ZCash/ZEC GPU mining

[n0x1ous]

What? You're getting 52-57 Sol/s on your 290 at STOCK clocks (947/1250)? Is it a stock BIOS? If not, which one is it?

Woops! slight overclock to 1075 on the core/stock memory, Stock bios I just checked it again. its closer to 52 most of the time. It hit 57 only 1 or 2 times.

 

[thilanliyan]

Woops! slight overclock to 1075 on the core/stock memory, Stock bios I just checked it again. its closer to 52 most of the time. It hit 57 only 1 or 2 times.

Haha, okay good, I thought I got some dud 290s lol. I'm also at 1075/1250 on a stock BIOS, and it's around the same speed as yours.

 

[dajeepster]

Doesn't work for me, in fact performance goes down whether I use -t 6 or -t 8 with the -e 2 flag

my bad... for some reason i was thinking you were running an lga2011-v3 chip

 

[RussianSensation]

Woops! slight overclock to 1075 on the core/stock memory, Stock bios I just checked it again. its closer to 52 most of the time. It hit 57 only 1 or 2 times.

Props n0x1ous! If it weren't for your post, I'd still be using Genoil 0.5.

Here is my preliminary data with Catalyst 15.12.
R9 390 @ 1150mhz/1500mhz memory
R9 295X2 @ 1100mhz/1250mhz memory per GPU

R9 390 @ 1150mhz is outperforming my R9 290Xs @ 1100mhz.

As a bonus, ZEC mining uses less power than Ethereum mining.

 

[dajeepster]

Props n0x1ous! If it weren't for your post, I'd still be using Genoil 0.5.

Here is my preliminary data with Catalyst 15.12.
R9 390 @ 1150mhz/1500mhz memory
R9 295X2 @ 1100mhz/1250mhz memory per GPU

R9 390 @ 1150mhz is outperforming my R9 290Xs @ 1100mhz.

As a bonus, ZEC mining uses less power than Ethereum mining.

what are your cpu and gpu loads?

 

[RussianSensation]

what are your cpu and gpu loads?

Close 100% for each GPU, 74-78% on the 6700K CPU with -t 6 flag (when running Genoil 0.5/0.6, same conditions, GPU usage is at 82-83%). I tried -t 8 flag and it slows down Claymore GPU miner to 118-120H/sec. The -e 1, 2, 3 flags don't improve performance. I removed them entirely.

My XFX R9 390 is a monster, easily outperforming my R9 290Xs = 56-57H/sec vs. 50-53H/sec. Overclocking R9 390's memory from 1500mhz (6000mhz effective) to 1600-1650mhz (6400-6600mhz) lowers performance. Seems for Hawaii under Claymore, latency is more critical than top GDDR5 speed. With R9 390 overclock, 3 Hawaii cards are up to 159-160H/sec. Not bad for the old dogs! I wonder how fast an 1100mhz Fury X would be.....

Bonus time: The latest Catalyst 16.11.1 Hotfix just released works on Genoil 0.6 and/or Claymore 1.0 without any significant penalty compared to Catalyst 15.12 on my Hawaii cards. No need to stick to old 15.12 drivers for Hawaii cards at least.

"AMD today released the Radeon Software Crimson Edition 16.11.1 Beta, which brings support for the impending Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare as well as Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Remastered. The software also includes a CrossFire profile for Titanfall 2 under DX11. The long list of fixes and known issues are best left after the break. As always, you can grab the new drivers right below."

154-157 with Claymore 1.0 + 29 on the CPU with nheqminer_v0.3a = 183-186 in total.

The PC is perfectly usable with only 8GB of DDR4 and still room for a decent amount of tabs open in Chrome 54. Chrome 55 should lower RAM usage by up to 50%. The fact that the CPU can also mine ZEC at close to 30 Sols/sec is a nice bonus. I imagine 6-10 core CPUs would do a lot better than 6700K.

