Ethereum GPU mining?

[DrMrLordX]

I have a reference 290 that used to do 1070/1250 all day @ maybe 72C, but now it likes to overheat like a sonofagun. Not 100% sure why, now it's a fireball even with the standard -100mV voltage adjustment.

Sounds like you may need to do some BIOS hacking on that card to get power consumption down. And yeah, TIM replacement is an option. I would recommend monitoring power usage on the card to see how much it's using . . . if that figure is abnormally high, there may be more wrong than just a poor TIM job.

 

[IEC]

Just added $500 worth of ETH via GDAX (Coinbase). We'll see where it goes

 

[DrMrLordX]

Good luck! Hopefully you bought in when it went down to ~$12. It's in a state of flux right now. My guess is some people sold off their stakes after it went up to $15. Profit-taking and all that.

unrelated: what are you Linux miners out there using for wireless NICs on those systems that require them? I have a PCIe 802.11ac NIC that Lubuntu can't use at all (based on Realtek 8812AE), a Realtek 8912cu-based USB dongle that works well except for the fact that its driver is bugged and likes to drop connection at pseudo-random (guh), and a Ralink RT3070 USB dongle that has terrible range/signal in Linux; sometimes it connects at 1 Mbps, and it can drop connection due to weak signal strength.

Between the two USB adapters, I have no 100% consistent way to connect my Linux miners to my router. Short of a cable drop.

 

[poofyhairguy]

unrelated: what are you Linux miners out there using for wireless NICs on those systems that require them?

I use Intel wifi cards for all my Linux wireless needs. Rock solid drivers.

Sounds like you may need to do some BIOS hacking on that card to get power consumption down. And yeah, TIM replacement is an option. I would recommend monitoring power usage on the card to see how much it's using . . . if that figure is abnormally high, there may be more wrong than just a poor TIM job.

The power usage seems to be alright (a little less than my 390x), and it can can clock up to 1100 stable before coming down to 950 throttlesville in a few hours. I might mess with the TIM this weekend. With the news that Polaris is coming July probably I appreciate having the card all the more so I will put some time into it.

 

[DrMrLordX]

I use Intel wifi cards for all my Linux wireless needs. Rock solid drivers.

You mean stuff like this? Might be an option if there's an extra PCIe slot.

The power usage seems to be alright (a little less than my 390x), and it can can clock up to 1100 stable before coming down to 950 throttlesville in a few hours. I might mess with the TIM this weekend. With the news that Polaris is coming July probably I appreciate having the card all the more so I will put some time into it.

As long as the power isn't out of control, you should be fine. I think the power consumption gets wacky if the VRMs are damaged.

 

[VeryCharBroiled]

over on another forum someone mentioned GenEthOs as a more or less turnkey OS. 14.04 based. probably start with that. then mess around with the official 15.10.

tried the GenEthMiner OS briefly, was way too loaded with stuff i didnt need. wouldnt of used 99% of it.

so installed ubuntu 15.10, installed the amd 15.12 drivers and claymores dual miner. no problems. single nitro r9 390 in it atm, with a nitro r9 380 on its way.

 

[Pete_69]

Hi all, new to the forum and to mining. I want a new graphics card for gaming/3d design and I can get a r9 390 nitro here in uk for £180, would it pay for itself and in what sort of time frame? Thanks.

 

[Feld]

Hi all, new to the forum and to mining. I want a new graphics card for gaming/3d design and I can get a r9 390 nitro here in uk for £180, would it pay for itself and in what sort of time frame? Thanks.

It depends on your electricity costs, but it should be something around 3 months of 24/7 mining to pay for itself at the current mining difficulty and price of ether. Sooner if the price goes up, or longer if the price goes down, difficulty goes up a lot, or your electricity costs are very high.

 

[DrRamtop]

Hi all, new to the forum and to mining. I want a new graphics card for gaming/3d design and I can get a r9 390 nitro here in uk for £180, would it pay for itself and in what sort of time frame? Thanks.

UK energy costs average about 14p per KW/h, so you'd be looking at 4-4.5 months for the card to earn back its cost once electricity is taken into account. That assumes ether price and difficulty stay as they are today.

 

[Chiropteran]

Trying to catch up on this but I can't read through the entire thread.

What is the best high-end card to buy for mining ethereum? Is the fury-x bad at mining for some reason?

