Ethereum GPU mining?

[SK10H]

I finally received 2 Sapphire Nitro RX470 8GB today, I am disappointed they put the artificial memory limit at 2100MHz max. Only bought 2 luckily.



Test with 1 card on pci-e slot 1 x16.

Sapphire RX470 8GB, 16.8.1, 75.9% asic, mem at 2100MHz in Wattman.
idle: 92W
mining at 1025/2100, 900mv 25.5MH/s: 207W
at 875mv, 202W
at 850mv, rejected shares

87.3% asic
At 1025/2100 875mv, 202W still mining but screen doesn't wake up

With both card mining, took 328W, so 125W per card on Corsair AX750.



Then I pick the 75.4% asic Ref RX480 8GB, 16.8.1
idle: 90.5W
1025/2100, 875mv, 200W
Basically, 2-3W statistical noise difference vs Nitro RX470 8GB.

This ref 8GB card needs 900-912mv to be stable. To show the mini-throttling when not enough vcore is applied,

At 875mv, 25-25.2Mh/s


At 888mv, 25.2-25.4 Mh/s


At 900mv, 25.5 Mh/s is reachable.

 

[Madpacket]

I finally received 2 Sapphire Nitro RX470 8GB today, I am disappointed they put the artificial memory limit at 2100MHz max. Only bought 2 luckily.



Test with 1 card on pci-e slot 1 x16.

Sapphire RX470 8GB, 16.8.1, 75.9% asic, mem at 2100MHz in Wattman.
idle: 92W
mining at 1025/2100, 900mv 25.5MH/s: 207W
at 875mv, 202W
at 850mv, rejected shares

87.3% asic
At 1025/2100 875mv, 202W still mining but screen doesn't wake up

With both card mining, took 328W, so 125W per card on Corsair AX750.



Then I pick the 75.4% asic Ref RX480 8GB, 16.8.1
idle: 90.5W
1025/2100, 875mv, 200W
Basically, 2-3W statistical noise difference vs Nitro RX470 8GB.

This ref 8GB card needs 900-912mv to be stable. To show the mini-throttling when not enough vcore is applied,

At 875mv, 25-25.2Mh/s


At 888mv, 25.2-25.4 Mh/s


At 900mv, 25.5 Mh/s is reachable.

Thanks for sharing results. Pretty close when undervolting from the looks.

 

[Madpacket]

6*480 MSI build completed.

https://imgur.com/a/sAD7T

 

[Elfear]

Madpacket's basic 480 multi-card mining guide using Windows 10.

So every setup is a little different for these 480's. You need to add one card at a time and take notes. This is a conservative approach I take when tweaking my rigs, if you have better ideas please suggest them. I wouldn't mind a sticky to help out newbies.

1. Write down the ASIC ratings using GPU-Z (right click on title bar, settings, ASIC rating)
2. Open Wattman and write down the default VID for each card for the highest state (7).
3. Using GPU-Z monitor the GPU core voltage. It should be idle at 0.8mv.
4. Close Wattman and load up ming program and then note how high the default voltage in GPU-Z is now reporting for each card, write the VID values down.
5. Open Wattman and tweak each card based off default VID. What I do is,
6. Drag the clock slider to -30 so all state values down clock. Now set the core speed to manual. Tweak states 3 through 7. Set them all to 800Mhz except for state 7. Set this to 1000 or 1020. (Start with 1000, move to 1020 for a tad more Mh).
7. Adjust GPU core voltages 3 - 7 manually. Set 3 - 6 to 800mv. Set state 7 between 860 and 900mv. This depends on your default VID. The lower the default VID, the higher you want to set it. And vice versa.
8. Adjust memory clock to 1180Mhz (to start)
9. Adjust memory voltage to 900mv
10. Adjust fan Max / min temp profile to 70 Max and 60 min.
11. Save changes and move to the next card, rinse repeat. If you have trouble matching the ASIC rating and default VID to Wattman (cards seem to rearrange randomly in Wattman) temporary set the fan of a single card to 100% and then look for the corresponding fan speed in GPU-Z.

