Ethereum GPU mining?

[IntelUser2000]

I am starting to think the RX 470 overclocked could be an awesome mining card if the memory can overclock as well as on the RX 480. It seems the mining speed on the RX 480 isn't that sensitive to shader speed/GPU clocks?

Searching around for the results, its not sensitive to core clocks at all, until a certain point. That point seems to be about 950MHz. Now, that's for the 8GB part, meaning 8000MHz memory.

1266MHz would need: 1266/950 x 8000 = 10661MHz memory or 33% overclock to make it optimal and end up nearly 33MH/s. Of course, overclocking the memory to 9GHz at core clock of 950MHz gets you some benefits, but tiny, like 0.3MH/s.

So ideally if you can get your hands on a RX 470 that can clock at 1.4GHz core clock and 10479MHz memory, you can get 32MH/s for $150. The memory is only at 7GHz by default though, so unless the board guys decide on just downclocking 8GHz samples to 7GHz, you'll need to OC the memory by 50%.

Or maybe 8GHz memory would work, and you can set the core clock at 1069MHz and get ~24.5MH/s for $150.

 

[Erenhardt]

Our 290 clocks and undervolts are similar. What power limit do you run at? I run 1100/1200 -62mv core and -20% power limit for 30.7 Mh/s

I don't change power limit.

 

[Shmee]

I am starting to think the RX 470 overclocked could be an awesome mining card if the memory can overclock as well as on the RX 480. It seems the mining speed on the RX 480 isn't that sensitive to shader speed/GPU clocks?

RX 470 = 2048 SPs x 1206mhz = 4.94Tflops
RX 480 = 2304 SPs x 1266mhz = 5.83Tflops

That's an 18% disadvantage in theoretical performance. That means if the memory on the RX 470 can be overclocked to RX 480 speeds, it should mine similarly to a 1073mhz RX 480. At $149, that would be a sweet deal!

Can you test the hashing speed difference between a 1266mhz RX 480 and a 1073mhz RX 480? Just curious as to what the differences are with 8000mhz memory speed.

---

Any news on GTX1070's mining rate under Windows 10? I am interested in putting 1070 SLI into my main rig and mine on the side but I want to do it under Windows not Linux.

AFAIK no improvements yet, I wonder if it may be a while.

 

[suklee]

ASRock H97 Anniversary as already recommended by DrMrLordX.. This board is actually available on NewEgg for cheap and you can pickup a celeron for $50, and a 4GB stick for $15 but grab a single 8GB stick instead as it's not much more and will speed things up a bit. Buy a 1.35v DIMM to save watts. I also recommend a 120GB MLC SSD. It'll save you setup time for interruptions from critical patch installations etc, this will make up cost difference from using a mechanical drive. Although a tad cheaper, the TLC drives tend to use a bit more power under load but idle power is most important.

I havent done the research on which drives have the best idle power states so I don't have specific recommendations sorry.

Make sure you buy quality powered risers or you'll have a tough time getting all the cards to be recognised by the OS. Add one card at a time. Make your primary card use the x16 slot. Disable onboard crap like extra drive controllers, sound, etc. Undervolt and underclock your CPU as well. 2Ghz is plenty. This should get you to under 30W idle.

The nice thing about the Rx480 is you can save money on the power supply. 850W is plenty for 6 cards. EVGA G2 or Corsair RMX would fit the bill. Of course if you catch a good deal on a 1KW EVGA G/P2 grab that instead but don't bother if it's more than $25.00.

No Anniversary ATX (only mATX) boards where I am, but I managed to hunt down a used H61 Pro BTC off a local website. Hard to find other boards with 6 PCIe slots that are non-Asrock branded... are there any recent (2015-2016) models? Googling, some people had problems getting 6 GPUs to work on the Z170 chipset.

Ordered powered risers off eBay... parts are coming together slowly

Is the Celeron G465 1.9GHz a bit too slow for Windows/mining?

Edit: Looking good on the XFX 480s. Possibly getting a mixture of the "plain" & "black oc" versions.

