Ethereum GPU mining?

[Madpacket]

I fixed my issue by fixing my PC's time. Apparently it was off by 30 seconds or so.

Ahh, that makes sense. OK will try syncing to NIST time servers or something. Thanks.

 

[Madpacket]

I fixed my issue by fixing my PC's time. Apparently it was off by 30 seconds or so.

Thanks for the tip, that worked just fine.

 

[metalliax]

I fixed my issue by fixing my PC's time. Apparently it was off by 30 seconds or so.

I used grimpr's post to install ntp and now my time is always updated.

 

[EightySix Four]

Hmm, looks like my VRAM is pretty weak, anything over 1500mhz results in lower scores. The benchmark gives me 20.4MH/s but my 6 hour average is around 24 MH/s. I'm on target for $200ish a month and I have low electric costs. Me and a friend are discussing building a much bigger rig out of used 290s, pretty cool stuff 👍🏻

 

[Erithan13]

It would be risky adding a 380 to a PC that already has a 290X on a 550W power supply.

For reference I have one 380 + one 390 on a FX 8350 platform with half cores disabled and underclocked etc powered by a Seasonic 750W. With this combo I undervolted / power tuned both cards pretty severely and it's still pulling 440W from the wall. You could probably get away with it with careful tuning but not at stock voltages.

I've had my finger hovering over the button on a 4GB 380 so I've got a power meter to see how much I'll be pushing the PSU. Power draw from the wall at stock clocks is 300W, taking into account the PSU efficiency that puts the system draw somewhere in the 260W range. The CPU is undervolted and doesn't break 60W under gaming load, <20W idle. By a fairly conservative estimate that gives me 200W to play with before I exceed 500W system draw. That fits neatly with the power consumption of the 380 according to what I've researched although a lot of reviews are more concerned with OCing it to the max and making it suffer rather than being nice and underclocking it a little......think I'll take the chance and grab the 380. I predict 500W max from the wall which would be 450W system draw even at 90% PSU efficiency, I'm perfectly comfortable with that on a 550W unit and there's still room to underclock the cards further.

I'm probably still going to buy a little ether but the nice thing about mining is even if the whole thing collapses you're still left with a gpu to sell to get something back.

 

[Madpacket]

I've had my finger hovering over the button on a 4GB 380 so I've got a power meter to see how much I'll be pushing the PSU. Power draw from the wall at stock clocks is 300W, taking into account the PSU efficiency that puts the system draw somewhere in the 260W range. The CPU is undervolted and doesn't break 60W under gaming load, <20W idle. By a fairly conservative estimate that gives me 200W to play with before I exceed 500W system draw. That fits neatly with the power consumption of the 380 according to what I've researched although a lot of reviews are more concerned with OCing it to the max and making it suffer rather than being nice and underclocking it a little......think I'll take the chance and grab the 380. I predict 500W max from the wall which would be 450W system draw even at 90% PSU efficiency, I'm perfectly comfortable with that on a 550W unit and there's still room to underclock the cards further.

I'm probably still going to buy a little ether but the nice thing about mining is even if the whole thing collapses you're still left with a gpu to sell to get something back.

Ok good luck. Also factor in the wear and tear on your PSU. Supposedly as they age, power supplies can lose efficiency and rated output levels. Likely variable dependent on the quality of the supply but something to keep in mind.

 

[EightySix Four]

It looks like both Suprnova and Nanopool are down right now.

 

[wege12]

Is it possible to mine ethereum using a single computer with multiple different AMD gpu's? For example, if a 270x, 280x, 280x, and 290 were on the same motherboard, would this be possible?

I'm trying to find the least expensive way to get all my gpu's up and minning.

 

[Shmee]

@ wege12, I believe this would work, in fact it may mine of all of them automatically.

 

[siriuus]

Im running a 280x and a 290x in parallel on a z97-i plus. The 280x is actually running through the mini pcie-slot usually used by the wlan module.. so far flawlessly.
afaik ethminer will use all gpus automatically and post them on startup, but you can also manually define their number with "-t X" (X as number of gpus)

 

[Madpacket]

Im running a 280x and a 290x in parallel on a z97-i plus. The 280x is actually running through the mini pcie-slot usually used by the wlan module.. so far flawlessly.
afaik ethminer will use all gpus automatically and post them on startup, but you can also manually define their number with "-t X" (X as number of gpus)

Mining with multiple cards is not a problem but keep in mind different generation cards mine better with different settings. Not sure if you can run two instances and specify the exact parameters per card but that would probably be best.

 

[Madpacket]

Im running a 280x and a 290x in parallel on a z97-i plus. The 280x is actually running through the mini pcie-slot usually used by the wlan module.. so far flawlessly.
afaik ethminer will use all gpus automatically and post them on startup, but you can also manually define their number with "-t X" (X as number of gpus)

Ooh, you just gave me an idea for one of my ITX systems, thanks!

 

[Madpacket]

It looks like both Suprnova and Nanopool are down right now.

not sure about supernova but nanopool is working fine for me.

 

[EightySix Four]

not sure about supernova but nanopool is working fine for me.

They are back up this morning but both were choking last night. Getting 503s on Nanopool and suprnova's page wouldn't load. My miner couldn't connect to either of them either.

 

[Madpacket]

They are back up this morning but both were choking last night. Getting 503s on Nanopool and suprnova's page wouldn't load. My miner couldn't connect to either of them either.

Hmm. In the old days of BTC mining it was common for these pools to get DDOS'd occasionally. I used to have a failover pool setup in the event of a DDOS but I haven't investigated if this is possible with Etherium miners. Something we all should probably look into.