 

[DrMrLordX]

I am running Claymore's miner now and the jury is still out on what improvements it'll show pool-side, but locally it appears as though I got a total of +10 MH/s using it over two instances of Genoil .42. Linux version available in 1-2 days so that'll make me happy.

ZEC prices are dropping fast though. Surprise surprise.

 

[RussianSensation]

ZEC prices are dropping fast though. Surprise surprise.

Makes sense as more ZEC is available for sale. As long as mining ZEC and Ethereum remains profitable, it's a nice bonus to have PC hardware pay for itself. The mining detractors have been singing the same tune since HD4870/4890 were paying for themselves in 2008-2009. While mining is still profitable, AMD needs to release Vega as early as possible as it's almost guaranteed sales for them from miners. By now anyone mining on Tahiti and/or Hawaii has paid for those cards many times over, which means their Vega upgrades will be free/close to free.

 

[dajeepster]

Makes sense as more ZEC is available for sale. As long as mining ZEC and Ethereum remains profitable, it's a nice bonus to have PC hardware pay for itself. The mining detractors have been singing the same tune since HD4870/4890 were paying for themselves in 2008-2009. While mining is still profitable, AMD needs to release Vega as early as possible as it's almost guaranteed sales for them from miners. By now anyone mining on Tahiti and/or Hawaii has paid for those cards many times over, which means their Vega upgrades will be free/close to free.

All my upgrades are free... i mine to buy upgrades..

i mine with nicehash multi-algo miner... i played with the standalone nheqminer to perfect the settings, and then i just imported the settings into the nicehash miner

found out that the current version of nheqminer doesn't like mixed cards... at least not 480 mixed with 290.. i need to report the bug

edit... looks like they already know...

 

[codyray10]

Both ETH rigs switched over to ZEC. Pulling in ~200H/sec total between 3x RX 480, 290 and my 2700k @ 4.6ghz. Screenshot in link below (img tags are the devil).
https://app.box.com/s/1155h604mjjmea78j1xybw28j39o1k77

Dual RX 480 + 2700k with stats screen
https://app.box.com/s/lwofy2muwfdneox7ncw1sharpj3hu5oy


Edit: Using Claymore miner

 

[RussianSensation]

Both ETH rigs switched over to ZEC. Pulling in ~200H/sec total between 3x RX 480, 290 and my 2700k @ 4.6ghz. Screenshot in link below (img tags are the devil).
https://app.box.com/s/1155h604mjjmea78j1xybw28j39o1k77

Dual RX 480 + 2700k with stats screen
https://app.box.com/s/lwofy2muwfdneox7ncw1sharpj3hu5oy

A pretty staggering 45-50% performance difference between 2700K @ 4.6Ghz (19-20 Sols) and 4Ghz 6700K (28-29 Sols).

Do you get any performance increase when running RX 480 at 1.35-1.4Ghz? 1.125-1.195Ghz is very low GPU clocks for RX 480 cards.

 

[codyray10]

A pretty staggering 45-50% performance difference between 2700K @ 4.6Ghz (19-20 Sols) and 4Ghz 6700K (28-29 Sols).

Do you get any performance increase when running RX 480 at 1.35-1.4Ghz? 1.125-1.195Ghz is very low GPU clocks for RX 480 cards.

I haven't tried bumping the GPU core clocks back up to stock+ with ZEC yet. The clocks I'm running are my ETH mining profiles. I'll bump those core clocks up in a bit and see what happens.

 

[DrMrLordX]

ZEC is down to $588 or so. Getting close to its historic minimum (~$450). Enjoy it while it lasts folks, this may not go on for much longer.

 

[lienad216]

too late to the party again, it seems...

On Claymore ZEC, I'm seeing much lower readings from VDDC In/Out (than ETH) which is odd, because what I know is that those readings are only for the GPU (not the memory). At the same time, memory controller loads are down to low 30%, sometimes dropping even lower. I'm not sure if this is because of erratic GPU usage from the miner or by design... If it is by design it makes the dual eth+zec miners a distinct possibility.

