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Ethereum GPU mining?

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Okay, same version as I. Do you uh, have a time/date conflict between your OS and the NIST time servers or anything like that?
 
Looks like that contribution has already driven up the price of ether. It was up to ~$9 earlier, back down in the ~$8 range now.

In completely unrelated news, my Sapphire 290s are in the process of rehab. The bad one - card #2 - has a new coat of TIM on the die. It also has an ASIC quality of 82.4%! It's so odd, static voltage values I set in HawaiiBIOSReader behave differently on that card than they do any other. For example, setting max voltage to 1.1v sets voltage to 1.008v instead. It's doing 1075/1250 just fine with that setting so I have no complaints.
 
I have Sapphire tri-x 290x but in my main PC so had no wish to test lowest voltage for use 🙁
it defaults at 1000/1250 and GPU-Z say VDDC is 1.148v while mining ethereum, ASIC is 72.3 in past I had truble finding lover stable voltage for 290 I had so I did not even try with new 290x I got from RMA
 
DrMrLordX said:
For example, setting max voltage to 1.1v sets voltage to 1.008v instead. It's doing 1075/1250 just fine with that setting so I have no complaints.
Click to expand...
It could be that the reading you're seeing is the voltage after sag; as an example I have a 7970 that's set to 1.175v but in HWInfo or GPU-Z, the actual voltage reading is 1.11v.
 
Yeah there seems to be some vdroop when mining, but I've noticed that cards with lower quality produce a higher detected voltage when operating despite having the same static entry in their BIOS tables.

Sadly the 82% 290 crashed after maybe 10 hours of mining, so I bumped voltage up to around the same level as my other 290s (measured, not same BIOS setting). We'll see how that goes. I don't have one of those super-awesome 290s that can do 1200 MHz+ GPU on -100 mV, despite a quality of 82.4%
 
DrMrLordX said:
Yeah there seems to be some vdroop when mining, but I've noticed that cards with lower quality produce a higher detected voltage when operating despite having the same static entry in their BIOS tables.

Sadly the 82% 290 crashed after maybe 10 hours of mining, so I bumped voltage up to around the same level as my other 290s (measured, not same BIOS setting). We'll see how that goes. I don't have one of those super-awesome 290s that can do 1200 MHz+ GPU on -100 mV, despite a quality of 82.4%
Click to expand...

My experience with ASIC quality has been fairly consistent across the same manufacturer and model of cards (lower binned cards require more voltage). That being said the differences in VRM layout with different model but same GPU type shows a bigger difference in energy consumed.

For example my Powercolor 390 cards on average clock the lowest but have the best overall power consumption (all voltages and clocks being equal). My MSI cards all undervolt to -100mv and run at 1111mhz core, 1250 mem. Compared to Powercolor which need -80mv to hit 1060Mhz stable. Overall hash speeds of each miner is comparable with the MSI a tad faster. Each miner consists of 4 cards each. The Powercolor miner consumes 870W or so where the MSI consumes around 920W. Now you may think this is due to clock differences but even at the same settings with very similar ASIC ratings the Powercolor miner edges out the MSI by around 35-40W.

Not much but every bit helps.

That being said the Asus 390's overall have been the best performers (hashes per watt) over 1100mhz but they still consume on average more watts at equal settings to Powercolor 390's.

I haven't tested Sapphire or XFX cards so I can't comment on them. I will say the Sapphire 390's need 2x8 PCIe which made me stay away from them as many power supplies lack enough 8 pin PCIe connectors to build a miner.
 
How easy is this to setup on a rig currently running Windows 10 and can I just turn it off and on whenever I want?
 
Madpacket said:
My experience with ASIC quality has been fairly consistent across the same manufacturer and model of cards (lower binned cards require more voltage). That being said the differences in VRM layout with different model but same GPU type shows a bigger difference in energy consumed.