 

[SimianR]

Trying to catch up on this but I can't read through the entire thread.

What is the best high-end card to buy for mining ethereum? Is the fury-x bad at mining for some reason?

I think the Fury and Fury X are basically not much faster than a 290/290x/390/390X but obviously quite a bit more. The 290/390 are the best value as far as I know for mining Eth.

 

[DrMrLordX]

The theory is that mining speeds with the current algorithm are bottlenecked by on-card memory bus width. Fury/FuryX doesn't offer much over Hawaii in that department, so the performance isn't that much higher.

However, in perf/watt, Fury Nano is currently the king, if you can get over the high MSRP. In terms of bang/buck you get the most out of a reference 290. Enjoy the noise!

Seriously though, any Hawaii will do about as well as any other Hawaii, with a slight edge to the 290x/390x. Usually 390/390x cards will draw more power thanks to the extra 4Gb of VRAM. You CAN get more performance out of Fury/FuryX, it just isn't enough to justify the additional cost.

 

[Chiropteran]

Looks like Nano is close to $500, 390X is around $370, and a 290x is $250 but seem to be largely out of stock, only one sapphire model available.

Tempted to get the nano actually since I could also use it as a great gaming card, but I still see some reports of coil whine. Is that still a problem even with newly purchased nanos today? Bah.

 

[techie81]

Any guess to how long small miners like myself, with a few video cards will remain somewhat competitive? A few months? Into 2017?

 

[Chiropteran]

Any guess to how long small miners like myself, with a few video cards will remain somewhat competitive? A few months? Into 2017?

I'm new to eth, but I mined bitcoin for a couple years. The answer is: nobody knows. If price goes up at rate x and difficulty at rate y, you could calculate how long until mining becomes unprofitable... but neither of those things will change at a constant rate, there will be wild fluctuations in price and difficulty could be disrupted as mining becomes more popular.

And then there is the fact, that if you could calculate long-term mining profitability, for example because you knew the price would increase at some set value... then the correct move is probably to simply buy ethereum instead of mining it.

But despite that, for some people mining is fun. And if you can get a secondary use out of your hardware, then the effective price of mining hardware is reduced, you can come out ahead, more or less.

 

[beginner99]

And then there is the fact, that if you could calculate long-term mining profitability, for example because you knew the price would increase at some set value... then the correct move is probably to simply buy ethereum instead of mining it.

But despite that, for some people mining is fun. And if you can get a secondary use out of your hardware, then the effective price of mining hardware is reduced, you can come out ahead, more or less.

Agree. Mining is to pay off the card. If you speculate about ETH value in future, just buy some directly.

 

[RussianSensation]

Agree. Mining is to pay off the card. If you speculate about ETH value in future, just buy some directly.

It is less risky buying the GPUs though. Not saying you shouldn't buy ether directly, but let's say 6x $199-229 RX480 cards with each earning $50 USD a month after electricity = $300 a month profits. 1000W PSU is enough for all 6. That's about 4 months payback period at current rates of difficulty/prices. If you sell all 6 of these cards for 50% of their retail value in 4-5 months, that would be $600 of profits. That $ can then be used to buy GTX1070 SLI for $160 out of pocket. If profitability continues at even $150 a month after rewards are halved, in 3 more months it'd be $450 in earnings (then add back $600 in resale value assuming you dump each card for $100 on the used market). That would be $950 USD towards 1080 SLI or Vega CF.

 

[beginner99]

It is less risky buying the GPUs though. Not saying you shouldn't buy ether directly, but let's say 6x $199-229 RX480 cards with each earning $50 USD a month after electricity = $300 a month profits. 1000W PSU is enough for all 6. That's about 4 months payback period at current rates of difficulty/prices. If you sell all 6 of these cards for 50% of their retail value in 4-5 months, that would be $600 of profits. That $ can then be used to buy GTX1070 SLI for $160 out of pocket. If profitability continues at even $150 a month after rewards are halved, in 3 more months it'd be $450 in earnings (then add back $600 in resale value assuming you dump each card for $100 on the used market). That would be $950 USD towards 1080 SLI or Vega CF.

Power here isn't exactly cheap here so thats a risk. Bigger risk is limited used market. ebay isn't really the thing here and with tolls and shipping cost not worth it. Most stuff is sold on "local ebay". Selling 6 GPUs of the same time will lead to lower prices because of high availability. Not kidding. And people are stupid here, AMD has much lower resale value.

