Ethereum GPU mining?

[poofyhairguy]

your VRAM upped to 2000? - I think that makes a big difference.

Yeah that is the default speed with the 8GB bios, which is why I get close to 25. But anytime I try to go past that or get crafty cutting the voltage I end up hurting my hashrate. I know it's a PEBKAC problem, I am searching Youtube for some sort of guide now.

 

[MrTeal]

With the reports on how well the 4GB cards do relative to the 8GB cards (possibly due to tighter timings) and seeing how well they do with low clock speeds, I'm going to hold off on ordering any more RX480s until I see what the 470 can do. I think it will probably end up being a situation like we saw with Hawaii Pro/XT where the 290 didn't hash appreciably worse than the 290X. If the 470 can hit 23MH/s or so at good power levels at is ~$150, it will be a pretty awesome card to replace all my 290s with.

 

[poofyhairguy]

With the reports on how well the 4GB cards do relative to the 8GB cards (possibly due to tighter timings) and seeing how well they do with low clock speeds, I'm going to hold off on ordering any more RX480s until I see what the 470 can do. I think it will probably end up being a situation like we saw with Hawaii Pro/XT where the 290 didn't hash appreciably worse than the 290X. If the 470 can hit 23MH/s or so at good power levels at is ~$150, it will be a pretty awesome card to replace all my 290s with.

I think at some level it all comes down to timing in regards to value. My $199 480 will mine like $50 worth of ETH profit this month, which means that a $150 470 that you can buy in a month and a half maybe isn't the best value overall.

I think by the time any of these cards are readily available and it's easy to source them the difficulty rise will make it hard to payback any of these cards in a reasonable time.That is unless some new super coin pops up that is worth mining.

 

[EightySix Four]

Yeah that is the default speed with the 8GB bios, which is why I get close to 25. But anytime I try to go past that or get crafty cutting the voltage I end up hurting my hashrate. I know it's a PEBKAC problem, I am searching Youtube for some sort of guide now.

Anytime I mess with the memory things go to hell on my cards. Heat goes nuts and hashing rates plummet. I think there must be some serious curves set in the BIOS that we aren't able to touch, looking forward to some tools to allow us to drag more out of the cards.

 

[MrTeal]

I think at some level it all comes down to timing in regards to value. My $199 480 will mine like $50 worth of ETH profit this month, which means that a $150 470 that you can buy in a month and a half maybe isn't the best value overall.

I think by the time any of these cards are readily available and it's easy to source them the difficulty rise will make it hard to payback any of these cards in a reasonable time.That is unless some new super coin pops up that is worth mining.

True, it will depend on availability. There's not even a release date on the 470 yet, so it could be that waiting isn't a profitable option. I'm set up on notices for all the 480s at Newegg, but who knows when availability will be better.

You got pretty lucky on the 4GB models, I think. I'm really not sure how many 4GB ones we'll see until the AIB cards start producing actual 4GB units once the chip supply becomes better. It's starting to seem more and more like shipping a few handfuls of rebranded 8GB units was AMD's way of meeting their $200 promise, and that was it.

 

[Madpacket]

My 8GB model was delivered today (14 days!, damn you NewEgg). I'm going to be busy until the weekend but I'll get it running with Claymore and report back my findings.

One thing I forgot to ask 480 owners here, what are your ASIC ratings? and if you bought multiple cards have you noticed any major power consumption / undervolting / clocking differences?

 

[n0x1ous]

My 8GB model was delivered today (14 days!, damn you NewEgg). I'm going to be busy until the weekend but I'll get it running with Claymore and report back my findings.

One thing I forgot to ask 480 owners here, what are your ASIC ratings? and if you bought multiple cards have you noticed any major power consumption / undervolting / clocking differences?

82.5% asic on my XFX 4GB. Says better than 75.4% of similar gpus

 

[IntelUser2000]

High ASIC ratings: Better for overclockers
Low ASIC ratings: Better for underclock/undervolt

My Visiontek R9 280X has a 54% ASIC rating. Because of that I can undervolt plenty.

High ASIC rating has a default lower voltage, and Low ASIC rating has a default higher voltage. Does it mean that Low ASIC rating use more power? Nope. In fact, they use about the same(meaning the current use is different). Meaning more opportunities for lower power on the Low ASIC rating since more can be undervolted.

On the RX 480 reviews, the one with the worst power use result was the one with highest ASIC rating. 84% or something.

 

[Madpacket]

Well preliminary testing done. Impressive so far.

I only had a few minutes to tweak tonight but already have great results.