 

[RussianSensation]

ZEC is down to $588 or so. Getting close to its historic minimum (~$450). Enjoy it while it lasts folks, this may not go on for much longer.

It'll be interesting to see what happens once ZEC profitability and Ethereum profitability reach parity. If both are just as profitable, I'll switch back to Ethereum. It'll be actually beneficial for both ZEC and Ethereum miners if the split between the two pools. This way both coins will be profitable. Right now the ZEC network is at 8,058 KH/s vs. 3,984 GH/s for Ethereum. If prices for ZEC fall and/or difficulty increases, it won't be long before Ethereum is back in the spotlight.

 

[lienad216]

Either way, Profits have increased. For ETH its gone from ~7.5GH to 4, which comes out to maybe 50% more profit.

The game might change if there's dual mining software though... depending on what rates one gets each coin.

On the other hand, the initial rates of ZEC made it seem like a good idea to expand... I'm not so sure now. I'm only running a 390X, so it probably wont make too much difference, but still. ROI could be had in about two or three months, conservatively. More if the ZEC prices drop even lower.

 

[Shmee]

Is it worth mining with CPU for 4930k and 5930k?

 

[dajeepster]

Is it worth mining with CPU for 4930k and 5930k?

yes... . i'm averaging around 37 sol/s for the 5930K .. i can't give you an answer on the 4930k yet... doing a tear down and rebuilding that system.

 

[Madpacket]

So after switching my miners to Claymore my pool stats are reporting a nice increase. I went from 950 to 1.7Gh. Too bad the price is tanking but I still made enough profits to pay for my monthly Hydro in only 4 days

Hopefully a dual miner is released soon.

http://imgur.com/a/h0QBx

 

[DrMrLordX]

The ZEC influence will probably keep ETH and ZEC more profitable than ETH was alone for . . . awhile. On the plus side, ZEC seems to be floating above its minimum (~$500 right now on Poloniex, slightly higher according to nanopool). So that may be its basement.

Time for me to check out the Linux Claymore client since zogminer is getting to be a drag.

edit: Claymore's Linux miner really came through. I am seeing big gains over 2x Zogminer instances per card, and I don't have to have arseloads of term windows open simultaneously to monitor all that crap (okay I probably could have done it more elegantly but whatever).

Claymore's miner makes it easy, and now I have both boxes (mostly) automated. I'll post a quick-and-dirty Ubuntu 15.10 setup for Hawaii/Pitcairn/etc. if anyone wants one. It isn't perfect, it certainly could be done better, but it works. It would not take much effort to turn it into a 16.04/16.10 setup for Polaris.

 

[poofyhairguy]

That would be awesome. My Linux boxes are still mining ETH.

 

[RussianSensation]

Is it worth mining with CPU for 4930k and 5930k?

Of course. If you already have various AMD GPUs hooked up to those rigs, might as well get extra Sols with the CPUs. The best part even with my overclocked Hawaii cards and 4Ghz i7 6700K mining ZEC, the system still uses less power than stock Hawaii cards and running 6700K @ 800mhz mining ETH! 3 Hawaii cards would get 75-80MH/sec with ETH but the exact same hardware components are getting 185-190Sols/sec. Mining ZEC is way more profitable as a result. The calculation charts on cryptocompare are wrong since they are using only 30 Sols/sec hashing rate for RX 480 but it's higher than that with Claymore. The difference is basically double for Hawaii that gets about 25-28MH/sec with ETH per card but with ZEC on Claymore, each of my Hawaii cards is doing 51-57 Sols/sec. Since ZEC is less GPU demanding, the GPUs are running cooler and quieter too. As a result, mining ZEC with CPU + Radeon cards is at least 2.5X more profitable right now than mining ETH on the same system if you do the calculation.

