Ethereum GPU mining?

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beginner99

Diamond Member
Jun 2, 2009
5,208
1,580
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Just a harsh reminder of the difficulty curve. I expected this to happen but not so quickly.

https://etherscan.io/charts/difficulty

Sorry to be the bringer of bad news.

Anyone starting after mid-february was more or less already late to the game. The biggest winners are the ones that bought directly in January. I still think if you don't have hours of tinkering to waste and want to make bank, it's easier to just outright buy ether. If it reaches BTC levels in couple years you get a 50x return....

How long do we have left before our earnings drop by 1/2 due to a doubling in difficulty?

During BTC days, the market value of the coin adjusted as difficulty increased and it became more scarce. Seems like that's not happening with Ether at all. The unfortunate part is that even as AMD increased shaders with Fury X, the output didn't proportionally increase over 290/290X/390/390X. That doesn't bode well for next gen cards when in the past as AMD GPUs got 40-50% faster, their BTC output also increased.

Well price has skyrocketed since the difficulty increase. So I actually disagree with you. it has much more than doubled.
The shader part might just also be due to cod optimization. It's OpenCL and sadly to gett best performance it must be optimized for each card separately. Best guess it they optimized for Hawaii. But I don't fully disagree. With the newest drivers messing up hashrates that doesn't bode well for Polaris. Or has this been fixed now?
 

Staple

Member
Jun 9, 2013
30
0
0
Any secret to getting nvidia cards and Win10 to play nice? I have a GTX 760 and when I threw it into my old vista system I was hashing at 14mh/s. In Win10 I get about 3.

I tried the CUDA miner along with the 347 nvidia drivers but no joy.
 

Accord99

Platinum Member
Jul 2, 2001
2,259
172
106
You can tweak VDDCI in Afterburner? Cool. I can't do it on any of my cards. Though BIOS h4x0ring it down to .900v showed no problems. Huzzah!
On my 290x, it can be changed via the Aux voltage on Afterburner that shows up after clicking the down arrow button beside the core voltage setting.
 

VeryCharBroiled

Senior member
Oct 6, 2008
387
25
101
Any secret to getting nvidia cards and Win10 to play nice? I have a GTX 760 and when I threw it into my old vista system I was hashing at 14mh/s. In Win10 I get about 3.

I tried the CUDA miner along with the 347 nvidia drivers but no joy.

stock up on old drivers... seriously. I have, for instance, on win7 and AMD r9 390 here so your CUDA stuff is different. 15.12 driver, BIG difference in eth mining. and I have squirreled away all 16.x.x (which sucks for eth) as I also game on my win7 box

Im temped to do a full image backup to NAS for my win7 install and just switch between win7 for mining and win10 for gaming..

someone mention Vista, my HTPC runs Vista ultimate 32 bit. AMD dripped the crimson stuff for Vista, only old drivers for it. for mining you probably want win7.

win10 will automacially "upgrade" you drivers. NO NO NO.. BAD win10. we DO NOT want upgraded drivers with can suck serious pond water as far as eth mining.
 
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Staple

Member
Jun 9, 2013
30
0
0
stock up on old drivers... seriously. I have, for instance, on win7 and AMD r9 390 here so your CUDA stuff is different. 15.12 driver, BIG difference in eth mining. and I have squirreled away all 16.x.x (which sucks for eth) as I also game on my win7 box

Im temped to do a full image backup to NAS for my win7 install and just switch between win7 for mining and win10 for gaming..

someone mention Vista, my HTPC runs Vista ultimate 32 bit. AMD dripped the crimson stuff for Vista, only old drivers for it. for mining you probably want win7.

win10 will automacially "upgrade" you drivers. NO NO NO.. BAD win10. we DO NOT want upgraded drivers with can suck serious pond water as far as eth mining.

Ya, as I mentioned I used the old drivers that people recommend...I actually tried many of them without any luck. Supposedly it has something to do with CUDA or the way Win10 addresses nvidia cards. I've never been able to fix it. I am using 15.12 with my AMD cards.
 

DrMrLordX

Lifer
Apr 27, 2000
21,582
10,785
136
stock up on old drivers... seriously. I have, for instance, on win7 and AMD r9 390 here so your CUDA stuff is different. 15.12 driver, BIG difference in eth mining. and I have squirreled away all 16.x.x (which sucks for eth) as I also game on my win7 box

Actually, 16.2.1 and earlier are just fine for ethminer.

win10 will automacially "upgrade" you drivers. NO NO NO.. BAD win10. we DO NOT want upgraded drivers with can suck serious pond water as far as eth mining.