Sapphire ASIC rating 75%

I don't really understand how the new powetune works but I was able to set core to 970 and memory to 2210. Set power to +50mv and undervolted memory to 800mv, core to 1000mv (default 1.13).

This nets me 25.5Mh at around 150W from the wall.
Idle power is 50W with this system so I can't complain with the results. I'm guessing after losses the 480 is really using around 100W for 25.5Mh which is a lot better than my tweaked 290's to be honest (they're closer to 160 - 170).


Some pics...


https://imgur.com/a/2iADS

Sorry for the quality, tired.

Off to ZZz

 

[IEC]

Looks like you shaved another 10W off of my lows + optimized for another 0.5Mhs, Madpacket. Any chance you can share your voltage curves in Wattman? If I can replicate your results, it looks like I should be able to get under 350W system draw for three cards. Which would be fantastic efficiency.

 

[Madpacket]

Looks like you shaved another 10W off of my lows + optimized for another 0.5Mhs, Madpacket. Any chance you can share your voltage curves in Wattman? If I can replicate your results, it looks like I should be able to get under 350W system draw for three cards. Which would be fantastic efficiency.

I'll have to look over my settings tonight. I really just quickly messed with it and got decent results. I don't like the interface (confusing) but the tool seems powerful. I just set everything to manual and tweaked voltages as mentioned in my last post but I'll double check everything tonight. I don't even know if my memory can go higher or if I can lower the voltages further (probably a little).

Oh and checking this morning the power usage is actually a tad lower than I reported last night. It's actually bouncing between 148-151W so my computer must have been doing something in the background for the original measurement.

http://imgur.com/XqTGTsf

150W from the wall is great considering the rest of my system specs:

- Core i7-4790K underclocked to 2200Mhz, aftermarket cooler low profile Xigmatek w/120mm low profile fan.
- 16GB DDR3 1.35V 1600Mhz RAM underclocked to 1333Mhz (2*8GB)
- AsRock Z97E-ITX/ac Motherboard, using onboard Intel wireless NIC.
- Silverstone FTZ01 ITX case running 2x120mm fans
- Silverstone SFX-L 500W Gold power supply.
- Dual Radeon 480 (heh) SSD's running in a RAID stripe (Steam drive etc)
- ADATA Premier SP600NS34 M.2 2242 256GB (Boot drive).

As you can see this is not the most efficient setup for a miner. This is meant to act as my gaming rig while not mining. I haven't disabled any controllers (RAID, USB 3.0, Sound, Ethernet), just a bit of undervolting / underclocking. On an ideal mining platform I could save roughly 5 - 10 watts more in system power.

I unloaded my 5x290 cards and I'll put the money towards more 480's. I plan on ordering 12 - 18 more cards and selling off my existing 390's over the next month or two. Should be a substantial power savings once all said and done.

 

[MrTeal]

I'll have to look over my settings tonight. I really just quickly messed with it and got decent results. I don't like the interface (confusing) but the tool seems powerful. I just set everything to manual and tweaked voltages as mentioned in my last post but I'll double check everything tonight. I don't even know if my memory can go higher or if I can lower the voltages further (probably a little).

Oh and checking this morning the power usage is actually lower than I reported last night. It's actually bouncing between 148-151W so my computer must have been doing something in the background for the original measurement.

http://imgur.com/XqTGTsf

150W from the wall is great, here's the rest of my system specs:

- Core i7-4790K underclocked to 2200Mhz, aftermarket cooler low profile Xigmatek.
- 16GB DDR3 1.35V 1600Mhz RAM underclocked to 1333Mhz (2*8GB)
- AsRock Z97E-ITX/ac Motherboard, using onboard Intel wireless NIC.
- Silverstone FTZ01 ITX case running 2x120mm fans
- Silverstone SFX-L 500W Gold power supply.
- Dual Radeon 480 (heh) SSD's running in a RAID stripe (Steam drive etc)
- ADATA Premier SP600NS34 M.2 2242 256GB (Boot drive).

As you can see this is not the most efficient setup for a miner. This is meant to act as my gaming rig while not mining. I haven't disabled any controllers (RAID, USB 3.0, Sound, Ethernet), just a bit of undervolting / underclocking. On an ideal mining platform I could save roughly 5 - 10 watts more in system power.

I unloaded my 5x290 cards and I'll put the money towards more 480's. I'll probably be ordering 12 - 18 more cards and selling off my existing 390's. Should be a substantial power savings once all said and done.

Out of curiosity, what did you get for your 290s?

 

[Madpacket]

Out of curiosity, what did you get for your 290s?