Now fire up your miner and you should be getting around 26.5Mh per card but you need to ensure no throttling is taking place. If you experience throttling you should see it within 5 minutes, at least with Claymore anyway. If you start to throttle increase VID of the throttling cards a tad, back off clocks a little and improve ambient cooling.

If you're good after 10 minutes or so without throttling stop the miner and create a system restore point. Reboot Windows and then go back into Wattman. Now increase the memory of each card by 20mhz until you see throttling or crashing takes place. If you crash and need to set all cards back to previous values run the last restore point. It will take less time especially if you have an SSD. **Note always shut down your mining software while tweaking Wattman.

The idea is to now push the memory of each card as far as it can go before throttling or crashing.

*Most* 8GB reference 480's will hit 2200Mhz, some will go all the way to 2250, some may only hit 1180. You need to find the sweet spot for each card. This is time consuming but take notes as you tweak and eventually you'll get everything working. On average over 6 cards you should hit between 27 - 28Mh per rig. If you get a bad card you may get stuck with 26.5Mh but the other cards should bump up the average unless you got a really bad lot of cards.

In the end with the above tweaks you should be at roughly 800W from the wall +- 20-30W with a 1KW Platinum power supply (I'm using an EVGA P2 1KW for reference). This will get you to just over 160Mh if done right.

Pro tip - if you have a label maker, print out the ASIC ratings and stick them to the top of your cards.

Good luck!

Excellent guide! Thanks for posting.

 

[suklee]

Not necessary with 480's or 390's running Windows 10 anyway. I usually leave a dongle hooked up to my main card in the rig for maintenance purposes but they run just fine without dongles or dummy plugs.

I experienced the following issue on a rig - without a monitor plugged in, W10 was limited to 640x480, and Radeon Settings wouldn't show/display properly. I tried to force Windows to go to a higher resolution, but no dice. Maybe moving to the latest AMD drivers will help - I'm still on 16.7.2.

 

[SK10H]

I experienced the following issue on a rig - without a monitor plugged in, W10 was limited to 640x480, and Radeon Settings wouldn't show/display properly. I tried to force Windows to go to a higher resolution, but no dice. Maybe moving to the latest AMD drivers will help - I'm still on 16.7.2.

Even if you boot with a monitor to Windows, then unplug the monitor while using higher resolution, Radeon settings still would not display at all, and vnc in is very slow as well.

When my rx480 and 390 boot, they are stuck at 640x480 without monitor attached. My 7970/7950/280x has no such problem. If it's the primary video card, 1024x768 is available, Radeon settings launch just fine, and no slow down at all when remote in.

 

[tracerit]

Is there a method to allocate some of the GPU resources to mining when i'm gaming? Or should I just stop mining for the time being?

I just started mining as well with my 470. Here's a screenshot, everything looking ok? If ethermine.org is updating, that means I'm actually mining now right?

 

[cusideabelincoln]

Would it be worth it to mine on a 980 Ti?

 

[tracerit]

I finally received 2 Sapphire Nitro RX470 8GB today, I am disappointed they put the artificial memory limit at 2100MHz max. Only bought 2 luckily.



Test with 1 card on pci-e slot 1 x16.

Sapphire RX470 8GB, 16.8.1, 75.9% asic, mem at 2100MHz in Wattman.
idle: 92W
mining at 1025/2100, 900mv 25.5MH/s: 207W
at 875mv, 202W
at 850mv, rejected shares

87.3% asic
At 1025/2100 875mv, 202W still mining but screen doesn't wake up

With both card mining, took 328W, so 125W per card on Corsair AX750.



Then I pick the 75.4% asic Ref RX480 8GB, 16.8.1
idle: 90.5W
1025/2100, 875mv, 200W
Basically, 2-3W statistical noise difference vs Nitro RX470 8GB.

This ref 8GB card needs 900-912mv to be stable. To show the mini-throttling when not enough vcore is applied,

At 875mv, 25-25.2Mh/s


At 888mv, 25.2-25.4 Mh/s


At 900mv, 25.5 Mh/s is reachable.

did you use Wattman to cap your mining at that speed (1025mhz)?

 

[SK10H]

Yes, 1025MHz core is good for mem at 2100 on rx470.

