Ethereum GPU mining?

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IntelUser2000

Elite Member
Oct 14, 2003
8,686
3,785
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Ethereum is planning to launch staking on the mainnet in a month unless any new critical bugs arise on the testnet. Imminent staking for passive income is providing a lot of upward price pressure right now.

That might be true, but we're still, long, long ways away from any sort of PoS happening. I'm running the node for testnet right now, and if that goes ok, then Phase 0 comes. Yes you can stake but once you convert Eth1 to Eth2, you won't be able to pull your Ethereum out until late 2021(maybe even 2022).

There are going to be something like six phases. Full transition doesn't happen until after that, which I suspect won't happen before 2024 assuming things go smoothly. Meaning PoW in some form will exist until then.

Revolution never happens as a jump. It's steady like everything else.
 

Feld

Senior member
Aug 6, 2015
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That might be true, but we're still, long, long ways away from any sort of PoS happening. I'm running the node for testnet right now, and if that goes ok, then Phase 0 comes. Yes you can stake but once you convert Eth1 to Eth2, you won't be able to pull your Ethereum out until late 2021(maybe even 2022).

There are going to be something like six phases. Full transition doesn't happen until after that, which I suspect won't happen before 2024 assuming things go smoothly. Meaning PoW in some form will exist until then.

Revolution never happens as a jump. It's steady like everything else.
Correct, it's going to be a slow, stepwise process. But being about to take the first step is undoubtedly the main reason for the current price rally.
 

DrMrLordX

Lifer
Apr 27, 2000
21,582
10,785
136
FWIW, I updated Claymore, and doing mining to the "default" address in ETH-only mode, I'm getting ~92 MH/s @ power draw of 236W. GPU clock of 1801 MHz, RAM of 1235 MHz, GPU voltage reduced to 1.043v, and max power draw set to +50% (thanks MorePowerTool!)

GPU hotspot is only 54c. Radeon VII sure does well in compute and rendering tasks!

edit: +50% power draw made no difference. I set it to +0% and it performs the same.
 
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IntelUser2000

Elite Member
Oct 14, 2003
8,686
3,785
136
@DrMrLordX Did you buy the Radeon VII for other than mining? I can't justify the price, even with the performance for mining. 80MH/s+ on a single card is surely tempting though.
 

DrMrLordX

Lifer
Apr 27, 2000
21,582
10,785
136
@IntelUser2000

I bought Radeon VII because I'm kind of an AMD zealot, and because I was glad that they actually tried releasing a "high end" graphics card. I don't upsell it to others because, let's face it, for gaming a 2080Ti is faster and AMD is doing a bad job of supporting Radeon VII OC in drivers right now (if you waterblock it, it causes all kinds of weird problems, for me at least).

It's a hell of a compute/mining card though.
 
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VirtualLarry

No Lifer
Aug 25, 2001
56,226
9,990
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Well, seems that the "Surge" is over, and my PCs that were making an estimated $7/day and $10/day, are now basically breaking even with electricity, so I shut them down for the night. Sigh. Ups and downs, gotta keep telling myself to get used to it.
 

Shmee

Memory & Storage, Graphics Cards Mod Elite Member
Super Moderator
Sep 13, 2008
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@IntelUser2000

I bought Radeon VII because I'm kind of an AMD zealot, and because I was glad that they actually tried releasing a "high end" graphics card. I don't upsell it to others because, let's face it, for gaming a 2080Ti is faster and AMD is doing a bad job of supporting Radeon VII OC in drivers right now (if you waterblock it, it causes all kinds of weird problems, for me at least).

It's a hell of a compute/mining card though.
My life for AMD!
images


Hahaha
 

Kenmitch

Diamond Member
Oct 10, 1999
8,505
2,248
136
Well, seems that the "Surge" is over, and my PCs that were making an estimated $7/day and $10/day, are now basically breaking even with electricity, so I shut them down for the night. Sigh. Ups and downs, gotta keep telling myself to get used to it.

That's how it works Larry. I thought you've been doing it long enough to know by now. Price of coins go up, everybody mines, difficulty increase, profits go down. You either mine for the long haul or ya just stop mining all together. I guess depending on how many coins you accumulated you could always play the ups and downs of the market to make a few extra bucks. Jumping into the ocean full of killer whales might not be too bad if your a fast enough swimming fish! If you can swim fast enough and out maneuver the whale you might have better odds of survival in the end.

FYI....No I don't practice what I just preached to you. Dabble a little here and there in the past, but wasn't for me.
 
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LightningZ71

Golden Member
Mar 10, 2017
1,627
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In the end, unless you have free power, coin mining doesn't pay unless you are a very big fish and are very in tune with the industry.
 

amenx

Diamond Member
Dec 17, 2004
3,847
2,013
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Man, I hope we dont have a repeat of the mining craze with these cards.