I'm a little embarrassed to admit it but I just sent them back to NewEgg. I was still within the return Window (only just). They had a normal 30 day return policy so I took advantage of it. I know I know, kind of a dick move but I've spent over $20K at NewEgg over the last 12 months. This wasn't my intent when I first purchased the 290's. All cards were returned in pristine condition (kept all packaging etc). And of course I will buying my new 480 cards / motherboards / CPU's from them.

 

[thilanliyan]

I've spent over $20K at NewEgg over the last 12 months.

 

[IEC]

In for a penny, in for a pound!

 

[poofyhairguy]

I'm a little embarrassed to admit it but I just sent them back to NewEgg. I was still within the return Window (only just). They had a normal 30 day return policy so I took advantage of it. I know I know, kind of a dick move but I've spent over $20K at NewEgg over the last 12 months. This wasn't my intent when I first purchased the 290's. All cards were returned in pristine condition (kept all packaging etc). And of course I will buying my new 480 cards / motherboards / CPU's from them.

Nothing wrong with returning the cards, the value proposition changed overnight and 480s aren't impossible to get (just hard). I am glad I only kept one reference 290 myself and sent back the other. The one is a mining champ (it by itself OCed almost out performs my rig with 2 Tahiti's on average!), but unlike every other card I bought for mining I have no clue what to do with it when it's not worth running it. Few gamers want a reference 290, but every other card is spoken for. Maybe I will keep it in my GPU hall of fame with my Voodoo 2 and my GTX 460- "the card that made me the most money."

On another note mining might have killed my poor 390x! It was never a great OCer in games (and it had this red streak on the screen when loading games) but now I can't run freaking Firestrike on the card at stock speeds, it crashes every time.

My most expensive GPU ever and I killed it. I feel like a bozo, I might have to put the 480 in my big gaming rig just to play Rocket League with friends. At least the 390x can still mine, I might literally run it into the ground to help raise the funds for a replacement.

 

[SK10H]

I run DDU and clean install 16.7.2. Running 3 x 480s.

In order to undervolt #2 and #3 card, I *Cannot* overclock the memory at all. If #2 and #3 card stay at 2000MHz memory, then undervolt works fine. If memory is oc a little, the vddc is stuck at 1150mv.

The #1 primary card does not have this problem. I can overclock memory and core undervolt still work, although I need to run 3DMark a couple of time to adjust the voltage.

I try to crossfire it and 2nd card still wouldn't undervolt if memory is oc.

Please fix it in 16.7.3 or 16.7.4.

 

[DrMrLordX]

Strangely I can't change core/memory reliably in Afterburner. I just installed 4.3 beta and I can overclock the memory speed but not under clock?

Sorry I missed this earlier. I have had similar problems . . . the easiest way to cope with this is to mod the BIOS, if you're willing to go that far. I've done it a million times now so I'm somewhat insensitive to it now, but I can understand how others might not want to take the plunge, so to speak.

Sorry to repeat myself, but I can underclock GPU and VRAM using the aticonfig tool under Linux with Catalyst 15.12. Sometimes Afterburner and TRIXX don't want to go below the defaults. Sometimes they do.

 

[DrMrLordX]

On another note mining might have killed my poor 390x! It was never a great OCer in games (and it had this red streak on the screen when loading games) but now I can't run freaking Firestrike on the card at stock speeds, it crashes every time.

My most expensive GPU ever and I killed it. I feel like a bozo, I might have to put the 480 in my big gaming rig just to play Rocket League with friends. At least the 390x can still mine, I might literally run it into the ground to help raise the funds for a replacement.

It may just require more voltage to run games now. If you're feeling creative, you can try to rebalance the card's power budget by reducing TDC and increasing voltage. The procedure requires trial and error since altering TDC can sometimes change the card's vdroop characteristics. Monitor your power usage carefully to make sure you aren't raising overall power draw by boosting voltage.

It might work, or it might not. Alternatively you can just jack up voltage a bit, burn more power, and see if that works.

 

[MrTeal]

I'm a little embarrassed to admit it but I just sent them back to NewEgg. I was still within the return Window (only just). They had a normal 30 day return policy so I took advantage of it. I know I know, kind of a dick move but I've spent over $20K at NewEgg over the last 12 months. This wasn't my intent when I first purchased the 290's. All cards were returned in pristine condition (kept all packaging etc). And of course I will buying my new 480 cards / motherboards / CPU's from them.

Heh, that's why I'm wondering. I can return my latest 5 until Saturday for the 15% haircut, but I'm on the fence. I got mine for CDN229 apiece. I'll be out of town for a week and a half starting in a week, so really if I do return them for store credit it will probably be another 3 weeks before I can do anything with that credit. After power costs I should mine about CDN40 after power in that time, so really I'm looking at getting 200 back now or $40 plus an R9 290 in few weeks.

