Ethereum GPU mining?

[EightySix Four]

1). I checked nanopool (I'm mining with them) and it says my reported hashrate is 0 MH/s (actual hashrate matches what my client is reporting). It seems like I'm supposed to report my hashrate as a part of the command line I use to start the mining process, but I have no idea how to actually do that with ethminer. Apparently reporting a low hashrate can affect the kind of workload I get, or . . . something? Anyway should I be concerned about that?

I think they've only recently started to put it in place and haven't updated the instructions yet. I'm waiting for that update as well. The reported hashrate section wasn't there a little while ago.

2). Is there anything special that needs to be done to mine to the same wallet using multiple machines?

Nope - just point to that wallet in the URL for nanopool on all of the machines and everything should be good to go.

 

[MrTeal]

Hmm, no responses . . . that's fine. Found a better guide to flashing with VBE7, so i'll experiment with that later I guess.

Some news: Crimson 16.3.2 is out, but I have no idea if it hurts Ethereum hash rate like 16.3 did. I'm sticking with 16.2.1 for now, until I hear otherwise.

Looks like the 2 Gb cards took a dump due to DAG file size back on 3/18/2016, and I didn't even notice. It's more due to a foible of OpenCL drivers than anything else. Most Windows OpenCL drivers limit you to ~1.4 Gb of VRAM per workload, so when the DAG file went over that size . . . crash bang boom. A fairly significant amount of miners went offline. Not sure how well they're recovered.

In Windows (Win10 at least) you can get around this by setting some environment variables. Go to a command line and enter:

setx GPU_MAX_ALLOC_PERCENT=100
setx GPU_SINGLE_ALLOC_PERCENT=100

Then reboot. That should fix any problems you have with the DAG file not allocating in a single chunk. Allegedly there are changes in the works for ethminer to allow loading the DAG in smaller chunks, but I don't know how much that would help deal with its increasing size vs. static VRAM.

Later on, once the DAG reaches ~1.7 Gb, there's going to be another problem with ethminer thanks to it defaulting to 350 Mb of VRAM to "other tasks" such as basic desktop usage. You can PROBABLY get around this with the --cl-extragpu-mem switch. Set it to 0 (or some value lower than 350 Mb) to free up more of your card's VRAM for mining. Beware doing this is the card in question has desktop display duties.

Interesting. I was debating on whether picking up a couple cheap (~CDN205, USD155 Shipped) 2GB 285s would be worth it, but it doesn't sound like it would be worth the hassle.

 

[EightySix Four]

There are 3 390's near me for $288/each. Having a real hard time not jumping on them.

 

[Shmee]

Wow good price! What brand/cooler?

 

[EightySix Four]

Wow good price! What brand/cooler?

Gigabyte G1's. Thinking about grabbing them and a 4U chassis and throwing them on one of my racks. Still haven't decided - would have to buy/build a whole new box for it. If the new GPUs weren't right around the corner I'd feel a bit better about it since the resell value should be reasonably high, but there would be a lot of bets on the table (price of Eth, price of 390's, hash rate of the coming GPUs, the slim chance of asics, etc.).

 

[DrMrLordX]

Interesting. I was debating on whether picking up a couple cheap (~CDN205, USD155 Shipped) 2GB 285s would be worth it, but it doesn't sound like it would be worth the hassle.

285s don't look like it, no. They don't seem to do much better than 270s in the limited reading I've done on them, and getting one at an acceptable price seems difficult. 2 Gb cards will stay alive for awhile yet, but they are clearly on life support, unless software updates to ethminer make large DAG files work okay for VRAM-limited cards.

Also I'm hitting myself for not figuring out the multiple rig thing, apparently all I'd have to do is change the name at the end of the string I'm using to start ethminer.exe from "miner1" to something else. Duh. Well there might be more to it but probably not.

I think they've only recently started to put it in place and haven't updated the instructions yet. I'm waiting for that update as well. The reported hashrate section wasn't there a little while ago.

Okay, that explains that. I saw some funky instructions for geth (or something) where you had to put in your wallet address, then something else (I forget what), and then the reported hashrate, BUT the reported hashrate had to be different from any other machine in your local network since that also served as your machine ID (?!?!?). Anyway it was weird and complicated.

Nope - just point to that wallet in the URL for nanopool on all of the machines and everything should be good to go.

Huh, cool. I'm still assuming that I can use different machine names (miner1, miner2, etc) to get the page to show every machine.

 

[EightySix Four]

Huh, cool. I'm still assuming that I can use different machine names (miner1, miner2, etc) to get the page to show every machine.

Yep

 

[DrMrLordX]

Works for me.

Oh, if any of you wind up grabbing a "cheap" Dell R9 270 from someplace, the one I have has Hynix RAM (if it matters) and it has a mostly-locked BIOS. VBE7 can't do a whole lot to change the power output . . . but if you write a modded BIOS to the card with VBE7, it unlocks GPU and VRAM clocks so that you can tweak it with Crimson. The fan profile is extremely conservative which is why it runs so hot!