 

[Pete_69]

Hi everyone, i have just got my new ref 480 and i am going to start mining for the 1st time.Downloaded geth, typed geth --rpc and started to download the blockchain, been on since yesterday afternoon and still going, chaindata folder is now 22.3gb, is this right? Thanks.

 

[suklee]

Hi everyone, i have just got my new ref 480 and i am going to start mining for the 1st time.Downloaded geth, typed geth --rpc and started to download the blockchain, been on since yesterday afternoon and still going, chaindata folder is now 22.3gb, is this right? Thanks.

^^ I tried these instructions at first too but I believe that is for solo mining.

What you want to do is download a miner like Claymore's (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1433925.0), pick a pool (I use ethermine.org), and then set up a .bat file to run to start mining.

Edit: try following this guide https://www.cryptocompare.com/mining/guides/how-to-connect-to-an-ethereum-mining-pool/

 

[Pete_69]

Thanks for the help, just followed that guide and am now building dag file, a lot quicker. Is it safe for me to deleted that 22gb file?

 

[suklee]

Yep you can safely delete that chaindata... Once you've downloaded the ethereum wallet it will automatically re-download the Eth chain data. When mining, make sure u are using the receiving address in your ethereum wallet.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[n0x1ous]

I was able to snag another 4gb rx 480 from amazon this morning and it will be mining with a 7970 and r9 290. Anyone know how radeon settings handles having non RX series cards in regards to wattman? wattman shows up if clicked on rx 480 and back to overdrive if on something else?

 

[codyray10]

I was able to snag another 4gb rx 480 from amazon this morning and it will be mining with a 7970 and r9 290. Anyone know how radeon settings handles having non RX series cards in regards to wattman? wattman shows up if clicked on rx 480 and back to overdrive if on something else?

That is correct. Overdrive will still be there for your 7970/290. Did you get the 4GB 480 @ MSRP?

 

[n0x1ous]

That is correct. Overdrive will still be there for your 7970/290. Did you get the 4GB 480 @ MSRP?

Yes, Amazon had Sapphire's for $199 for about 30 seconds this morning. I should be receiving on Friday. This one will be replacing a 280x that I can only get 18 MH out of and finally get me to my goal of 100MH. I can get 27 MH out of my XFX 4GB RX 480 so hoping for the same from this Sapphire.

R9 290 - 30 MH
7970 - 17 MH
XFX RX 480 - 27 MH
SPH RX 480 - 27 MH

I have a buyer for my 280x Toxic for $150 otherwise would have dumped the 7970

 

[codyray10]

Yes, Amazon had Sapphire's for $199 for about 30 seconds this morning. I should be receiving on Friday. This one will be replacing a 280x that I can only get 18 MH out of and finally get me to my goal of 100MH. I can get 27 MH out of my XFX 4GB RX 480 so hoping for the same from this Sapphire.

R9 290 - 30 MH
7970 - 17 MH
XFX RX 480 - 27 MH
SPH RX 480 - 27 MH

I have a buyer for my 280x Toxic for $150 otherwise would have dumped the 7970

Very nice. I'm so jealous of the fact you 4GB 480 owners can unlock the rest of the memory. There is no better deal. I've considered trying to get my hands on a 4GB, unlocking and then selling my 8GB. However finding the 4GB before it goes out of stock is proving to be a tough task now that everyone and their mother wants one. That and the fact I'm awaiting custom cards to go xfire.

 

[poofyhairguy]

It may just require more voltage to run games now. If you're feeling creative, you can try to rebalance the card's power budget by reducing TDC and increasing voltage. The procedure requires trial and error since altering TDC can sometimes change the card's vdroop characteristics. Monitor your power usage carefully to make sure you aren't raising overall power draw by boosting voltage.

It might work, or it might not. Alternatively you can just jack up voltage a bit, burn more power, and see if that works.

Thank you for the suggestion, I tried that and it didn't work. Even jacking up the voltage it crashes in Firestrike.

Oh well, it still mines. I just need to get a AIB 480 I guess to replace its gaming function, unless I can get lucky and get XFX to RMA it or something.

