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Ethereum GPU mining?

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Head1985 said:
Even if ethereum reach 1000USD next month?
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Until diffused, the difficulty bomb will do more damage than the increased glut of miners if the price skyrockets. But I agree with others that it's just a matter of time before consolidated mining ends up in places like China. Nice thing about GPU's is this will take a lot longer than it did with ASICs. Hopefully the price stays high for a while this time.
 
VeryCharBroiled said:
im temped too.

ill have to switch over to my 1200 watt hp server psu with breakout board to do it as my evga g2 850 wont cut it adding a vega to my 5 card rig. pulls 750 - 840 watts from the wall as it is, depending on algo and if its dual mining or not.

need a nano psu adapter to run everything from a single server psu. dont like dual psu setups..
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I still have a 1300w evga G2 I kept from my previous mining days so I'm probably covered for a triple Vega setup 😎.

Now only need to see if it would be worth doing.

I also ran dual PSUs on some rigs, it's fine if you know what you're doing.
 
[DHT]Osiris said:
The day that happened, another 500TH would come online to cut the ratio back into balance.
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$1000 ETH is still only profitably for a little over a year with CURRENT capacity online. Everyone mining everything else would jump straight to ETH, every GPU sold would 100% be for mining for the next six months and difficulty would skyrocket even faster bringing that year of profitability down to well under a year, probably less than six months.

POS mining will not continue year after year with the demand it has now. Profitability on all coins will become so slim that only those with free power will be able to mine for profits, just like with BTC. It's anyone's guess how long it will take but for the vast majority of us miners, this isn't a long term business, it's take while we can and then get out, hopefully recouping some of our hardware investment.
 
IntelUser2000 said:
Are you sure?

https://etherchain.org/charts/difficultyBomb

Because <0.04% is what I'd call insignificant. Even nonexistent.
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It's the temporal factor that makes the difficulty bomb so detrimental. Everytime it changes it adds X amount of seconds (forget exact values, around 8 or so) to mine a block. The reward of 5 ether per block won't change but the amount of time per block keeps increasing with each step upwards. This will continue indefinitely until the first half of Metropolis. We could be up to 45 seconds per block before it's diffused. The default time is 12 to 15 seconds. So yeah a doubling soon and soon a tripling in difficulty just due to the programmed bomb is worse than adding another couple TH of cards. I don't think we'll triple the difficulty of hashing power from added cards over the next 3 months.

After the bomb is diffused payouts will drop from 5 to 3 Ether per block but we'll be back to 12 - 15 second blocktimes.

So yeah Ether is going to have to rise pretty significantly in price to offset the difficulty bomb and the increased hashes followed by a 33% reduction in payouts per block post diffusion.
 
Madpacket:

So where do I see a place that shows the real impact of the difficulty bomb? ethstats shows 21 seconds which is increased from 10-12 seconds I saw last time(last year).
 
Yakk said:
I also ran dual PSUs on some rigs, it's fine if you know what you're doing.
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no worries on running dual PSUs, its just i already have the sever psu so i would rather not buy another.. always meant to put it on the mining rig, just never bought the nano PSU to go with it. laziness is my middle name 🙂

Madpacket said:
[snip]. So yeah a doubling soon and soon a tripling in difficulty just due to the programmed bomb is worse than adding another couple TH of cards. I don't think we'll triple the difficulty of hashing power from added cards over the next 3 months.

After the bomb is diffused payouts will drop from 5 to 3 Ether per block but we'll be back to 12 - 15 second blocktimes.

So yeah Ether is going to have to rise pretty significantly in price to offset the difficulty bomb and the increased hashes followed by a 33% reduction in payouts per block post diffusion.
Click to expand...

well there are always other coins to mine. thats the beauty of gpu rigs vs ASICS.

.. well assuming the other coins dont tank lol. worse comes to worse ill have some sweet videocards to play games with. LAN party time!
 
IntelUser2000 said:
Are you sure?

https://etherchain.org/charts/difficultyBomb

Because <0.04% is what I'd call insignificant. Even nonexistent.
Click to expand...

I'd agree, but it is daily so it compounds Let's just say that 3-4 months ago, 1 AMD RX480 could mine a bit ~1 ETH per month. Now 3 can barely mine over .5 a month. I'll continue a bit longer, but it's getting really hard. 2x RX480 + a 1070 is pulling .6 a month now vs the 4 it could have pulled 4 months ago. Prob gonna dump my RX480's while I can get a premium. It's not worth the heat dump it causes and the electricity costs anymore. Upside is I paid them off months ago /w the income from the early mining.
 
IntelUser2000 said:
Madpacket:

So where do I see a place that shows the real impact of the difficulty bomb? ethstats shows 21 seconds which is increased from 10-12 seconds I saw last time(last year).
Click to expand...

