Ethereum GPU mining?

[Shmee]

From what I can tell with my 1070 it's 100% bandwidth limited. Core clock seems to have no effect. What drivers/OS are you using?

I am using windows 10 pro and 369.09. Oh, and it looks like 372.74 is now available. My clocks are +150/+450 on afterburner. I suspect the memory OC may make more difference.

 

[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.

Apologies if I missed an earlier reply - were you able to adjust Radeon Settings without any monitor plugged in? I've found that using Teamviewer, the settings don't display properly unless I plug in a monitor.

PS - Going to give MS RDC a try, as suggested here

 

[n0x1ous]

Apologies if I missed an earlier reply - were you able to adjust Radeon Settings without any monitor plugged in? I've found that using Teamviewer, the settings don't display properly unless I plug in a monitor.

PS - Going to give MS RDC a try, as suggested here

Try chrome remote desktop. Works fine without monitor plugged in.

 

[Yakk]

From what I can tell with my 1070 it's 100% bandwidth limited. Core clock seems to have no effect. What drivers/OS are you using?

That would make sense with the extra work the 1070 has to do. I'm very curious what is your GPU power draw?

 

[ozzy702]

That would make sense with the extra work the 1070 has to do. I'm very curious what is your GPU power draw?

I have it set at -50 power offset and +475 memory. Core is down around 1400mhz and it's pulling ~ 110 watts more from the wall than system idle. I have a 650 watt EVGA Platinum PSU. This machine is our family's media machine, my gaming box (I maybe game 5-10 hours a month these days), backup server for pics/videos, etc so it's running 24/7 anyway.

The really weird things is that the hash rate just seems to jump around all over the place. On my AMD boxes there is very little variation on hash rate. I tried playing with different settings but nothing really changed so I don't think it's system instability.

 

[Yakk]

I have it set at -50 power offset and +475 memory. Core is down around 1400mhz and it's pulling ~ 110 watts more from the wall than system idle. I have a 650 watt EVGA Platinum PSU. This machine is our family's media machine, my gaming box (I maybe game 5-10 hours a month these days), backup server for pics/videos, etc so it's running 24/7 anyway.

The really weird things is that the hash rate just seems to jump around all over the place. On my AMD boxes there is very little variation on hash rate. I tried playing with different settings but nothing really changed so I don't think it's system instability.

So +/- 27mh @ 110w. That's better than I'd thought it would be. The hashrate is probably jumping around because nvidia cards so not have the needed instructions for mining in hardware. It has to be done in software for the most part, so depending on what else the card is doing it will affect mining more. Also since it is done in software the there probably is wasted bus access. One more question, what is your CPU utilization?

That it can do it this well says the cuda code must be quite optimized already. AMD cards perform everything in hardware so that's why the rates are constant.

 

[DownTheSky]

Any trick to go less than 1V? My cards won't go lower than 1V even though I set 950mV or less in Wattman.

Also what's the best pool to mine on?

 

[Thala]

I have it set at -50 power offset and +475 memory. Core is down around 1400mhz and it's pulling ~ 110 watts more from the wall than system idle

What is the average hash rate reported with these settings then?

 

[Hitman928]

Any trick to go less than 1V? My cards won't go lower than 1V even though I set 950mV or less in Wattman.

Also what's the best pool to mine on?

I've noticed the voltage issue as well. With light loads it will use the voltage I set in Wattman, but when mining starts it sticks at 0.9875 V no matter how low I set it in Wattman.

I use ethpool but some don't like how it pays out.

 

[poofyhairguy]

Also what's the best pool to mine on?

I still like Ethermine.

 

[Madpacket]

anyway to gimp my mining when i'm using the computer?

I'm using Claymore miner and there's two lines in the start.bat file named

setx GPU_FORCE_64BIT_PTR 0
setx GPU_MAX_HEAP_SIZE 100
setx GPU_USE_SYNC_OBJECTS 1
setx GPU_MAX_ALLOC_PERCENT 50
setx GPU_SINGLE_ALLOC_PERCENT 50

I changed the last two to "50" from "100" hoping that it'd use just 50% of the GPU so that I can watch movies, browse the web, etc with no stutters. However I'm still mining at my max of 21.5Mh/s. I want to set another shortcut for 100% when I'm done using the computer.

I don't think the setx variables work that way (even though that would seem logical). Read the options available in Claymore. There are intensity switches you can adjust if you want to use your computer while mining. I haven't messed with them personally but they should work fine if they work anything like ethminer did. If you have success please share what worked best for you.

I was trying to mine on my new rx480.

I'll look into the programs you mentioned and see if they make a difference.

No worries. This thread is getting pretty big at 82 pages, and there's a bunch of info scattered here and there that would help you. Ideally we would sticky some of the better posts or even create our own FAQ. I find Googling for information on ether mining not very useful. Most guides I've read are outdated or have incorrect information. A lot of the good stuff is buried in random posts. Reddit also has an ethereum mining forum which may be a good spot to ask for help.

https://www.reddit.com/r/EtherMining/

You don't necessarily need a Samsung, but a memory that's default clocked at 8GHz.