 

[DrMrLordX]

If it's still under warranty, they should honor it. Using your video card for compute functions is not outside the realm of acceptable use. GCN is designed for that!

If you modded the BIOS or overclocked the card . . . well . . . that's another story.

 

[brainchain]

Haven't seen anything different from what it was before...meaning it's extremely slow (like 4MHs or something like that) in Windows.

What about earlier versions of Windows can you mine with the 1070?

Like with nicehash v1.6.1.2

 

[thilanliyan]

What about earlier versions of Windows can you mine with the 1070?

Like with nicehash v1.6.1.2

You'll have to read up. That is just what I've seen. I haven't tried it myself.

 

[brainchain]

You'll have to read up. That is just what I've seen. I haven't tried it myself.

Yeah, I definitely am reading everything I can find. I guess I'll know soon enough because I'm taking delivery on 10 of those cards tomorrow. I'm running a Linux rig now and couple Windows rigs. I'm just a little more comfortable with Windows.

 

[thilanliyan]

Nm

 

[Madpacket]

I wouldn't spend an outrageous amount more on a bigger power supply, but outside of the obvious benefit going with a bigger one (saving power due to higher efficiency), you also generally get more cables on a larger supply. IE, the 1000G2 has six PCI-e cables and six peripheral/SATA cables, while the 850W has four PCI-e and four perif/sata cables. Electrically I wouldn't be worried about the PCIe at all, but depending on your powered risers (isolated vs shared 12V) it'd be nice to have a separate cable to feed each riser since the peripheral and sata cables only have one 12V wire each.

That being said, you can't go wrong with the two you recommended. In Canada I'd be really tempted by the Zalman 1250W platinum unit that Amazon is selling for $150 no rebate (with free shipping if you have Prime). Not only is probably around 4% more efficient than something like an 850G2 at an 800W DC load (which translates to about 24kWh a month) but it's $10 cheaper and has a buttload of cables. The only thing to watch out for is the crappy 18 gauge power cord they ship with it.

Yes good point about the rails. I keep forgetting we need to supply enough wattage to the powered risers so you want to pull from multiple connections if aiming for a 6x480 rig. Even though 750/850 is enough power they may have issues supplying enough amps across available SATA/Molex connectors for the risers.

Thanks the Zalman 1250 mention, I picked the last one up It's an older power supply with a weird +12v rail split but it looks amazingly efficient and the price was bonkers..

FYI the H97 Anniversary are only $55 CAD A/R at NewEgg.ca right now.

http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157564&ignorebbr=1

Add in one of these and you've got a great base for a 6x rig.

http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819117301&ignorebbr=1

 

[Madpacket]

Any news on GTX1070's mining rate under Windows 10? I am interested in putting 1070 SLI into my main rig and mine on the side but I want to do it under Windows not Linux.

No. And the only guy who appears to have the knowledge and cares to work on the CUDA implementation is taking a break from development. So I ended up sending back my Zotac 1070 (the DPC issue really bugged me as well). If things ever get sorted with the mining I'll probably reorder but for the price of one Zotac 1070 I can get two 480's.

--


AFAIK anything after around 1080Mhz on the Rx480 does nothing to increase mining speeds. The memory speed makes the biggest difference. I'll test it out anyways soon but keep in mind the default mining speeds without touching anything is only around 24.x Mh, and that's running at 1200+Mhz core.

For the 470 you have to take into account a few things. Less shaders (this does seem to make a difference up to a point), therefore you'll need to run the GPU core faster as you mention. This will require more voltage probably negating any power/performance advantage over the 480. The 480 can be undervolted to less than 900mv for 27Mh hashing speeds at under 100W. Remember these chips were never really designed to run at higher frequencies (Raja mentioned something about this in the PCPer interview) so they kind of start to miss their optimal power target after 1100Mhz a then brick wall shortly after 1300Mhz. I'm not that optimistic for the aftermarket cards for this very reason. Sure some of them may hit 1400Mhz+ with silly amounts of voltage applied but what's that going to do for the power efficiency? They could be terrible for mining compared to the reference cards unless you get full voltage control.