But regardless, I'm not that into tinkering around that much to get the stuff up and running and build additional rigs. If the card pays for itself fine but for speculation I just buy ETH with cash (albeit price IMHO is too high now due to much of ETH being sucked into DAO).

 

[dark zero]

Wondering if NVIDIA will outclass AMD on this department... No info on Pascal and mining.

 

[Madpacket]

So anyone want to take a guess what a $199 Polaris 10 will mine Ether at?

I'm guessing bwtween 21-23Mh at stock clocks. If they can be severely undervolted they may come close to or even match the Nano in power efficiency per Mh but at less than half the card cost

These may be the new mining cards to get if paying more then 10 cents per KW.

Hopefully someone gets their hands on one soon!

 

[Madpacket]

Wondering if NVIDIA will outclass AMD on this department... No info on Pascal and mining.

I thought I read the 1080 mines around 23Mh according to the Claymore developer? Pretty terrible speeds for the price to be honest but it's possible the algorithm could be optimised better? but given how close Pascal is to to Maxwell I doubt it'll make much of a difference. The 1070 will likely mine around 19 - 20Mh.

At least they'll be power efficient at 16nm

 

[Chiropteran]

It is less risky buying the GPUs though. Not saying you shouldn't buy ether directly, but let's say 6x $199-229 RX480 cards with each earning $50 USD a month after electricity = $300 a month profits. 1000W PSU is enough for all 6. That's about 4 months payback period at current rates of difficulty/prices. If you sell all 6 of these cards for 50% of their retail value in 4-5 months, that would be $600 of profits. That $ can then be used to buy GTX1070 SLI for $160 out of pocket. If profitability continues at even $150 a month after rewards are halved, in 3 more months it'd be $450 in earnings (then add back $600 in resale value assuming you dump each card for $100 on the used market). That would be $950 USD towards 1080 SLI or Vega CF.

It all sounds good, except I have a tiny 1 bedroom condo and a 2 year old son, so not a lot of space for computers. Still thinking about buying one video card to increase my mining rate, I'll need to upgrade from my aging 7970 soonish anyway.

 

[poofyhairguy]

So anyone want to take a guess what a $199 Polaris 10 will mine Ether at?

I'm guessing bwtween 21-23Mh at stock clocks.

That would be nice, but I am scared with the combo of the 256 memory bus and an unoptimized mining program and driver (I bet it won't be able to use the 15.12 in the folder trick) it might be sub 20. We will see, I still plan to get one in a month if only for actual gaming use in my Mini ITX gaming rig since my main gaming machine is a mini mining farm right now. I am so tired of the 750 ti, $200 Polaris 10 would be a great upgrade.

I finally got the reference 290 to behave. I put on some new paste, put the fan on 79%, and put the machine on its side with a box fan next to it. In that configuration it will do 1155 stable all day which basically makes it almost equal to the 390x. I like that the blower seems hardy even if it is loud, the Sapphire 7970 Ghz my friend was letting my borrow had a fan literally rip in half while mining. Luckily some zip ties and a 120mm fan fixed that for now.

I also decided to blow some Best Buy reward points I was sitting on and I picked up a 2GB 370 from there that will eventually go in my desktop hackintosh. Now that is in my "gaming" rig with the 390x and (hanging on the side via riser) the half broken 7970. Overall that setup works pretty well because it's cool enough that I can overclock the 390x and the 370, which is something I couldn't do when the 7970 was actually in the case. Now total between my three machines (ref 290, 280x, 7970, 370, 390x) I have broken the 100 hashrate barrier which is a good feeling.

 

[MrTeal]

So anyone want to take a guess what a $199 Polaris 10 will mine Ether at?

I'm guessing bwtween 21-23Mh at stock clocks. If they can be severely undervolted they may come close to or even match the Nano in power efficiency per Mh but at less than half the card cost

These may be the new mining cards to get if paying more then 10 cents per KW.

Hopefully someone gets their hands on one soon!

I would hope for a good bit more than that, but we'll have to see what ends up happening. A 380 get about 20Mh/s, and a 480 will have ~30% more CUs, and about a 30% higher core clock.

 

[thilanliyan]

If a Polaris can do 30+MHs at <200w I'd probably buy one. If not I'll stick to my 2x290s, even if my system is drawing 600w while mining at 62MHs.