My numbers were a bit off but the point still stands.

Things are still being discussed under EIP 186 so you can get more detail there.

A miner made a relevant post (albeit ignoring the ramifications of the bomb diffusion) so this is what you can expect over the coming months. Just ignore everything that was stated after October in the post.

By Nov 6th, we'll be at 45 second block times (we're at 22 seconds now, 27 seconds on August 26th, and 35 seconds on September 27th).


"
I know that you are all devs, and see this issue from one side of the spectrum, so if you don't mind, please allow me to express the flip side of this spectrum (the "bloated" miners perspective), in real dollars, so that you can take that information and see where it takes you in terms of when to expect network hashing power to drop off from the difficulty bomb.

Real world numbers as of 8/3/2017:

I'm going to use a 4 GPU rig of GTX 1060's as my example, as it hashes nicely at an even 100 mh/s. Extrapolate this out for larger operations.

Hashing: 100 mh/s
Wattage: 400w System + 50w Fan
Mid-of-the-road Electric Rate: .13 kWh
Frugal build cost: $1600

Let's assume the miner started 6/1/2017, here would be his ETH earnings (Current USD $220):

June - 2.33 ETH +512.60 -42.12 = $475.16
July - 1.35 ETH +297.00 -42.12 = $254.88
Aug - .585 ETH +128.70 -42.12 = $86.58
Sept - .285 ETH +62.70 -42.12 = $20.58
Oct - .138 ETH +30.36 -42.12 = ($11.76)
Nov - .067 ETH +14.74 -42.12 = ($27.38)
Total $798.06

So by October, you'll see about 1/3 to 1/2 of hashing power drop off, because they will have no chance of recouping their ROI and will be losing money by continuing.

By November only the individuals that live near hydro or nuclear plants that get .03 kWh power will remain and Ethereum would be a stretch to still call a "decentralized network".

Keep in mind:

  • Miner does not hit ROI
  • Miner's time is valued at zero
  • Does not include hotter climates where A/C is required (Easily add 25-50% Cost)
With all this being stated, I hope that you can see that miners are not rolling around in piles of cash.

Please consider this calculation in your decision to reduce block rewards and continue with current difficulty increases due to the bomb.

We all want to see Ethereum succeed. If PoS was to release in full by the end of October, then perhaps the numbers work, but if the possibility of a year and a half wait time that's been thrown around is valid, then the network just simply can't sustain. Especially with a decrease in block reward."
 
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Madpacket said:
Things are still being discussed under EIP 186 so you can get more detail there. A miner made a relevant post (albeit ignoring the bomb diffusion) so this is what you can expect over the coming months. Just ignore everything that was stated after October. By Nov 6th, we'll be at 45 second block times (we're at 22 seconds now).


"
I know that you are all devs, and see this issue from one side of the spectrum, so if you don't mind, please allow me to express the flip side of this spectrum (the "bloated" miners perspective), in real dollars, so that you can take that information and see where it takes you in terms of when to expect network hashing power to drop off from the difficulty bomb.

Real world numbers as of 8/3/2017:

I'm going to use a 4 GPU rig of GTX 1060's as my example, as it hashes nicely at an even 100 mh/s. Extrapolate this out for larger operations.

Hashing: 100 mh/s
Wattage: 400w System + 50w Fan
Mid-of-the-road Electric Rate: .13 kWh
Frugal build cost: $1600

Let's assume the miner started 6/1/2017, here would be his ETH earnings (Current USD $220):

June - 2.33 ETH +512.60 -42.12 = $475.16
July - 1.35 ETH +297.00 -42.12 = $254.88
Aug - .585 ETH +128.70 -42.12 = $86.58
Sept - .285 ETH +62.70 -42.12 = $20.58
Oct - .138 ETH +30.36 -42.12 = ($11.76)
Nov - .067 ETH +14.74 -42.12 = ($27.38)
Total $798.06

So by October, you'll see about 1/3 to 1/2 of hashing power drop off, because they will have no chance of recouping their ROI and will be losing money by continuing.

By November only the individuals that live near hydro or nuclear plants that get .03 kWh power will remain and Ethereum would be a stretch to still call a "decentralized network".

Keep in mind:

  • Miner does not hit ROI
  • Miner's time is valued at zero
  • Does not include hotter climates where A/C is required (Easily add 25-50% Cost)
With all this being stated, I hope that you can see that miners are not rolling around in piles of cash.

Please consider this calculation in your decision to reduce block rewards and continue with current difficulty increases due to the bomb.

We all want to see Ethereum succeed. If PoS was to release in full by the end of October, then perhaps the numbers work, but if the possibility of a year and a half wait time that's been thrown around is valid, then the network just simply can't sustain. Especially with a decrease in block reward."
Click to expand...