 

[EightySix Four]

Yeah, I am considering setting everything up in a rack I have access to but a little concerned with the amount of babysitting it has required thus far.

 

[Erithan13]

I'm having a problem trying to underclock my 290 (Sapphire Tri-X). Normally I use the AMD Overdrive panel and while it will overclock the card no problem it simply doesn't have any effect if I underclock (as in I can change the slider but the core clock stays stuck stubbornly at 1000mhz). Tried MSI Afterburner with the same result, is there some setting I have to change or something obvious I'm missing here?

Especially strange since I just got my 380 installed and Overdrive can underclock it no problem. It's mining away happily at 63C while the 290 is getting uncomfortable at 82C, just want to drop the temperatures a little. Seeing 45MH/s between the two and 460W power consumption from the wall.

 

[metalliax]

I'm having a problem trying to underclock my 290 (Sapphire Tri-X). Normally I use the AMD Overdrive panel and while it will overclock the card no problem it simply doesn't have any effect if I underclock (as in I can change the slider but the core clock stays stuck stubbornly at 1000mhz). Tried MSI Afterburner with the same result, is there some setting I have to change or something obvious I'm missing here?

Especially strange since I just got my 380 installed and Overdrive can underclock it no problem. It's mining away happily at 63C while the 290 is getting uncomfortable at 82C, just want to drop the temperatures a little. Seeing 45MH/s between the two and 460W power consumption from the wall.

You need to use the Power Limit slider. Best to use MSI Afterburner, and slowly lower Core Voltage (mine is at -72mV on a Nano) and Power Limit (mine is -40%). This will make you GPU downclock and use considerably less power. My PC (with just Nano mining) is 150w at wall power.

 

[Madpacket]

I'm having a problem trying to underclock my 290 (Sapphire Tri-X). Normally I use the AMD Overdrive panel and while it will overclock the card no problem it simply doesn't have any effect if I underclock (as in I can change the slider but the core clock stays stuck stubbornly at 1000mhz). Tried MSI Afterburner with the same result, is there some setting I have to change or something obvious I'm missing here?

Especially strange since I just got my 380 installed and Overdrive can underclock it no problem. It's mining away happily at 63C while the 290 is getting uncomfortable at 82C, just want to drop the temperatures a little. Seeing 45MH/s between the two and 460W power consumption from the wall.

You may need go into settings and apply the "extended overclocking settings" without powerplay. I had to do this to get actual voltage control working properly. Make sure you reboot after making these changes.

 

[DrMrLordX]

Sorry if this has already been asked, but:

how much longer will people be able to mine ether? Is there a cutoff date? Some earlier posts in this thread made it seem so.

 

[Madpacket]

Sorry if this has already been asked, but:

how much longer will people be able to mine ether? Is there a cutoff date? Some earlier posts in this thread made it seem so.

No one can answer that with any certainty. Right now it's fairly profitable due to the price of Etherium vs. the cost of electricity but this could change at any moment. Many consider the price severely undervalued given the utility of Ethereum so there's a good chance it could go up.

Also there's this concept called "proof of stake" which the core founder's have shown interest in moving to at some undetermined point in time. This is fundamentally different than "proof of work" which what we're all participating in now. I've no idea how this will affect miners but even with proof of work, mining eventually (always) becomes basically a zero sum game. Difficulty increases daily and if the price doesn't go up in lockstep the returns are diminished to the point of just simply wasting electricity. I don't see this happening anytime soon but no one really knows when.

All that being said Ethereum is quite different than Bitcoin and really shouldn't be compared to it other than on the most fundamental level. We're really in unknown territory sailing without a compass but with the desire to make something great and the tools to do it. There's a lot of interest and even some major investment happening so Ethereum should stick around for a while.

If I were just getting in I would invest in a couple handful of coins (only with expendable money) and if you have the equipment mine away and make a few coins. It's getting a bit late in the game to start buying up a bunch of video cards with Polaris in sight but at today's Ethereum price you could pay off a 380 in a few months time. And who knows, if the price doubles it'll still be profitable to mine for some time even with existing cards after Polaris arrives.

 

[DrMrLordX]

Interesting. So it isn't a set cutoff date.

Anyone tried doing this with an R9 285 yet?

 

[Madpacket]

Interesting. So it isn't a set cutoff date.

Anyone tried doing this with an R9 285 yet?

The R9-285 is a lower clocked 380 which is an excellent card to mine with. However 2GB cards don't work very well with Ethereum mining from my experience but you may have better luck than me. You may need to ask around on Etherium forums for help but I imagine you would need some sort of integrated GPU to use as a primary display adapter and then be able to assign your miner all available RAM to the 285. That's just a guess on how some are able to get 2GB cards working, good luck. If you do get it going please tell us how

Perhaps dig through this thread to see if anyone's mining on a 285 and then ask them how they got it going.

https://forum.ethereum.org/discussion/2134/gpu-mining-is-out-come-and-let-us-know-of-your-bench-scores

 

[DrMrLordX]

That thread had a miner using a 285 in May 2015. He got 15.5 MH/s under Ubuntu. For point-of-reference, another poster during May 2015 under Ubuntu reported ~22.5 MH/s with an R9 290, and others were reporting 25.5 MH/s with a 290x.

Given the results people have been getting in this thread with the 380 and the absurd prices on the 285 eveywhere, it looks like the 285 is a non-starter.

I do have an iGPU though (7700k) so it can handle general display duties, as it does currently.

 

[dark zero]

Wait... higher memory cards works better than the rest? or depends on the uARCH?

because if that so, Titan X and 980 Ti should do far better mining than the Fury X....