If you happen to be a Windows Insider, you can sort of avoid that. They stopped auto-updating drivers months ago once AMD stopped using Win10 Fast Ring as a petri dish to test their ES drivers. In fact the only updates you get in the Fast Ring are new builds and occasional updates to Windows Defender.
 

MrTeal

Diamond Member
Dec 7, 2003
3,554
1,658
136
Difficulty increase actually hasn't been that terrible. It's gone up pretty linearly since mid-February when the price really started going up adding ~8TH/month, which isn't a catastrophic result. At least it doesn't appear that it will have the exponential rise that BTC difficulty did with the introduction of ASICs.
 

VeryCharBroiled

Senior member
Oct 6, 2008
387
25
101
Actually, 16.2.1 and earlier are just fine for ethminer.

If you happen to be a Windows Insider, you can sort of avoid that. They stopped auto-updating drivers months ago once AMD stopped using Win10 Fast Ring as a petri dish to test their ES drivers. In fact the only updates you get in the Fast Ring are new builds and occasional updates to Windows Defender.

interesting. I game on the miner so a decent compromise is 16.2.1 or earlier then.

as far as insider build I am somewhat limited bandwidth (lookup EVDO for a taste of my world) and the daily driver living room desktop I want to keep win7 for. I have win 10 on my daily driver notebook. it actually has nice feature but I selected "limited bandwidth" option (whatever its called) mainly so it will STOP updates. also is I dont want my notebook to be experimented on, i want it to Just Work if you know what i mean.

I do daily rolling file backups and weekly rolling full image backup to my FreeNAS server so I could play "experiment on me!" if I really wanted to. but Im too lazy :)

EDIT just installed 16.2.1 win764bit. works well on eth so far. gonna rerun benchies on hitman. thanks again!
 
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DrMrLordX

Lifer
Apr 27, 2000
21,582
10,785
136
Good luck, and I don't blame you for not wanting to play with Fast Ring builds. Just a heads up for anybody that does want to use them . . .
 

Madpacket

Platinum Member
Nov 15, 2005
2,068
326
126
Playing around with an MSI 2GB 370 (7850) I picked up for 150 CAD new. Getting roughly 16Mh out it and it only consumes around 110-120W. Not a terrible choice if you have some spare risers or want to dabble in mining. It's about 80% the speed of a 950 for gaming so not totally useless as a 1080P card at medium settings.

If you can get them cheap enough two of them outperform the 390's slightly and they cost a good 100 less and are roughly on par energy consumption wise.

Just throwing it out here as a cheaper option.

Milk Crate Miner 2 will be built this week. I picked up 3 more 390's and depending on consumption probably add a 4th.
 

VeryCharBroiled

Senior member
Oct 6, 2008
387
25
101
VeryCharBroiled said:
EDIT just installed 16.2.1 win764bit. works well on eth so far. gonna rerun benchies on hitman. thanks again!

6 hours average 32.0 mhs @ nanopool, sapphire nitro r9 390 16.2.1 1090/1500 -0.75 mV driver win7 64bit pro.. so far so good..

shiny! as I ran 15.12 and it seems just as good.. BONUS POINTS for gaming with a later driver.

will bench hitman. I dont have to time for games like before I was married to The Wife ;) so havent done that yet.
 
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Madpacket

Platinum Member
Nov 15, 2005
2,068
326
126
6 hours average 32.0 mhs @ nanopool, sapphire nitro r9 390 16.2.1 1090/1500 -0.75 mV driver win7 64bit pro.. so far so good..

shiny! as I ran 15.12 and it seems just as good.. BONUS POINTS for gaming with a later driver.

will bench hitman. I dont have to time for games like before I was married to The Wife ;) so havent done that yet.

Nice speeds. Can you tell us what your memory type is on the Sapphire and ASIC rating?

Thanks.
 

VeryCharBroiled

Senior member
Oct 6, 2008
387
25
101
Nice speeds. Can you tell us what your memory type is on the Sapphire and ASIC rating?

Thanks.


asic qaulity 67.3% will check speed after work as its in the nxzt case.

will do a hitman bench just for the lulz (hey it was free with amd card).

right now after 50 hours non stop nanopool 16.2.1 driversays 31.3 with eth-proxy. it wanders a bit heh.
 
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RussianSensation

Elite Member
Sep 5, 2003
19,458
765
126
Milk Crate Miner 2 will be built this week. I picked up 3 more 390's and depending on consumption probably add a 4th.