The companies(AMD/Intel/Nvidia) are being smart nowadays. They are likely completely aware of Ethereum miners getting the RX 480 8GHz memory versions. Other than the one flub with Reference 4GB being an 8GHz memory part(which is basically non existent), they are priced based on how they perform..

That's the thing, there are 470 cards with different types of memory for the same or very similar pricing. Some cards do better than others so having a list would be useful. I'm still buying 480's myself as the price difference is negligible in most cases but that's because of geography more than the set MSRP.

I wouldn't count on Vega being that much better for mining, unless it comes with a huge increase in memory interface bandwidth.

PoS (Casper).

Unless Vega does something vastly different I agree. However I doubt extra memory bandwidth will help. Look at Fury X's as an example, no changes in hashing speeds between 333 - 550Mhz, bandwidth isn't a problem and the amount of ROP's don't seem to matter after 32.

Just wanted to chime back in with the solution I found to my 6th card not being recognized. Bottom line, use Win 10. That was the easiest solution after fighting with Win 8.1 for a few days.

Madpacket - What are your ambient temps? I'm getting a lot of thermal throttling but my ambients are in the mid 80's.

My 6x rigs run in the mid 70's on average. I wrote a guide a few pages back but I need to update the section on throttling. A friend of mine and myself have been plugging away at the throttling issue for a few weeks now. I think we finally have it solved but it has more to do with supplying the right amount of VDDC. These Polaris cards are very sensitive to VDDC changes. Just been busy lately so haven't had time. I'll update the section explaining this in more detail hopefully tonight or tomorrow.

Apologies if I missed an earlier reply - were you able to adjust Radeon Settings without any monitor plugged in? I've found that using Teamviewer, the settings don't display properly unless I plug in a monitor.

PS - Going to give MS RDC a try, as suggested here

Perhaps my last statements were misleading. I'm old school and just plug a small monitor in when tending to my miners. All of them have male Displayport to female DVI or male HDMI to female DVI adapters hanging off the primary cards. Given my 6th rig will be built this week (only 4 cards though, slowing down my purchasing) I may revisit the remote management. Thanks for the suggestion (and you too Nox).

 

[ozzy702]

What is the average hash rate reported with these settings then?

It's reporting ~ 29mhs @ 110 watts from the wall which means it's really only pulling ~ 101-103watts from the PSU. Not bad at all. It half makes me want to snag another 1070 for this box and just let them rip but I'm already poised and ready for castration, divorce or both from the wife if this endeavor doesn't pay off.

 

[ozzy702]

So +/- 27mh @ 110w. That's better than I'd thought it would be. The hashrate is probably jumping around because nvidia cards so not have the needed instructions for mining in hardware. It has to be done in software for the most part, so depending on what else the card is doing it will affect mining more. Also since it is done in software the there probably is wasted bus access. One more question, what is your CPU utilization?

That it can do it this well says the cuda code must be quite optimized already. AMD cards perform everything in hardware so that's why the rates are constant.

i7-6700k @ 4.4ghz. It's sitting at 6% utilization with qbittorren, teamviewer, and a few other things running so it doesn't appear to be hitting the cpu very hard.

 

[suklee]

Try chrome remote desktop. Works fine without monitor plugged in.

Cheers, have started testing Chrome RD - AMD Radeon settings indeed display without monitor plugged in, which is rather useful! Getting some cursor disappearance issues but can work around them I think. Super simple to set up, didn't have to fumble with opening ports etc. which I think I'd have to do with Microsoft RDC.

Perhaps my last statements were misleading. I'm old school and just plug a small monitor in when tending to my miners. All of them have male Displayport to female DVI or male HDMI to female DVI adapters hanging off the primary cards. Given my 6th rig will be built this week (only 4 cards though, slowing down my purchasing) I may revisit the remote management. Thanks for the suggestion (and you too Nox).

I've been using Teamviewer for a couple of years but recently started getting the "Commercial usage" warning. I'd consider getting a license, however A) even the cheapest option costs a ridiculous amount - with the current sale it's US$700 (!!) and B) aforementioned issue with Radeon settings not displaying without a monitor plugged in -- this is an even bigger deal breaker.

Getting some strange issues with a single card not being detected, or sometimes it would detect but can't change any settings (greyed out) in Wattman. Seems like could be an issue with the riser, but I have trouble identifying which card is causing issues. Perhaps I need to start labelling my cards with their ASIC values for easier identification.

 

[DrMrLordX]

Unless Vega does something vastly different I agree. However I doubt extra memory bandwidth will help. Look at Fury X's as an example, no changes in hashing speeds between 333 - 550Mhz, bandwidth isn't a problem and the amount of ROP's don't seem to matter after 32.

It's hard to say exactly what it is that the algorithm wants for optimum performance. It's clearly designed to frustrate ASICs/FPGAs and the like. It may well be that we never get anything better than Fury X anyway in terms of raw performance potential. Even with memory speeds down in the 333 MHz range, that massive 4096-bit interface seems like exactly the thing that ethminer et al should want from a card. Latency might be an issue too, I dunno.