Spot on and exactly what I've been saying for months now since everyone and their mom hopped on the ETH mining bandwagon. There is ZERO ROI with current difficulty and the effects of the difficulty bomb. Even with free power, no ROI which means the only people who will be mining in 6 months are those who fully believe we'll see astronomical ETH prices and that's a small fraction of what is needed to secure the network.
 
ozzy702 said:
Spot on and exactly what I've been saying for months now since everyone and their mom hopped on the ETH mining bandwagon. There is ZERO ROI with current difficulty and the effects of the difficulty bomb. Even with free power, no ROI which means the only people who will be mining in 6 months are those who fully believe we'll see astronomical ETH prices and that's a small fraction of what is needed to secure the network.
Click to expand...

Yeah, it looks pretty grim for mining Ether in the coming months. Anyone building a miner from the ground up is taking a huge risk today. Two variables that can't be ignored is the price of Ether and the difficulty (total hashrate generated by GPU's). As the freeze continues and profits drop considerably (by the end of the month this should become even more apparent) many miners will either sell their cards or move to other coins. This will have a dramatic effect on the total hashrate and security of the blockchain.

The good news is it'll likely drop the hashrates as people leave en-masse, and shortly after the reset, it should be lucrative to mine again with the block times reset provided the price of Ether around where it's at today or preferably higher - at least until Capser becomes a reality and prices stay high. If the price of Ether keeps increasing pre-bomb diffusion it'll keep miners around a little longer but it'll have to nearly double to stay lucrative as we approach 45 second block times.

I'm not sure I see this happening to the price but I hope I'm wrong.

I'm no Ethereum developer but I think the core devs may be underestimating what kind of effect could have.

What the core devs seem to ignore is the consequences of the price of Ether dropping. They've stated on record they don't care if the price goes back down to double digits and that the difficulty could be cut in half and the network would still be extremely secure (which is true). The problem with the price dropping to double digits is one of psychology. The reason Ether has gotten so much traction this year is mainly due to the EEA announcements and the subsequent price skyrocketing. The price increase attracted a lot of regular folks, people who normally wouldn't invest in something so foreign. It also attracts new developers, attracts more people to attend Ethereun Meetup's, and creates a ton of positive news in MSM which catches the attention of Fortune 500's.

I would argue the price increase created a cascading effect of positive news that benefitted the Ethereum ecosystem as a whole.

If prices go back to double digits, many interested parties will likely go away, and momentum may be lost in the process. This is, of course, all speculation but a scenario I could see unfolding.
 
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Anyone notice their Radeon rigs decreasing in hash rate over the last couple weeks? I have 6x480s (8GB) and with a modded bios they used to mine at ~29.5Mh/s each and now they're at ~26.5Mh/s. I'm using Claymore v9.8 (Ethereum only mining).
 
Elfear said:
Anyone notice their Radeon rigs decreasing in hash rate over the last couple weeks? I have 6x480s (8GB) and with a modded bios they used to mine at ~29.5Mh/s each and now they're at ~26.5Mh/s. I'm using Claymore v9.8 (Ethereum only mining).
Click to expand...
yes this is a known issue with Polaris. Everything time the DAG epoch goes up they drop a bit. It does not affect Fiji or Hawaii at the moment. Supposedly AMD is working on a driver patch for it, although someone on claymore's bitcointalk thread has a modified driver that apparently fixes it.
 
n0x1ous said:
yes this is a known issue with Polaris. Everything time the DAG epoch goes up they drop a bit. It does not affect Fiji or Hawaii at the moment. Supposedly AMD is working on a driver patch for it, although someone on claymore's bitcointalk thread has a modified driver that apparently fixes it.
Click to expand...

Thanks. I think this is the thread you're referring to.
 
n0x1ous said:
yes this is a known issue with Polaris. Everything time the DAG epoch goes up they drop a bit. It does not affect Fiji or Hawaii at the moment. Supposedly AMD is working on a driver patch for it, although someone on claymore's bitcointalk thread has a modified driver that apparently fixes it.
Click to expand...
I can't speak for Hawaii as I haven't been running any of those for months now, but the Fury X that I have in my main desktop has definitely been affected. It's down from 33 MH/s to 28 and change.
 
Feld said:
I can't speak for Hawaii as I haven't been running any of those for months now, but the Fury X that I have in my main desktop has definitely been affected. It's down from 33 MH/s to 28 and change.
Click to expand...

Interesting . Mine hasn't budged
 
My 4GbBHawaii cards seem slower now than they were before, but perhaps I am misremembering things. My 8GB 390s are still trucking right along like always.
 
Dang, I thought you guys were kidding when you talked about the price of BTC possibly reaching $5k. It has been shooting up all day, and is currently at $4.1k. The only bad part is that it seems like other coins aren't really following suit, so since I use NiceHash, I don't make as much in BTC as the other coins don't convert to as much.
 
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