You are well on your way to a mini Ether farm! :thumbsup:

Newegg US has raised prices on 390 to MSRP, with the cheapest model selling for $329.99 USD.
 
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Aristotelian

Golden Member
Jan 30, 2010
1,246
11
76
Hey everyone, I'm a bit late to this party which probably already poses a problem but I have a few questions (broad, and specific).

1. I currently have a 2600K (overclocked to 4.4Ghz), 2 GTX 580s in SLI, 8Gb ram, and a seasonic 850 gold power supply, with some SSDs. I was going to try to sell this rig in its entirety for a song but then I realised that I think I could just dump the 580s on ebay, and buy two video cards good for ethereum mining, and avoid the cost of building a new rig. Would I be crazy to do this? I was thinking of dumping the cards, maybe upgrading to 16Gb ram (ddr 3), and getting two polaris cards if AMD still commands this massive lead on currency mining.

2. On taxation/sanctions - we are all from different places here, but - if I mine currency, I believe I will have to pay tax as soon as I sell the currency - it'll be considered under capital gains tax where I live. But regulation of virtual currency seems rather minimal - is this something you guys are concerned about? There have been criminal prosecutions in the USA e.g., of that teenager who posted the Bitcoin/ISIS guide. If I do not know who I am selling to, or buying from, am I at risk of circumventing UN Resolutions? Any news on virtual currency regulation?
 

Madpacket

Platinum Member
Nov 15, 2005
2,068
326
126
You are well on your way to a mini Ether farm! :thumbsup:

Newegg US has raised prices on 390 to MSRP, with the cheapest model selling for $329.99 USD.

Thanks! I should very close to 500Mh by Friday :) The difficulty is rising so fast it's really crazy. This is without ASICS or FPGA's too! RTG is going to have a good quarter :)

I see Bitcoin is starting to rally now probably due to the upcoming split. Hopefully this drops the price of Eth down temporarily so I can buy under $10 CAD again.

Found a good post on Reddit Ethtrader which I'll paraphrase below for everyone;

"Bitcoin, the blockchain application has been around for 6 years with little adoption outside its original use cases. Why? Because money is the at the core of our society. It's the most difficult thing to disrupt in the world. It'd take decades, at least, to make any serious inroads against Fiat and gold.
Smart contracts are primarily still only in production but already governments and firms are clamoring to integrate them into their processes.
The problems they solve are clear. They remove middle men wherever they exist and through synergy solve problems we didn't even really knew we had. The level of connectedness interoperable smart contracts are about to bring about will dwarf the changes the internet brought about.
We're entering a world where your doctor can accredit your medical record folder with your medical records, which can then be read in real time by your health insurance cover providers who in turn can haggle over prices allowing to change your plan with a swipe on your phone every day. The owner of the medical records could also earn some money by allowing a medical research smart contract to talk to the records on a zero-knowledge of the person's actual identity basis. If a person is in an accident, a personal injury lawyer could be allowed access to the records in a split second instead of the weeks it takes now. If you die, the notice of your death posted to this folder by your doctor can trigger your will which is also a smart contract which in turn can talk tell your health insurance provider where to distribute the insurance funds. Processes that normally take months will take seconds. This is just one example of millions I could give to highlight the synergy Ethereum smart contracts allow. The utility to society is crystal clear."

Exciting times!
 

Madpacket

Platinum Member
Nov 15, 2005
2,068
326
126
For anyone wondering how to store Eth I recommend creating a smart contract multi-signature wallet with Mist and storing your coins in the contract wallet. Pretty safe until someone like Trezor comes along with hardware wallet support. Paper wallets are good for long term storage but a pain in the rear to move funds around with quickly. These contract wallets let you set cool parameters like how many signatures are required, and set withdrawal limits etc.

Details on how to do that here:

http://ethdocs.org/en/latest/account-management.html#using-mist-ethereum-wallet
 
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Madpacket

Platinum Member
Nov 15, 2005
2,068
326
126
asic qaulity 67.3% will check speed after work as its in the nxzt case.

will do a hitman bench just for the lulz (hey it was free with amd card).

right now after 50 hours non stop nanopool 16.2.1 driversays 31.3 with eth-proxy. it wanders a bit heh.

Nanopool is pretty decent. I have one card mining there to keep an eye on earnings. I prefer ethermine.org though, a little higher payouts over time in my experience.