 

[n0x1ous]

Cheers, have started testing Chrome RD - AMD Radeon settings indeed display without monitor plugged in, which is rather useful! Getting some cursor disappearance issues but can work around them I think. Super simple to set up, didn't have to fumble with opening ports etc. which I think I'd have to do with Microsoft RDC.

Turn on "mouse keys" and that will take care of your disappearing cursor issue

 

[Pete_69]

Hi all, need some help with mining.

I have a Powercolor RX480 (ref), which I`m very happy with, mining at ~26-27Mhs, but saw a post somewhere about dual mining with an apu to squeeze a couple more Mhs out.
What I would like to know is how do I go about setting up the dual graphics mining.

Thanks in advance.

 

[Hitman928]

Hi all, need some help with mining.

I have a Powercolor RX480 (ref), which I`m very happy with, mining at ~26-27Mhs, but saw a post somewhere about dual mining with an apu to squeeze a couple more Mhs out.
What I would like to know is how do I go about setting up the dual graphics mining.

Thanks in advance.

I don't know if mining on the APU is worth it. Which APU do you have?

 

[Pete_69]

I have an A8 6600K. Just on ethereum forum, it was an old post, some one had the same apu and a r9 370 and he said it gave another 2-3Mhs but did not explain how he set it up, do not want to be called a gravedigger in replying to an old post.

Thanks again for giving your time.

 

[codyray10]

I have an A8 6600K. Just on ethereum forum, it was an old post, some one had the same apu and a r9 370 and he said it gave another 2-3Mhs but did not explain how he set it up, do not want to be called a gravedigger in replying to an old post.

Thanks again for giving your time.

I put together a rig recently with a 7400k APU and 290 installed. The miner (claymore) picked them both up automatically. It gave me about 2Mh/s on top of what the 290 was doing. Just make sure the APU graphics are enabled in the bios and I would think you should be good to go.

 

[tracerit]

Cheers, have started testing Chrome RD - AMD Radeon settings indeed display without monitor plugged in, which is rather useful! Getting some cursor disappearance issues but can work around them I think. Super simple to set up, didn't have to fumble with opening ports etc. which I think I'd have to do with Microsoft RDC.

The cursor issue, are you referring to getting a curosr that looks like multiple stacked lines on top of each other? This is so annoying, I'm running dual monitors and only happens on the primary monitor. Have to turn on cusror shadows to "fix" it. Searching for a solution, it seems that people have been having this issue since 2001! lol

 

[tracerit]

It's reporting ~ 29mhs @ 110 watts from the wall which means it's really only pulling ~ 101-103watts from the PSU. Not bad at all. It half makes me want to snag another 1070 for this box and just let them rip but I'm already poised and ready for castration, divorce or both from the wife if this endeavor doesn't pay off.

is this 110W for the whole system or just the the power draw number from GPU-Z?

I picked up another GPU, a 480 and the power usage is huge (to me). I had only a 470 4GB before and it peaked at 160W total PC from the wall for 21Mh/s. Plugged in the 480 also and now i'm at 305W for 47Mh/s.

 

[ozzy702]

is this 110W for the whole system or just the the power draw number from GPU-Z?

I picked up another GPU, a 480 and the power usage is huge (to me). I had only a 470 4GB before and it peaked at 160W total PC from the wall for 21Mh/s. Plugged in the 480 also and now i'm at 305W for 47Mh/s.

110 Watts tops over idle from the wall according to my killowatt. My tower has eight drives in it, four 140mm fans (including cpu fan), usb headphones, game pad, gaming keyboard, etc. It's pulling ~ 85 watts idle and mining on the 1070 ~ 195-200 watts. I don't waste time looking at GPU-Z numbers, I care about what's being pulled from the wall.

 

[suklee]

Turn on "mouse keys" and that will take care of your disappearing cursor issue

^^ this worked 🙂

edit - for some reason CRD is also not displaying AMD settings now without a monitor plugged in! (why?)

The cursor issue, are you referring to getting a curosr that looks like multiple stacked lines on top of each other? This is so annoying, I'm running dual monitors and only happens on the primary monitor. Have to turn on cusror shadows to "fix" it. Searching for a solution, it seems that people have been having this issue since 2001! lol

^^ The cursor issue with Chrome RD - my cursor disappeared altogether when my cursor was hovering inside Windows... Turning on mouse keys fixed the issue.

By the way, Claymore has released 6.2, saw a couple new interesting additions:

-cvddc set target GPU core voltage, multiplied by 1000. For example, "-cvddc 1050" means 1.05V. You can also specify values for every card, for example "-cvddc 900,950,1000,970". Supports latest AMD 4xx cards only.

-mvddc set target GPU memory voltage, multiplied by 1000. For example, "-mvddc 1050" means 1.05V. You can also specify values for every card, for example "-mvddc 900,950,1000,970". Supports latest AMD 4xx cards only.

(It does my head in trying to figure out which card is which in Claymore/GPUz/Wattman, hopefully can adjust core/memory speed & voltages via command line)

 

[Erenhardt]

^ amazing. Thanks for the heads up!
Gunna test it right now.