I set mine from 1.188 VDDC to 1.100 VDDC, and then used Crimson to set it to 1100 mhz GPU and 1500 mhz VRAM (speeds faster than 1500 seemed to hurt performance). It's chugging along happily now with these settings and seems to be getting close to 17 MH/s using --cl-local-work 128 and --cl-global-work 16384. I have to try 256 local work later to see if that actually improves anything.

 

[EightySix Four]

Couldn't pass them up since they include Hitman as well, going to pick them up tomorrow and build a rig with all three.

 

[DrMrLordX]

Word. That's like 90 MH/s right there . . . are they models that can be undervolted? I think Gigabyte 390s are voltage-locked, but that's it.

 

[EightySix Four]

Word. That's like 90 MH/s right there . . . are they models that can be undervolted? I think Gigabyte 390s are voltage-locked, but that's it.

Not sure yet - the power usage isn't really a big deal for me, it'll barely be a blip on the radar where they are going (and I don't pay the bill heh). I'll undervolt if I can to keep the heat down, but if not, not a major loss. Need to pick a Haswell CPU (looking at a GA-Z97X-UD3H board) and decide between an SSD and HDD (if Eth takes off storage may become an issue).

Right now I'm thinking 8gb of ram and an i3 should cut it (Pentium?), but it feels like a wasted opportunity for a much more capable rig. May bump it to an i5 and 16gb. If I go with the Pentium/i3 I'll probably run linux on it, if I go i5 I may run Win7 or Win Server. Could go AMD too...

 

[DrMrLordX]

From what I have read, you don't need much CPU or RAM to run fairly extensive mining rigs. There was a guy last year bragging that he has 6x R9 280s running on a Sempron 145 rig with 4 Gb RAM. If you're running Linux, apparently it's possible/plausible to run a mining rig off a USB flash drive.

 

[ItsAlive]

I was trying out tethering my pc through my phone, but I cant seem to get qtminer to connect. Is there a way to set up qtminer to work with tethering? I don't see a conf file for qtminer or anything. Im guessing I have to change the localhost, but have no idea where to find the settings.

 

[Neurodog]

Not sure yet - the power usage isn't really a big deal for me, it'll barely be a blip on the radar where they are going (and I don't pay the bill heh). I'll undervolt if I can to keep the heat down, but if not, not a major loss. Need to pick a Haswell CPU (looking at a GA-Z97X-UD3H board) and decide between an SSD and HDD (if Eth takes off storage may become an issue).

Right now I'm thinking 8gb of ram and an i3 should cut it (Pentium?), but it feels like a wasted opportunity for a much more capable rig. May bump it to an i5 and 16gb. If I go with the Pentium/i3 I'll probably run linux on it, if I go i5 I may run Win7 or Win Server. Could go AMD too...

I got 2 MSI 390 myself over the weekend for $450 CAD each. One of them is running at 27MH and waiting for riser cable to install the other in some sort of crate that I plan to build over the weekend.

It does run hot but I haven't checked it's power requirements yet.

 

[DrMrLordX]

I snagged a used one from FS/T for $280. I undervolted it -100mv and raised the GPU clock to 1100 MHz. That plus the 270 and my 7700k (yay) are putting out 50.1 MH/s.

Oh and nanopool's hashrate reporting seems to function now without any command line hijinx.

 

[MrTeal]

Not sure yet - the power usage isn't really a big deal for me, it'll barely be a blip on the radar where they are going (and I don't pay the bill heh). I'll undervolt if I can to keep the heat down, but if not, not a major loss. Need to pick a Haswell CPU (looking at a GA-Z97X-UD3H board) and decide between an SSD and HDD (if Eth takes off storage may become an issue).

Right now I'm thinking 8gb of ram and an i3 should cut it (Pentium?), but it feels like a wasted opportunity for a much more capable rig. May bump it to an i5 and 16gb. If I go with the Pentium/i3 I'll probably run linux on it, if I go i5 I may run Win7 or Win Server. Could go AMD too...

I got a little lucky and picked up a no-box Z97X UD5H board off Kijiji for CAD$90 on the weekend after the H87 Anniversary board I bought from NCIX was DOA. It's a great MB, and I have the same problem as you. I almost feel I need to swap out the G1840 for at least a G3258 just to make it worthwhile.

 

[Crono]

Got my first Nano. Whiny little bastard.

Actually, the coil whine isn't too bad. But it's currently in the open and the whine is intermittent (stops for a second or two when a new job comes in). Wouldn't be too bad if it were a steady hum. With some fans running and in a little case I hope the noise is masked or muted.

 

[MrTeal]

Heh, got my new mining card in today. The box is literally 3 times as big as a standard 390. What a beast.

 

[Madpacket]

Heh, got my new mining card in today. The box is literally 3 times as big as a standard 390. What a beast.

Really interested in how these cards run. Shoot for 1100/1700 right away. That's good for 30Mh...

 

[Madpacket]

Well managed to get an open box Asus 390 for 440 CAD today. 72% asic and still getting Hitman and 20.00 rebate. Card is a little better than my original Asus 390.