I have a two MSI 390's with similar ASIC ratings, they run a bit hotter but only consume a few more watts than higher rated cards. All of my cards except one will do 1111Mhz at -100Mv. I have one Powercolor card that has a 70% ASIC rating that requires -85mv at 1111Mhz so the ASIC rating isn't the most important metric. The VRM design makes a bigger difference. Powercolor and Club3D cards are manufactured by Foxconn, use an aluminum shroud and on average use less energy than the MSI cards all settings being equal. The MSI's are built like tanks and have a better warranty.

I'm actually most impressed with the Asus 390's. They consume a little less than the MSI's, they're closer to the Powercolor cards when undervolted but seem to be better at crunching hashes for some reason, they're more consistent. However RAM speeds are harder to set on them for some strange reason (I can't set them specifically to 1250, they wander to 1325/1350 Mhz so probably different memory ramps set by Asus in the BIOS) but If you can get the Asus cards for a good price I recommend them over the MSI or Powercolor cards. The Asus cards use plastic shrouds though and one them has a small fan ticking issue (fan is hitting shroud at higher RPM's) so I jammed a tiny piece of folded paper in the right spot and got rid of the noise, so this is where the Powercolor cards are better IMO but the fans on the Asus are quieter at higher speeds. I haven't tested Sapphire or XFX out but they appear to use unique VRM layouts and fans as well.

Each card design has its own list of pro's and cons. I'm just throwing out some info out here in case anyone is on the fence about a brand of card.
 
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Madpacket

Platinum Member
Nov 15, 2005
2,068
326
126
Hey everyone, I'm a bit late to this party which probably already poses a problem but I have a few questions (broad, and specific).

1. I currently have a 2600K (overclocked to 4.4Ghz), 2 GTX 580s in SLI, 8Gb ram, and a seasonic 850 gold power supply, with some SSDs. I was going to try to sell this rig in its entirety for a song but then I realised that I think I could just dump the 580s on ebay, and buy two video cards good for ethereum mining, and avoid the cost of building a new rig. Would I be crazy to do this? I was thinking of dumping the cards, maybe upgrading to 16Gb ram (ddr 3), and getting two polaris cards if AMD still commands this massive lead on currency mining.

2. On taxation/sanctions - we are all from different places here, but - if I mine currency, I believe I will have to pay tax as soon as I sell the currency - it'll be considered under capital gains tax where I live. But regulation of virtual currency seems rather minimal - is this something you guys are concerned about? There have been criminal prosecutions in the USA e.g., of that teenager who posted the Bitcoin/ISIS guide. If I do not know who I am selling to, or buying from, am I at risk of circumventing UN Resolutions? Any news on virtual currency regulation?

I can better answer question #1. Question #2 may be better answered by someone else but all I can say don't let something like a guide written by a <insert group here> scare you off. If you're not going to be using crypto currencies to circumvent anything illegal you don't have anything to worry about (and I don't recommend you try to do this). Remember regular old cash is still more anonymous than any valuable cryptocurrency and is still the preferred method of transfer for criminal acts. It's just a PIA to move cash around :)

For your first question:

It really depends on what your goals are.

If you're in this to have one box for both mining and gaming then sure sell your 580's when Polaris arrives and if mining is still profitable at that time go ahead and mine (if it works on Polaris cards).

Keep in mind every day you wait the difficulty rises making mining a point of diminishing returns. Mining has always been a short term endeavour. If you buy a few 390's today you may be able to recoup half the cost of your 390's in a few months but the value of those 390's will probably drop considerably. This may not matter if you keep the 390's (heck a pair of 390's will let you play games comfortably for a long time, especially since they have 8GB of GDDR5).

Some things to consider WRT Polaris (or any new card tech coming down the pipe).

- Who knows what the difficulty will be at once Polaris cards arrive?

- Who knows if Polaris cards will even work properly with existing ethereum mining applications? how much time will be required to get Polaris cards working optimally with the applications? Fury cards don't even run optimally so I don't see developers rushing to get Polaris working ASAP.

- Who knows how much Polaris cards will cost or what availability will be like?


You have to look at a bunch of factors.

- What do you pay for electricity?

- Are you in this for short term gains or are you going to hold onto your coins in the hopes they'll rise over time?

- Have you considered just buying coins instead of mining? Right now they're (IMO) a great bargain given the amount of potential the Ethereum platform offers. Large investors are distracted by recent Bitcoin developments but Bitcoin as a platform long term has very little capability outside of commerce compared to Ethereum (I say this as a holder of Bitcoin).