Cryptocompare shows that ZEC mining is barely more profitable than ETH mining, but the calculation isn't correct.
https://www.cryptocompare.com/mining/#/equipment

Cryptocompare's equipment page is showing misleading data. ZEC mining is 2.5X or more profitable than ETH mining at the moment:

3x Hawaii cards ~ 80MH/sec @ 830W system power => $ 130.57/month
https://www.cryptocompare.com/mining/calculator/eth

3x Hawaii cards OC + i7 6700K ~ 190 Sols/sec @ 790W system power => $ 360.62/month
https://www.cryptocompare.com/mining/calculator/zec

ZEC also puts older Tahiti generation cards like HD7950/7970/7970Ghz/R9 280X in play. Amazing that an AMD GCN GPU that's nearly 5 years old in December is 100% viable for earning $ right now! 7970 is legendary to me. I don't even know how many times that card paid for itself by now, and it's still going!

With RX 480 cards dropping to $155-230, and both ETH and ZEC being viable for paying back the card, I think I might load up on more RX 480s....

 

[DrMrLordX]

Quick and Dirty Automated Ubuntu 15.10 ZCash Mining Setup for Older GCN-based Cards

Note

Please read the end of these instructions. They will advise you about Optiminer.

These directions pertain to Ubuntu 15.10 specifically, though any version from 14.04 LTS to 15.10 will work here. The main reason for this particular range of versions is to facilitate use of Catalyst 15.12 which is non-functional on later versions of Ubuntu for various reasons. Note that software support for these versions of Ubuntu has ceased, so if any security vulnerabilities crop up, it'll be up to you to decide whether or not you want to keep running older versions of Ubuntu.

The reason for Ubuntu 15.10 specifically is that it defaults to the latest kernel of all Ubuntu versions that still support Catalyst 15.12 . You are free to upgrade your kernel by hand on 14.04 if you so choose.

The reason to use Catalyst 15.12 is to ensure working OpenCL support for older AMD video cards based on GCN 1.1 and earlier (Hawaii and earlier). You may be able to get your older cards working on 16.04 or 16.10 using the AMDGPU-pro drivers but I have no experience with that. For now, 16.04 at least still defaults to the radeon drivers on older cards which may not have suitable OpenCL support.

If you are using Polaris video cards, newer Ubuntu builds (16.04 or 16.10) are recommended since your cards will be fully-supported by AMDGPU out-of-the-box. The same applies for any GCN 1.2 cards (Tonga, Fury, Carrizo iGPU).

Hardware Requirements

Any GCN 1.0/1.1 card that worked with Ethereum mining will also work with Claymore's miner (see below). The card should have at least 2 GB of VRAM, with 4+ being preferred. Since this guide is aimed at helping miners transition into ZCash under Linux, it is assumed that you know how to get your rig up and running with PCIe risers and other hardware required for such things. If not, ask questions elsewhere in this thread so we can answer them on a case-by-case basis.

You should know the target GPU and RAM clocks for all your cards in advance, and you should have the voltages dialed in on your cards' respective BIOSes already (or just stick with default). You may be able to tweak card voltage in other ways but I am not going to go into all that.

Software Requirements

A naked Ubuntu 14.04-15.10 (15.10 preferred) is all you really need. I install mine to 32 Gb Silicon Power USB 3.0 thumb drives with zero swap space. That config might not be optimal, but I found that swap partitions on a USB drive actually slowed things down a bit. Dedicated SSDs or even platter-based drives will provide better usability during setup and installation, but no additional mining performance will be had from such a luxury.

When you install Ubuntu (I use the Lubuntu flavor but you can choose a different one), be sure to set up your primary account to log in automatically, and then disable lightlocker so it won't lock/shut down the machine or attempt to initiate sleep mode from idleness.

