ZCash/ZEC GPU mining

[IEC]

I mined almost double my usual ETH this week so I'm happy with ZEC

 

[dajeepster]

Tried -e 2 and I'm up to 11 Sols on the 4790k

try -e 1
my 3930K gets 19 sol/s with -e 1

 

[f2bnp]

And it's faaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaalling...

 

[poofyhairguy]

Quick and Dirty Automated Ubuntu 15.10 ZCash Mining Setup for Older GCN-based Cards

Thank you for this. The automation part in particular was much better than the .bashrc hack I was using before. I also didn't know what Ubuntu defaulted to .12 catalyst. It is all appreciated. I am over 300 sol now.

Also thank you for the idea of mining directly to Polo. I am now doing that too so I can sell my ZEC the second I can to maximize a declining value. I am keeping none of this junk, selling it and buying ETH.




It's amazing how all over the place the claymore miner is for cards. It turns some cards I almost sold due to lack of profitability on Ethereum into beasts.

I mean yeah my 390x gets 53 upclocked a little and each the 280X and 7970 GHZ are mid upper 40s. But crappy cards are the better value- my 2GB 370 is doing 33-39! when overclocked (a good 4-10 better than either of my 470 can do at best). My freaking 460 4GB gets 21-24 upclocked a little, which is a better ratio of it vs the 470s than under Ethereum. Even if zcash busts out to at on under Ethereum mining profitability it will still be worth using the 270, 460, CPUs and maybe the Tahitis to mine ZEC instead.

In my experience:

390x>290>Tahiti>480>370>470>460>CPUs

 

[DrMrLordX]

Glad to be of assistance. Maybe someday I'll go back and do a systemd-based automation version that will be more robust, but for now, that particular automation trick is working for me.

The trollbox users on Poloniex are beside themselves as to why miners would keep dumping ZEC. Poor guys probably bought in thinking there'd be another spike. Maybe there will be one, maybe not, but I too am dumping my ZEC as quickly as I get it. No sense in holding the bag on this one.

 

[RussianSensation]

RX 480s at 155$... where is this? :O

Newegg.com has MSI Radeon RX 480 Gaming X 4GB GDDR5 Video Card on sale for $199.99 (must add filler to get over $200) - $25 American Express Statement Credit - $20 Rebate = $154.99. Shipping is free
https://slickdeals.net/f/9244871-ms...r-20-rebate?src=SiteSearchV2_SearchBarV2Algo1

Even without AMEX, it's $180 after rebate. You can also get $25 off with AMEX checkout on any RX 480 that costs above $200.

On the 390X I have I get about 30MH/s with ETH and about 50-51 MH/s on ZEC. I think I must be missing something, since you're doing more than double.

No, it's around what I am getting. What I am trying to say that is ZEC hash rate is close to double ETH hash rate.

Enter your power usage and hashing rates into these 2 calculators and see what profitability you get:
https://www.cryptocompare.com/mining/calculator/zec
https://www.cryptocompare.com/mining/calculator/eth

The price has dropped again though, its sitting at 465 on poloniex. With the price dropping so fast, is it the usual thing to sell as fast as one mines or is it better to collect a little first and then sell together to save up on txn fees?

I thin BTC was the only coin that was worth holding for a long period of time. During HD4870/4890/5850 days in 2009, it was often possible to generate 0.5-1BTC per day but back then they were worth $1-3. I don't think Eth or ZEC have the same trajectory for appreciating the way BTC did. Since ZEC is falling in price, I'd sell it as fast as you mine it.

Tried -e 2 and I'm up to 11 Sols on the 4790k

That sounds low. What -t flag? -6 or -8? My Skylake would be slower with the -e 2 flag so I got rid of it.

I mined almost double my usual ETH this week so I'm happy with ZEC

Can you test how fast a Fury is in ZEC under Claymore just for curiosity?

 

[x3sphere]

ZEC will continue to fall, at least in BTC ratio. There's no way it'll continue to be worth 0.5 per coin when the amount of coins mined per day keeps going up.

I don't think anyone is buying it as a long term hold... rather just to profit off the volatility.

 

[DrMrLordX]

That would be my guess. Any longterm value to ZEC died when Vitalik announced he'd be incorporating their algorithm into ETH.

ZEC is below $400 and still falling. If this keeps up I may switch back to mining ETH.

I too do not see ETH ever reaching $600-$700 per coin or more since the volume is just too high. Though I think it will go up to maybe $30-$40 per ETH once PoS starts. Things will get wacky then since a ton of mining capacity will be pushed onto other coins.

 

[lienad216]

Newegg.com has MSI Radeon RX 480 Gaming X 4GB GDDR5 Video Card on sale for $199.99 (must add filler to get over $200) - $25 American Express Statement Credit - $20 Rebate = $154.99. Shipping is free
https://slickdeals.net/f/9244871-ms...r-20-rebate?src=SiteSearchV2_SearchBarV2Algo1

Even without AMEX, it's $180 after rebate. You can also get $25 off with AMEX checkout on any RX 480 that costs above $200.

No, it's around what I am getting. What I am trying to say that is ZEC hash rate is close to double ETH hash rate.

Tax? I think its 15$ or something. Or it depends on where you buy it from. I don't live in the US and don't really understand the tax systems. (Where I live all the prices are tax inclusive)

Still, that is about half the cost of the same card where I live... the prices are ridiculous here, but only for AMD.

at 0.5BTC the revenue from ETH is higher I'm not sure by how much. I've switched back to ETH for that reason...