I know that it's a wash at worst or at best holding onto the 290s gives a bit better value, but there's something to be said for just sending them baCK to Newegg and not having to deal with selling them in the future when 470 and 480 availability is good.

 

[IntelUser2000]

IntelUser2000,

How are you getting such amazing numbers on your 290x, do you mind sharing your batch file settings? I'm only getting ~ 28 / 280 MH for Eth/DCR at the mo... (edit: -dcri 50 is giving me much better rates)

Sorry for the late reply.

Yes, higher -dcri settings. I go to this website and configure it for optimal: http://cryptoage.com/en/инструменты...double-mining-calculator-ethereum-decred.html

Of course, higher -dcri may mean higher power use. I do it anyway because otherwise there's lot less profit despite power costs being not too high here(~9.7c/KWh).

I am not liking the 290X too much. It does use too much power. It seems its using about 270W with 25mV undervolt. Soon its going to have to retire. I want an RX 480, but its not available at MSRP prices. Its possible by the time its back in stock in Canada, I'd be looking at Sapphire Nitro 4GB RX 480, or even RX 470.

 

[Madpacket]

Thanks for the feedback guys.

MrTeal - Yes I figure reselling reference 290's in 6 - 8 months will be a little harder than the 480's. Plus the reduced heat / power consumption / noise is nice. It's still not a bad decision to keep the 290's as who knows how long it'll take to get our hands on enough 480's. I may be foolish for sending them back, it's risky to wait but that's just how things are in the crypto world

--
IEC:


I was able to tweak the card a bit more this morning (only had 30 minutes before work) and managed to improve things a little.

I'm basically getting just shy of 26Mh at 155W from the wall with the latest settings.

http://imgur.com/tWWuXjv
http://imgur.com/eqdWt4o
http://imgur.com/QxCHYTH
http://imgur.com/nnHXIpi

I'll keep playing with the card and try to squeezing even more speed out of it while keeping under 70W (before board power).

Memory set to 2205 at 875mV (I had a crash after 16 hours or so? I upped the voltage a bit). I'm sure I can go either a little higher Mhz or a little lower on the wattage, memory speeds / voltage changes are picky. Wattman can only be tweaked with Claymore not running so tweaking takes longer.

GPU Core is set to 0.9v at 975Mh which GPU-Z is reporting as using 65W power draw and showing 0.8625mv load on the core - difference from Wattman likely due to vdroop.

From the results I've seen so far I appear to have a decent card but think there's more room to tweak. Really aiming for 25Mhz at under 100W total (before 10% power supply losses including board power).

Goal is build a 6xRx480 card mining rig using no more than 650W that produces at least 150Mh.

 

[Madpacket]

High ASIC ratings: Better for overclockers
Low ASIC ratings: Better for underclock/undervolt

My Visiontek R9 280X has a 54% ASIC rating. Because of that I can undervolt plenty.

High ASIC rating has a default lower voltage, and Low ASIC rating has a default higher voltage. Does it mean that Low ASIC rating use more power? Nope. In fact, they use about the same(meaning the current use is different). Meaning more opportunities for lower power on the Low ASIC rating since more can be undervolted.

On the RX 480 reviews, the one with the worst power use result was the one with highest ASIC rating. 84% or something.

I have observed the same behaviour as well since GCN 1.0. (7970's). Low ASIC ratings generally make for better miners when undervolted but as a gaming card I prefer higher ASIC rated cards.

 

[Erenhardt]

Im running 1050MHz at 0.9V (you actually set the core voltage at the memory voltage settings in WTFmann) amd memory at 2220 MHz. Resulting in 27Mh/s almost perfectly the same as my r9 290 at stock and -200mv

GPUz shows 75Watts for 480. The actual delta indicated by my PSU is around 100-120watts for 480 and almost 200 for 290 from the wall.

Both are giving me 52Mh/s at 400-450Watts from the wall.

 

[Madpacket]

Im running 1050MHz at 0.9V (you actually set the core voltage at the memory voltage settings in WTFmann) amd memory at 2220 MHz. Resulting in 27Mh/s almost perfectly the same as my r9 290 at stock and -200mv

GPUz shows 75Watts for 480. The actual delta indicated by my PSU is around 100-120watts for 480 and almost 200 for 290 from the wall.

Both are giving me 52Mh/s at 400-450Watts from the wall.

Thanks for the feedback. 400-450W seems pretty high for only 52Mh?