 

VirtualLarry

No Lifer
Aug 25, 2001
56,226
9,990
126
As per the miners, the RTX 3080 is nearly 3-4x faster than the RTX 2080 in terms of Ethereum mining capabilities. You’re looking at 115 Mh/s, while the RTX 2080 manages just about 30-40 Mh/s.

Hmm, 115Mh/sec, per card? Not too shabby, but at what price? RX 5700/5700XT gets 48-53Mh/sec, and those cards are $300-400 new. How much are the RTX 3080 cards going for? I wonder how price-efficient they really are. Of course, when you have limited power/space, the most powerful cards tend to edge out the lesser ones, and once a significant portion of ETH miners are on RTX 3000-series cards (eventually, most probably will be), then those left on older hardware, will be getting so few shares, they'll be forced to shut down, or upgrade. Unless power is free, LOL.
 
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Kenmitch

Diamond Member
Oct 10, 1999
8,505
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136
Man, I hope we dont have a repeat of the mining craze with these cards.


You do realize that it could just be a sales ploy? Maybe it's just FUD being spread to sway those who wish to wait into impulse mode?

I wasn't buying anyways so I could really care less, but it could also be Karma rearing it's ugly head.
 

VirtualLarry

No Lifer
Aug 25, 2001
56,226
9,990
126
Honestly, if history plays out the same way again, AMD's "Big Navi" cards are going to be WAY better miner cards than NVidia's cards. I mean, RTX 2080ti, getting less MH/sec than a three-times-cheaper RX 5700? Let's keep things in perspective, here, and consider past hardware history.
 

Kenmitch

Diamond Member
Oct 10, 1999
8,505
2,248
136
Honestly, if history plays out the same way again, AMD's "Big Navi" cards are going to be WAY better miner cards than NVidia's cards. I mean, RTX 2080ti, getting less MH/sec than a three-times-cheaper RX 5700? Let's keep things in perspective, here, and consider past hardware history.

Why risk it? If your a miner it's probably not best to take the wait and see approach and risk be arsed out in the end. Buy up all the Amperes you can get your hands on! Worst case scenario is you just resale them to the gamers that are looking to beat your arse!
 

Feld

Senior member
Aug 6, 2015
287
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101
Man, I hope we dont have a repeat of the mining craze with these cards.

That's a little more price efficient than a Radeon VII if looking at MSRP for both, but not likely to be any more energy efficient (it might even be worse) considering how much of a power hog Ampere is. The energy efficiency of RDNA2, as exemplified by the upcoming consoles, is likely what miners are really eyeing up. I think Larry's assessment is on point here.
 
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VirtualLarry

No Lifer
Aug 25, 2001
56,226
9,990
126
All I can say is, those "Miner" edition MSI cards, HAD BETTER have at least ONE video output, capable of 4K UHD display, either HDMI2.0 or DP1.3-1.4. I bought an RX 470 "miner" card from Sapphire, it was disappointing, it only had a DVI-D, and could only do 1080P! No 4K! Useless for me, as I have 4K displays.

Even more useless, are those P104 and P106 NVidia (GTX 1060 3GB) "miner" cards, that have ZERO video outputs. (Apparently, as LTT documented, there's a way with the NVidia drivers to designate a different GPU or iGPU as a "framebuffer/render target", or whatever, so that you can have the card do the rendering of the frame, and then dump it into the iGPU's framebuffer for display. Messy, and who knows how long that loophole will last in the drivers.)

Video cards, SHOULD HAVE video outputs. At least one. That's all that I'm saying. Otherwise, what could have been turning into a display-only card later in life, becomes e-waste. Because the mfg's wanted to save a quarter on a connector.
 

VirtualLarry

No Lifer
Aug 25, 2001
56,226
9,990
126
No hate for those slimy scalpers?
Miners are scum. Scalpers are OK. Got it.

The truth is, the future is distributed apps, and distributed (decentralized) web sites. Which, will be powered by... get this, block-chain technology. Which is powered by... get this, MINERS!

So hate on them all that you want, I guess, because they're the "engines" that will power the future internet.
 

Markfw

Moderator Emeritus, Elite Member
May 16, 2002
25,478
14,434
136
Miners are scum. Scalpers are OK. Got it.

The truth is, the future is distributed apps, and distributed (decentralized) web sites. Which, will be powered by... get this, block-chain technology. Which is powered by... get this, MINERS!

So hate on them all that you want, I guess, because they're the "engines" that will power the future internet.
I don't think so.... But what do I know....
 

Shmee

Memory & Storage, Graphics Cards Mod Elite Member
Super Moderator
Sep 13, 2008
7,381
2,414
146
Well there are mineable and non-mineable cryptocurrencies, though right now ETH is the only one worth mining at all with GPU. And even then, not so much with current difficulty and pricing. Should be interesting to see how it further develops with PoS and such.