There are some is one dependency required to run SilentArmy's Claymore's miner:

git
build-essential
python3
fglrx-updates

To install this, type the following on a command line:

sudo apt-get install fglrx-updates

After installing fglrx-updates, restart the machine. Then open up a terminal in your home directory and type:

sudo aticonfig --adapter=all --initial

Then restart again, or at least log out/log in (logging out may be all that is required but the Windows user in me just loves to reboot all the damn time).

After rebooting, the first thing you should do is create a script to set the GPU and RAM clocks you want for each card assuming they aren't already set up in their BIOSes to run how you want. I'm fairly conservative, so I flash all my cards to a low-ish clockspeed for default operation (usually 900 MHz GPU and 1175 MHz RAM on Hawaii). Then I use software controls to bring speeds up to the desired target. I create a file called setclocks.sh in my home directory. Then I type the following at the command line:

chmod +x setclocks.sh

That ensures that the script can be executed. The script contains something like this:

aticonfig --od-enable

aticonfig --adapter=0 --od-setclocks=1075,1175
aticonfig --adapter=1 --od-setclocks=950, 1175
aticonfig --adapter=2 --od-setclocks=1060,1175
aticonfig --adapter=3 --od-setclocks=1090,1175

aticonfig --adapter=all --od-commitclocks

The --od-enable switch enables OverDrive, and the rest configures GPU,RAM clockspeeds for the specified cards. The --od-commitclocks switch locks in the changes to be permanent until reboot or until aticonfig is used again to change the speeds. Use a standard text editor like LeafPad to input all those lines.

Execute the script from the command line in your home directory like this:

./setclocks.sh

Since this guide is aimed at GCN GPUs, you will also need to/want to install the AMD APP SDK 3.0. Follow the instructions posted here. I post the link for brevity; if anyone wishes for me to expound on the subject here in detail, I'll do so on request.

Okay! Now we install the SilentArmy miner itself. First we use git to download the source files. At the command line, type:

git clone https://github.com/mbevand/silentarmy.git

This will create a subdirectory called silentarmy. It is recommended you run this command from your home directory.

Once the clone process is complete, open a terminal in the silentarmy subdirectory and type:

make

That should create a number of files, including a binary called "silentarmy" inside the silentarmy subdirectory. You can execute the miner from your home directory by typing:

./silentarmy/silentarmy -c stratum+tcp://<pooladdress>:<port> -use=<GPU #s> -u <wallet>/<minername>/<emailaddy> -p x

Or just use the --help switch when running ./silentarmy/silentarmy to see the commands for yourself. Be sure to use commas when specifying which GPUs to use via the -use command (example: -use=0,1,2,3). You can use the --list switch to find the order and number of your GPUs as detected by silentarmy.

Bear in mind that if you have any 2 Gb cards, you will need to enter the following lines in the terminal BEFORE running silentarmy Claymore's miner to get those cards to work:

export GPU_FORCE_64BIT_PTR=0
export GPU_MAX_HEAP_SIZE=100
export GPU_USE_SYNC_OBJECTS=1
export GPU_MAX_ALLOC_PERCENT=100
export GPU_SINGLE_ALLOC_PERCENT=100

Now you want to set up Claymore's miner. It's pretty straightforward. Download the .zip from his archive (check OP of this thread for link), find the latest Linux binary archive in the .zip you get, and extract its contents. I used /home/<username>/ClaymoreZEC as my directory name. Edit the config.txt exactly the same way you would under windows.

If that starts up okay and it mines, it's time to automate!

Automation: Quick n' Dirty

There are better ways to automate. This guide makes use of the .profile file which will cause all the below scripts to execute every time you log in as the associated user (assumed user is the default one) which would get ugly if you ssh into the box without using a separate login. With more time and care, a proper cron or systemd setup would be possible. But I digress.

