something screwy with how its detecting the card.

 

[Raduque]

Weird, I've had zero issues on 4 systems involving a 960, 970, 1080, 1080ti, and a bootcamp'd Mac with whatever garbage pro card they ship with it. Could be something screwy with how its detecting the card.

I have no idea. v2 got past the AMD check, so it's clearly something 1.7.x was doing. Also, I just re-ran Claymore, and it pretty much killed my entire system. Cursor unresponsive, music started skipping, etc.

 

[[DHT]Osiris]

I have no idea. v2 got past the AMD check, so it's clearly something 1.7.x was doing. Also, I just re-ran Claymore, and it pretty much killed my entire system. Cursor unresponsive, music started skipping, etc.

Preeeeety sure that 970m isn't gonna cut it, either something with the vram, something with thermal throttling (can check that with whatever, try Afterburner), etc. Gaming laptops aren't in the best of times, I wouldn't trust it to mine either.

 

[Turanz]

i saw that there is new version of claymore miner v9.6, is it worth upgrade from 9.5 for amd ?

 

[IEC]

I can't find a single reasonably-priced GTX 1060+ or RX 470+ card online.

I was going to pick up a GTX 1060 6GB for a friend's build but it seems I'm too late.

 

[[DHT]Osiris]

I can't find a single reasonably-priced GTX 1060+ or RX 470+ card online.

I was going to pick up a GTX 1060 6GB for a friend's build but it seems I'm too late.

If it can wait, there'll be a glut of them soon (most likely) from either people being scared off by the lower ROI right now, or a new card release. Miners will have to pay people to take the things off their hands

 

[ozzy702]

If it can wait, there'll be a glut of them soon (most likely) from either people being scared off by the lower ROI right now, or a new card release. Miners will have to pay people to take the things off their hands

So true!

 

[DrMrLordX]

i saw that there is new version of claymore miner v9.6, is it worth upgrade from 9.5 for amd ?

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1433925.0

Read for yourself. Looks like bugfixes and QoL improvements. Probably no performance increase. Big thing is that the reported termp/fan speed info will likely match that of other utilities now.

 

[Raduque]

I can't find a single reasonably-priced GTX 1060+ or RX 470+ card online.

Well, if you can stomach buying from Best Buy, you can get a 1060 3gb for $260 by the 13th, shipped directly to your store of choice for pickup.

 

[DrMrLordX]

If it can wait, there'll be a glut of them soon (most likely) from either people being scared off by the lower ROI right now, or a new card release. Miners will have to pay people to take the things off their hands

People are so silly sometimes. I've been pushing my 290s since last year. Until Serenity/Casper roll out those mining rigs will still turn profits for awhile unless they were already marginal due to power costs, and with the cards people are using these days, I don't see that being a big issue.

 

[zCypher]

Getting into the game late, but it has been interesting to say the least, especially reading back on all the threads over the past year or two on the subject of mining in general. So many people were saying how it's not worth it and how mining won't be profitable soon, blah blah blah. Yet here we are. It seems like every day there is a new crypto/algo.

I intended to put together a 6x 1060 on Z170-A, but Amazon shipped me the Z170-K instead (only 4 PCIE instead of 6). AMD cards were completely out of the question, out of stock everywhere. So for now I have 4x 1060 on Nicehash. After a few days, my first payout with Nicehash tomorrow is projected around CAD$55, not bad at all. A friend has a 1070 which seems to do much better at ethereum than the 1060 cards, so he's keeping it on that. From my observations with the 1060 cards so far, they sometimes switch over to ethereum when the other algos take a dip, but they spend most of their time on lbry and equicash. In stock form the 1060s only do around 17mhs on ethereum. The interesting thing about the 1060 is that they do quite well undervolted, still achieving respectable hashrates while only using 65-70w, which is even better for those in areas with higher electricity costs. Electricity is fairly cheap here, so I'm just running everything stock and monitoring with a killawatt, will see how things turn out.

One thing that I did not anticipate is how much tweaking, fine tuning and troubleshooting this would take! I don't mind terribly since I work at home, and I'm used to troubleshooting. It's still kind of a pain sometimes when you just want everything to work without a hitch, so I can definitely see how it could be off-putting for some people.

I can't complain though. Best case scenario is the gear pays for itself and then some, worst case scenario is it all goes to zero overnight, in which case I can keep a couple of the GPUs to build myself a nice gaming rig and sell off everything else. There can be worse things!

 

[Madpacket]

If anyone is wondering, the 22Mh Gigabyte Samsung based 3GB 1060's in my ghetto miner have been running just fine (along with the unlocked 460) for a few weeks now. Hindsight is always 20/20 but I should have picked up another 3 cards at $220 CAD/each. You could build a ~130Mh mining rig that uses around 600W tweaked for less than half the price of 6x1070 rig. Sure a 1070 rig is still better long term so if you can afford that, it's still the way to go. Just mentioning the 1060 rig for people on the cheap.

 

[Madpacket]

I can't complain though. Best case scenario is the gear pays for itself and then some, worst case scenario is it all goes to zero overnight, in which case I can keep a couple of the GPUs to build myself a nice gaming rig and sell off everything else. There can be worse things!

This is why there are so many miners now.

This may seem obvious to many but I'll mention this again as many people seem to forget about the difference the between break even point and reaching full ROI.

With mining rigs, you have two important metrics. You have the break-even point (the point in which you've mine enough Ether/Zec/LBRY etc and convert back to fiat) where if everything went to pot, you could sell (or repurpose) the hardware and not take a loss. I use a 50% metric for this. So if you spent 2K on mining gear, you only need to generate 1K in crypto to safely unload the rest of your gear and still break even.

The second metric is paying off the entire rig after accounting for power costs etc. Currently, this takes a lot longer but is still achievable if, or more likely when Ether/BTC climbs in value. This is the ideal goal (and anything after a full ROI turns your miner into a digital representation of a money tree provided your power costs are average) of many miners but you only need to hit the first metric (break even) to not take any loss (other than time invested which is variable and also beneficial as you'll learn a few things).

Happy mining all.

 

[ElFenix]

Hindsight is always 20/20

you ain't kiddin'. should have been running my 290 since i first saw this thread last feb. didn't want to burn out my one gaming card. ha!

 

[IEC]

you ain't kiddin'. should have been running my 290 since i first saw this thread last feb. didn't want to burn out my one gaming card. ha!

My single remaining R9 290 has paid for itself so many times since the days of Doge that I decided it earned an upgrade after its fans finally gave out. It got an AC Accelero Extreme III. Only the best for my ole' workhorse...