For example my Powercolor 390 cards on average clock the lowest but have the best overall power consumption (all voltages and clocks being equal). My MSI cards all undervolt to -100mv and run at 1111mhz core, 1250 mem. Compared to Powercolor which need -80mv to hit 1060Mhz stable. Overall hash speeds of each miner is comparable with the MSI a tad faster. Each miner consists of 4 cards each. The Powercolor miner consumes 870W or so where the MSI consumes around 920W. Now you may think this is due to clock differences but even at the same settings with very similar ASIC ratings the Powercolor miner edges out the MSI by around 35-40W.

Not much but every bit helps.

That being said the Asus 390's overall have been the best performers (hashes per watt) over 1100mhz but they still consume on average more watts at equal settings to Powercolor 390's.

I haven't tested Sapphire or XFX cards so I can't comment on them. I will say the Sapphire 390's need 2x8 PCIe which made me stay away from them as many power supplies lack enough 8 pin PCIe connectors to build a miner.
Click to expand...

My MSI Gaming won't do better than 1075 mhz or so, but that's pretty close to 1111 mhz. Er well, that's with -100 mV anyway. I have seen variations on power consumption between cards. I think my Gigabyte 290 consumes the least, followed by the XFX 290 and then the MSI 390 with the one Sapphire 290 with the high ASIC quality mentioned above coming in last place (read: most power consumed). That's with all cards @ 1075 mhz and more-or-less the same voltage setting. My other Sapphire 290 is being stupid. It keeps causing driver crashes, and I can't sort out why yet.

tential said:
How easy is this to setup on a rig currently running Windows 10 and can I just turn it off and on whenever I want?
Click to expand...

You are better off with Linux (Lubuntu 15.10 is what I am using) if you want to set up a headless system that just mines when you turn it on.
 
DrMrLordX said:
My MSI Gaming won't do better than 1075 mhz or so, but that's pretty close to 1111 mhz. Er well, that's with -100 mV anyway. I have seen variations on power consumption between cards. I think my Gigabyte 290 consumes the least, followed by the XFX 290 and then the MSI 390 with the one Sapphire 290 with the high ASIC quality mentioned above coming in last place (read: most power consumed). That's with all cards @ 1075 mhz and more-or-less the same voltage setting. My other Sapphire 290 is being stupid. It keeps causing driver crashes, and I can't sort out why yet.



You are better off with Linux (Lubuntu 15.10 is what I am using) if you want to set up a headless system that just mines when you turn it on.
Click to expand...
Well I'm more talking about using my primary gaming rig when I'm not gaming.
 
tential said:
Well I'm more talking about using my primary gaming rig when I'm not gaming.
Click to expand...

I can get from cold boot to mining in less than two minutes. Boot windows. Bring up command line via run command. Paste a couple of lines that I have saved in a document on my desktop. Off and mining. End it by closing command line window.


I finally got some good performance out of my 390x, getting 32.2 now with -12mv at 1160 ( ram still at 1275). The secret was a new bios that lets me go 50+ on the power limit. That evened things out.

Kinda sad though the difficult has jumped just since I started mining. I am excited I get the 280x in a few days, and I already have the system I am going to put it in ready. I am hoping that is a much more efficient rig than my gaming machine, it is dual core Ivy not quad core Sandy.
 
poofyhairguy said:
I can get from cold boot to mining in less than two minutes. Boot windows. Bring up command line via run command. Paste a couple of lines that I have saved in a document on my desktop. Off and mining. End it by closing command line window.


I finally got some good performance out of my 390x, getting 32.2 now with -12mv at 1160 ( ram still at 1275). The secret was a new bios that lets me go 50+ on the power limit. That evened things out.

Kinda sad though the difficult has jumped just since I started mining. I am excited I get the 280x in a few days, and I already have the system I am going to put it in ready. I am hoping that is a much more efficient rig than my gaming machine, it is dual core Ivy not quad core Sandy.
Click to expand...

Is it worth is mining on Windows with an R9 290 from crossfire?

If I can make a couple extra bucks a month with minimal effort on my part that'd be great.

I also have an HD7950 if that's a better GPU to use from this from an efficiency standpoint.