 

[Erenhardt]

After a long night fighting with WTFman I managed to brake something in driver and now i can run it like this:

Not sure what made it work

 

[ozzy702]

My 1070 had just been sitting around idle and I decided it was time to put it to work. I'm using Win 10 Anniv + 369.09 + 1.1.7 Genoil and am up and mining but the hash rates sure do fluctuate a lot more than I'm used to on my 480's. It bounces around between 21 and 31. Is this normal for CUDA miner?

 

[tracerit]

Yes, 1025MHz core is good for mem at 2100 on rx470.

what's your voltage for your memory overclock?

 

[suklee]

Even if you boot with a monitor to Windows, then unplug the monitor while using higher resolution, Radeon settings still would not display at all, and vnc in is very slow as well.

When my rx480 and 390 boot, they are stuck at 640x480 without monitor attached. My 7970/7950/280x has no such problem. If it's the primary video card, 1024x768 is available, Radeon settings launch just fine, and no slow down at all when remote in.

^ Is there a solution for this? It's not feasible to keep a monitor plugged in to every rig, esp when multiple locations are involved.

After a long night fighting with WTFman I managed to brake something in driver and now i can run it like this:

Not sure what made it work

Nice, what hash rate does this give you?

 

[tracerit]

So I've been mining for a day now. I got my ethereum address and made a password through geth, but switched to Claymore and am in the ethermine.org pool. I can check my unpaid balance on ethermine.org but how do I actually get paid?

I've read about wallets, but since I created the address through geth, do I create a wallet on a site like ethereumwallet and plug in my address and password? Or should I never give out my geth obtained password?

 

[Erenhardt]

^ Is there a solution for this? It's not feasible to keep a monitor plugged in to every rig, esp when multiple locations are involved.




Nice, what hash rate does this give you?

Around 28Mhs, Totally not worth it

 

[Erenhardt]

It seems that Asus GPUTweak2 and Msi afterburner did it. Extending overclocking limits in both, somehow broke the wattman so that I could set some silly 16GHz memory frequency in wattman.
Sadly no voltage control. 2300 Crashed with a colorful artifacts, 2350 instagibbed. 2280 seems unstable depending on the load/core clock? Not sure.
Anyway the core is too slow to keep up with increased memory clocks. You would need to boost GPU clocks to 1200-1300 to have better memory controller utilization. That kills perf/watt. So I guess for gaming it would be nice. For mining not so much

 

[SK10H]

Around 28Mhs, Totally not worth it

Just installed Asus GPU Tweak II and extend the overclocking limit. Just did a quick test at 2150, totally worth it for the RX470.

 

[Erenhardt]

Just installed Asus GPU Tweak II and extend the overclocking limit. Just did a quick test at 2150, totally worth it for the RX470.

What 470 is that? Was it driver locked to lower frequency?
Edit: NVM just noticed yourpost
How is hashrate now?

 

[SK10H]

What 470 is that? Was it driver locked to lower frequency?
Edit: NVM just noticed yourpost
How is hashrate now?

16.8.1 only allow up to 2100 without the GPU Tweak II unlock. It's a Sapphire RX470 8GB.
I set 1 card to 2150 and hashing at 25.9MH/s before going back to 2100 at 25.5MH/s for now, as I am at work and can't remotely power off/on if it's hard lock.

 

[MaxDepth]

So with mobo, memory, PSU and 6 480s, will you see a return on investment by next year?

6*480 MSI build completed.

https://imgur.com/a/sAD7T

 

[Yakk]

A full new 6x 480 setup with mobo, psu... etc... should break even in 6 months or less.

 

[Erithan13]

What's the most recent driver that gives good mining performance?

I've been on 15.something for ages, it's just decided to automagically update (without my permission) to 16.6 with the result my 290 won't even break 20MH/S.

 

[DrMrLordX]

Depends on how much power costs you and how difficulty progresses. I'm also not sure if we have a full 6 months mining left.

 

[Yakk]

Difficulty increasing will most likely be tied to 480 availability IMHO. It should spike at some point soon. As ETH is more resistant so far to anything but GPUs mining it should be profitable at least for the next few months until a better GPU is released which should be about 6 months for Vega.

If AMD rushed a bigger out sooner, then a major difficulty spike will come sooner.