The first thing you need to do is set up a mining script. Create a file in your home directory (mine is called multimine.sh) and then type the following in a terminal:

chmod +x multimine.sh

Whatever is your filename, put it in there instead of multimine.sh, but make sure your file ends with the .sh extension regardless. As above with setclocks.sh, this command allows execution of the script.

Open up multimine.sh (or whatever you named it) in LeafPad and put in the following:

/home/<username>/ClaymoreZEC/zecminer64 config.txt

Try executing multimine.sh from a terminal opened to your home directory. Just type:

./multimine.sh

And if it works, then we're ready for the next step.

Now you need to set the PCManFM file manager to view hidden files. Inside your home directory, you will find a file named ".profile". You need to add some language to the end of the file using something like LeafPad. I recommend:

export GPU_FORCE_64BIT_PTR=0
export GPU_MAX_HEAP_SIZE=100
export GPU_USE_SYNC_OBJECTS=1
export GPU_MAX_ALLOC_PERCENT=100
export GPU_SINGLE_ALLOC_PERCENT=100

./setclocks.sh

sleep 15
xterm -e ./multimine.sh

Note that the sleep line is mostly superfluous, but I leave it in there anyway. Every time you start up the account with that particular text in its .profile file in its home directory, that stuff gets executed BEFORE loading the desktop environment. The net effect is that you get a single xterm running the SilentArmy miner without any desktop. The desktop will not load until you kill the xterm. Just mouse over it (you will have a mouse cursor), left-click to make sure you have the term selected, and then hit Ctrl-C to kill the xterm. Then the desktop environment will load normally. Even if you kill the xterm, the environment variables set in your .profile will still enable mining with 2 Gb cards, and the effects of the setclocks.sh script will still be in effect, so you can always manually open up a terminal and execute multimine.sh by hand to resume mining.

Reboot your machine and watch what happens. If it starts mining in a tiny little term window against a black screen, you're in there! Now you can shut down the machine, disconnect the monitor, and reboot and mine with headless confidence. If it doesn't work . . . post here, I'll do my best to help you.

About Optiminer

Optiminer (linked in the OP) is an alternate client for GCN only that does not require compilation and is faster than the SilentArmy miner at this time. It is a simple binary blob that works a lot like Claymore's miner. Read the instructions on its use, but you can use it instead of the SilentArmy miner for more performance. There is a mining fee. All development of Optiminer has ceased, but for now, it's still the fastest Linux miner out there.

All you really need to do is set it up in a separate directory (I use OptiminerZEC, or /home/<username>/OptiminerZEC) and then change your mining shell script (multiminer.sh above) to reflect the new binary. So for example, I use:

cd OptiminerZEC
./optiminer-zcash -s <pooladdress>:<port> -u <wallet>/<minername>/<emailaddy> -p x

Note that if you use the above line for Optiminer 6.0, it may autodetect strange intensity settings for your cards, causing instability/crashing. I had to manually set intensity for it to work. For example, on a machine with 3 Hawaii cards and 1 Pitcairn, I settled on -i 5 -i 5 -i 5 -i 3 . That sets intensity 5 for the Hawaii cards (the first three) and intensity 3 for the Pitcairn.

 

[lienad216]

RX 480s at 155$... where is this? :O

On the 390X I have I get about 30MH/s with ETH and about 50-51 MH/s on ZEC. I think I must be missing something, since you're doing more than double. Unless its the CPU power that helps make up the difference In any case, it may be the power charges that makes the difference in profitability.

The price has dropped again though, its sitting at 465 on poloniex. With the price dropping so fast, is it the usual thing to sell as fast as one mines or is it better to collect a little first and then sell together to save up on txn fees?

 

[suklee]

you also need to run the -e extention -e 1 for a 3930K and -e 2 for a 5930K.... not sure what it is for a 4930K.
run the bench to see what yours supports
nheqhash.exe -b

run the help to find out the parameters.
nheqhash.exe -h

Tried -e 2 and I'm up to 11 Sols on the 4790k