So my GPU tally thus far;

2 x Asus 390
2 x Fury X
3 x MSI 390
1 x Powercolor 390
1 x Sapphire 380

I managed to snag a 1KW CoolerMaster power supply for 65 CAD and need another AM3 board to toss in the Asus 390's but I'm probably going to top out with another two 390's and then call it a day. The XFX are pretty cheap in CAD so curious how well they run and how loud under load.

 

[MrTeal]

Really interested in how these cards run. Shoot for 1100/1700 right away. That's good for 30Mh...

The Devil 13 doesn't seem to like 1700, but it's fine at 1100/1600. The temps are out of control at reasonable fan speed, good thing this can go in the garage. I'll have to jury rig some stuff though, as all my server PSUs have 6 pin connectors on them.

The XFX cooler is kind of crap, but the card is really cheap after MIR. The other nice thing about the XFX R9 390 is that it's compatible with my full coverage 290 blocks. I think what I'll do is pick up another XFX 390, and swap out my 290s when I redo some of my gaming rig cooling next week. The 290s can get their stock blowers, and I'll run the two 390s plus a water modded Devil 13 in my gaming computer in quadfire. It's a lot of hashrate to take offline when I want to game, but damn that's a lot of GPU horsepower.

Well managed to get an open box Asus 390 for 440 CAD today. 72% asic and still getting Hitman and 20.00 rebate. Card is a little better than my original Asus 390.

So my GPU tally thus far;

2 x Asus 390
2 x Fury X
3 x MSI 390
1 x Powercolor 390
1 x Sapphire 380

I managed to snag a 1KW CoolerMaster power supply for 65 CAD and need another AM3 board to toss in the Asus 390's but I'm probably going to top out with another two 390's and then call it a day. The XFX are pretty cheap in CAD so curious how well they run and how loud under load.

I'd imagine we're pretty close in hashrate then. I have the XFX 390, the Powercolor 390 X2, two 290s, two 7950s, a 7990, and five 4GB 380s. I should be around 350MH/s or so.

 

[Madpacket]

The Devil 13 doesn't seem to like 1700, but it's fine at 1100/1600. The temps are out of control at reasonable fan speed, good thing this can go in the garage. I'll have to jury rig some stuff though, as all my server PSUs have 6 pin connectors on them.

The XFX cooler is kind of crap, but the card is really cheap after MIR. The other nice thing about the XFX R9 390 is that it's compatible with my full coverage 290 blocks. I think what I'll do is pick up another XFX 390, and swap out my 290s when I redo some of my gaming rig cooling next week. The 290s can get their stock blowers, and I'll run the two 390s plus a water modded Devil 13 in my gaming computer in quadfire. It's a lot of hashrate to take offline when I want to game, but damn that's a lot of GPU horsepower.



I'd imagine we're pretty close in hashrate then. I have the XFX 390, the Powercolor 390 X2, two 290s, two 7950s, a 7990, and five 4GB 380s. I should be around 350MH/s or so.

I think you're still quite a few Mh's ahead of me. I'm aiming for 300Mh and then calling it a day. I did trade a few BTC for Eth as well to balance things out (high risk but what isn't in the crypto world).

I almost bought that Devil 13 a few weeks ago, hesitated for a bit and then it was gone They had it with a $100 rebate for a reasonable price a NewEgg.ca. I figured without watercooling like the 295X2 reference cards it would get toasty. Still nice to have that my MH's on one card. Trying to find a 295X2 second hand but can't find anything under $700.00 CAD which to me isn't really worth it. For $600 I would bite for a second hand card like this.

Thanks for the honest answer about the XFX cards and the cooler. I guess for milk crate mining they're still perfectly fine given the price though. After going triple fan with the Asus and Powercolor 390's I'm likely staying with three fan setup as they're reasonable under high loads noise wise. The MSI's cards are very good for dual fan but generally expensive in comparison and you have to run the fans at a pretty high RPM to keep them cool although even at high RPM's the fans aren't annoyingly loud. I haven't tried Sapphire yet but the cooler looks excellent as well.

The Hitman game vouchers are getting harder and harder to sell so cards with at least $20.00 MIR's are looking more attractive to me.

All this being said mining difficulty is increasing fast and Polaris is approaching soon. I think after April it will be get hard to ROI unless the price of Eth shoots up at least 20% (very possible).

Here's really good news which should help developers dive in much easier and create DAPPS.

https://consensys.net/static/MSVS.pdf

 

[DrMrLordX]

My MSI 390 Gaming does 30 MH/s at 1100 GPU/1500 VRAM and -100 mv. GPU-z reports that it's only taking in ~140W when mining. I'm pretty happy with it.

 

[EightySix Four]

Just finished the 3x 390 rig and seeing right around 30MH/s per card at 1100/1500. Is it best to run one instance per card?

 

[MrTeal]

Just finished the 3x 390 rig and seeing right around 30MH/s per card at 1100/1500. Is it best to run one instance per card?

Depends. It loads the whole DAG per instance, so running three would chew up ~4.5GB of RAM. If you have enough, I think that's the recommended way.