Too bad my server doesn't have a virtualization CPU or I'd just pop it in there and use it like that.
 
poofyhairguy said:
At current prices and at current difficulty (minus power) I expect to theoretically make around $70 bucks this next month off my 390x and around $40 on the 280x.
Click to expand...

That's not bad at all, I shouldn't have been so lazy and jumped in sooner. Could have had my Polaris GPU paid for by now.
 
tential said:
How easy is this to setup on a rig currently running Windows 10 and can I just turn it off and on whenever I want?
Click to expand...

Ya its pretty easy to setup on windows 10, especially now. Just write a simple .bat file and double click to mine, close it to stop. Seems that drivers 16.2 have better performance than the later ones in ethereum mining. Good luck.
 
Yeah that's what I do on my Win10 machine. Though I actually mine on two separate users so I don't have to invoke -t 3 to get all the cards mining. That keeps my 7700k free to do other things. I actually game on the iGPU while the cards mine . . . pretty nifty actually.
 
DrMrLordX said:
My MSI Gaming won't do better than 1075 mhz or so, but that's pretty close to 1111 mhz. Er well, that's with -100 mV anyway. I have seen variations on power consumption between cards. I think my Gigabyte 290 consumes the least, followed by the XFX 290 and then the MSI 390 with the one Sapphire 290 with the high ASIC quality mentioned above coming in last place (read: most power consumed). That's with all cards @ 1075 mhz and more-or-less the same voltage setting. My other Sapphire 290 is being stupid. It keeps causing driver crashes, and I can't sort out why yet.
Click to expand...

Interesting results.

Another big factor is the quality of power supply used. When our cards are being pushed to the edge of stability having solid voltage regulation with low ripple really helps especially if you're using a motherboard with a subpar VRM layout. Also quality of risers and powered vs. unpowered can also affect stability and having Elpedia vs Hynix RAM can make a difference as well as only 4GB vs 8GB.

There's a lot of variables to consider.

I recently picked up a Gigabyte 290 Windforce with Elpeida for cheap but I haven't tested consumption yet. Every minute of downtime is lost Ether!

For anyone mining on Ethermine there's a nifty bot available to tell you your stats. I recommend it (easy way to check from mobile when out and about).

https://www.reddit.com/r/EtherMining/comments/4gojbu/ethermineorgtelegrambot_available/

Not sure if every function listed currently works but the avg and current hashrates work great.
 
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thilanliyan said:
I have my mining .bat file to start with Windows in case of random reboots (like Win10 likes to do lol) or power failures, etc.
Click to expand...

Good idea especially as we head into warmer weather or for where I live thunderstorm / power outage season. Power on after Power Failure is also a good thing to set in the BIOS 🙂
 
poofyhairguy said:
I can get from cold boot to mining in less than two minutes. Boot windows. Bring up command line via run command. Paste a couple of lines that I have saved in a document on my desktop. Off and mining. End it by closing command line window.


I finally got some good performance out of my 390x, getting 32.2 now with -12mv at 1160 ( ram still at 1275). The secret was a new bios that lets me go 50+ on the power limit. That evened things out.

Kinda sad though the difficult has jumped just since I started mining. I am excited I get the 280x in a few days, and I already have the system I am going to put it in ready. I am hoping that is a much more efficient rig than my gaming machine, it is dual core Ivy not quad core Sandy.
Click to expand...

I was also wondering if you could create a text file with your lines of code, rename the extension to .bat, and then put that batch file in the startup folder so it's all automated. Or, you could just save a shortcut to the batch file on the desktop, then double-click the batch file to start it up.
 
KingFatty said:
I was also wondering if you could create a text file with your lines of code, rename the extension to .bat, and then put that batch file in the startup folder so it's all automated. Or, you could just save a shortcut to the batch file on the desktop, then double-click the batch file to start it up.
Click to expand...

You can schedule a task with task scheduler. Set it to run at startup and really startup not login so no need to login. You will need to enter the windows password in the task scheduler. It works. Thats what I did.

My batch file starts geth, ether-proxy and ethminer.
 
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