 

[Madpacket]

Can you test how fast a Fury is in ZEC under Claymore just for curiosity?

About 50 - 53Mh at stock clocks 1050/500. I have dual Sapphire Fury OC's running on air and they mine between 100 - 105 H/s on my 5930K / X99 platform. The 5930K is set to 4.0Ghz at stock volts and hit's 32 - 33 H/s with nheqminer.

 

[Shmee]

I also get around 50H/s with my Fury stock in claymore's.

 

[DrMrLordX]

Claymore has released a 2.0 beta of his miner. It's available from the same links in the OP as always. It is Windows-only (for now) and advertises 5-15% increase in performance based on the card.

My Win10 machine was averaging around 78 Sols/S with two downclocked Hawaii cards (900 MHz, 800 MHz). Now I'm up to maybe 86-87 Sols/S, at least according to the miner. It'll be a few hours before I have a decent pool average.

 

[Shmee]

Cool stuff, I will check it out.

 

[Shmee]

Looks like my Fury and 290 get slightly Hashrate in the 2.0 version of claymore. Maybe about 2-5 H/s higher on each, hard to tell for sure.

 

[n0x1ous]

Bought time to move back to eth

 

[DrMrLordX]

ZEC is below $300 and still falling. ETH may become more profitable soon. I'm still running above ETH's pre-Oct 28th profit level mining ZEC but that won't last long.

Maybe if Claymore releases his new 2.0 beta miner to Linux he can keep my ZEC profits above that level.

edit: looks like 2.0 beta won't hit Linux anytime soon. Apparently he's worried about people hacking his binaries and removing the dev fee portion. Or something? I dunno. No big whoop, 1.1 is okay too.

 

[Madpacket]

Moved over to 2.0. Increased my hashes a little. Fury doing another 5mh or so. Appears to use more CPU resources though so just be aware if you're running a CPU miner on the same rig.

According to whattomine ZEC is still more profitable than ether. But this seems contradictory from what I'm looking at. What do you guys think?

 

[IEC]

ETH difficulty increased like 10%+ in the past 24 hours so ZEC is probably still profitable. Provided it doesn't fall much further.

 

[DrMrLordX]

I would have to run my miners on ETH for ~6 hours to tell for sure what is more profitable right now, but based on what I was making with ETH before Oct 28th . . . ZEC is ahead by a hair. But it's really close.

 

[Madpacket]

I would have to run my miners on ETH for ~6 hours to tell for sure what is more profitable right now, but based on what I was making with ETH before Oct 28th . . . ZEC is ahead by a hair. But it's really close.

Hmm. Given the power savings over Ether mining I'm inclined to stick with ZEC for a bit longer.

 

[Madpacket]

ETH difficulty increased like 10%+ in the past 24 hours so ZEC is probably still profitable. Provided it doesn't fall much further.

The relationship will be interesting. As people leave ZEC to mine Ether, ZEC difficulty drops and vice versa. Right now I don't think you can go wrong with either.

 

[DrMrLordX]

I haven't done a power assessment on what ZEC mining is costing me. It almost has to be less than what I was paying mine ETH though. ZEC mining is not doing a good job of keeping the house warm. A pity.

On the plus side, Claymore v2.1 beta is out now, with an intensity setting. I'm using high intensity (-i 2) and it seems to raise performance by a hair . . . maybe 3-4 extra Sol/S on my Win10 machine. I'm sure it would have a larger net effect on a 4-6 card mining rig.

But no Linux version of that in sight yet so oh well.

ZEC still falling! $223 per ZEC now according to nanopool.

 

[EightySix Four]

The economics of ZEC the coin don't really make sense to me, so I've moved everything back over to ETH while the difficulty is lower.

 

[Erenhardt]

ZEC mining is not doing a good job of keeping the house warm. A pity.

Yep. That is why I switched back to ETH. Screw profit I want the warmth

 

[poofyhairguy]

As people leave ZEC to mine Ether, ZEC difficulty drops and vice versa.

You can clearly see that on whattomine, as its percentage based. ZEC is actually rising in profitability compared to ETH because so many people are going back to ETH.

I am working hard this week coming up with an optimal solution for myself in this inbetween time when either can be more profitable when you wake up the next day. I have almost reconfigured every mining machine I have, and I have consolidated the cards that mine ZEC better than ETH into two machines.

So going forward all my Polaris cards except my 460 will mine ETH, while my 390X, 270, 460, and two Tahiti's will mine ZEC for now. That way hopefully I can just leave it alone for a week (switching miners back and forth is quite a time drain) and have a little cushion no matter which is a better choice when I wake up tomorrow.

The best part about all of this is no matter what it seems the split of miners means that it is almost impossible to mine less value than I did last month, and as a bonus my CPUs (which were doing little) and my 270 2GB (which was about to get killed by a large ETH dag) have some way to get some sort of income until I stop mining altogether. Heck I was about to take the Tahiti's offline too as they have aged so poorly mining ETH (easily the worst out of any card). Mining ZEC they are doing basically double in relation to either the 480 or the 390x in regards ETH mining, which means even at if ZEC is 30% less profitable on those cards I am still ahead.

I thought the mining party would be done in February, but maybe now it will be worth doing until April or whenever POS speculation comes (aka when I plan to cash out).