One potentially large advantage people often forget about (and this more in response to your second question) is that you can mine coins basically anonymously as mining pools only require you provide them a receive address (which is randomly generated by a wallet application) but you can't really buy from an exchange anonymously (or easily anyway). This may be important for long term tax reasons. I like having a cache of my own coins that I earned myself that don't have a history attached to them other than a single pool payout.

Just something to keep in mind.
 

wege12

Senior member
May 11, 2015
291
33
91
Anybody else having issues downloading the new blocks using the latest Mist Wallet?
 

RussianSensation

Elite Member
Sep 5, 2003
19,458
765
126
Hey everyone, I'm a bit late to this party which probably already poses a problem but I have a few questions (broad, and specific).

1. I currently have a 2600K (overclocked to 4.4Ghz), 2 GTX 580s in SLI, 8Gb ram, and a seasonic 850 gold power supply, with some SSDs. I was going to try to sell this rig in its entirety for a song but then I realised that I think I could just dump the 580s on ebay, and buy two video cards good for ethereum mining, and avoid the cost of building a new rig. Would I be crazy to do this? I was thinking of dumping the cards, maybe upgrading to 16Gb ram (ddr 3), and getting two polaris cards if AMD still commands this massive lead on currency mining.

The best way to assess if it's worth it or not is to calculate the rate of return per day. You'll need the cost of electricity, assume Ether will remain at least at that day's price level for the foreseeable future and calculate your productivity rate if you were to buy 1, 2, or 3 Polaris cards. This will give you an opportunity to compare Polaris 10 vs. GP104 vs. discounted R9 390 cards around mid-June.

For instance, let's say 3x390s mine about 1 ether per day. 1 ether is worth $8.23 USD right. You can convert it to EUR so it's easier for you to subtract the cost of electricity. Let's say a rig with 3x Polaris 10 cards has the same productivity as 3x390s will use 450W of power (120W x 3 Polaris + 90W for downclocked and undervolted 2600K rig when mining).

Assume 3 Polaris 10s make ~ 1 Ether = $8.23 USD / (EUR to USD rate: 1.13 + add prob 2.5-3% for bank fee) - (0.45 kW x EURO per kWh x 24 hours) = profit.

Let's say 0.22 Euro per kWh

Half-yearly_electricity_and_gas_prices%2C_second_half_of_year%2C_2012%E2%80%9314_%28EUR_per_kWh%29_YB15.png


http://www.energyprice.be/

i.e.,

$8.23 / (1.16 Eur to USD FX) - (0.45 kW x 0.22 Eur per kWh x 24 hours) = 4.72 Euro

Let's say Polaris 10 x 3 costs 750 Euro less 150 Euro to resell 580s = 600 Euro

Days to break even/pay off 3 Polaris 10 cards:

600 Euro / 4.72 Euro profit per day = 127 days***

*** This assumes difficulty won't double over that period, halving the reward per day.

I think there is a strong chance it will be worth it. If we assume that Big Pascal/Vega 10 won't launch until January 31, 2017, there would be 215 days between June 30, 2016-January 31, 2017.

That means it's probably enough to pay off for 3x Polaris 10 cards, even if difficulty doubles at some point since you'd have 88+ extra days before Big Pascal/Vega 10. Then, you may rebuild your rig around Skylake-E and those large GPUs and just sell off Polaris 10s.

If you buy Polaris 10 cards June 15th instead of June 30th, it's extra 14-15 days too, etc.

2. On taxation/sanctions - we are all from different places here, but - if I mine currency, I believe I will have to pay tax as soon as I sell the currency - it'll be considered under capital gains tax where I live. But regulation of virtual currency seems rather minimal - is this something you guys are concerned about? There have been criminal prosecutions in the USA e.g., of that teenager who posted the Bitcoin/ISIS guide. If I do not know who I am selling to, or buying from, am I at risk of circumventing UN Resolutions? Any news on virtual currency regulation?

Not necessarily.

https://www.cryptocompare.com/wallets/#/cards

You should be able to find a card that allows you to transfer the funds directly to it to use it as a plastic or virtual debit/payment card.

For example, I chose the first one for EUR:
AdvCash EUR
http://advcash.com/en/solutions/card/

How are they going to prove that 600 EUR on your "credit card" is taxable income? That's a lot of tax payer dollars that are better diverted towards tax evasion on Panama Papers. :D
 
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Shmee

Memory & Storage, Graphics Cards Mod Elite Member
Super Moderator
Sep 13, 2008
7,381
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I have used coinbase before, can turn bitcoin into USD $$$ in your bank account.