Anyways I hope I'm wrong about the 470 but I suspect even if it's capable of higher hashrates (say it can hit 24/25 if you really push it) it will likely have to mine well outside of peak efficiency and likely be much worse performance per watt compared to the 480. All that being said if the card is a solid $50.00 less it'll still be a decent miner given the pricing.

 

[Madpacket]

No Anniversary ATX (only mATX) boards where I am, but I managed to hunt down a used H61 Pro BTC off a local website. Hard to find other boards with 6 PCIe slots that are non-Asrock branded... are there any recent (2015-2016) models? Googling, some people had problems getting 6 GPUs to work on the Z170 chipset.

Ordered powered risers off eBay... parts are coming together slowly

Is the Celeron G465 1.9GHz a bit too slow for Windows/mining?

Edit: Looking good on the XFX 480s. Possibly getting a mixture of the "plain" & "black oc" versions.

That chip and board are rather old but should work just fine. Another alternative is to go AMD. I have a few AMD miners and they're very solid but use a tad more watts at idle (5-10).

Gigabyte has a few boards that work really well such as the GIGABYTE GA-990FXA-UD3 R5. Toss in a Sempron 140 or 145 and you have yourself a solid mining board that can take 6 cards. Note the 990FXA is a little pricey but much higher quality than the cheaper Intel AsRock boards however both work well for mining. Sempron 145's are generally cheaper than the cheapest Intel chips which can make up some of the cost difference.

A third option is to go a little newer. I built a 5 slot miner with an AsRock Z71 Pro4s + Core i3-6100. This cost more up front but I can easily repurpose that chip and board after mining.

 

[poofyhairguy]

Anyways I hope I'm wrong about the 470 but I suspect even if it's capable of higher hashrates (say it can hit 24/25 if you really push it) it will likely have to mine well outside of peak efficiency and likely be much worse performance per watt compared to the 480. All that being said if the card is a solid $50.00 less it'll still be a decent miner given the pricing.

I just don't see how a 470 at some hypothetical point isn't squished by a 480 today. Any source I can find says that a 470 will be here at the end of the month at best. By that time my 480 will have mined $50 worth of ETH profits, completely erasing any possible value argument for a 470.

Seems like the most valuable mining card is the one that started mining for you yesterday given the massive difficulty increases seen recently. I just don't understand how anyone plans to wait until 470s are readily available (IE you can easily buy more than two to fill a crate) and expects that they will still payoff at that late of an hour. As soon as you (and by that I mean any of us) can buy mass quantities of these GPUs some else already has which will make the difficulty curve even worse.

I think by October ETH mining goes from "make a profit on your GPU you bought for mining" to "make a percentage back on the gaming GPU you were going to buy anyway." ETH prices would almost have to double to keep the party going.

 

[Madpacket]

Yes, Amazon had Sapphire's for $199 for about 30 seconds this morning. I should be receiving on Friday. This one will be replacing a 280x that I can only get 18 MH out of and finally get me to my goal of 100MH. I can get 27 MH out of my XFX 4GB RX 480 so hoping for the same from this Sapphire.

R9 290 - 30 MH
7970 - 17 MH
XFX RX 480 - 27 MH
SPH RX 480 - 27 MH

I have a buyer for my 280x Toxic for $150 otherwise would have dumped the 7970

Man these 480's are selling out so fast. Yesterday two models showed up at NewEgg.ca and sold out in like 20 minutes. I only managed to snag one 8GB MSI model. I hate paying extra for the 8GB model but I guess at least we'll get more back when reselling the card (even if the 4GB are really 8GB).

So now I have 2 Rx480's but still need 10 more haha.

 

[Madpacket]

I just don't see how a 470 at some hypothetical point isn't squished by a 480 today. Any source I can find says that a 470 will be here at the end of the month at best. By that time my 480 will have mined $50 worth of ETH profits, completely erasing any possible value argument for a 470.

Seems like the most valuable mining card is the one that started mining for you yesterday given the massive difficulty increases seen recently. I just don't understand how anyone plans to wait until 470s are readily available (IE you can easily buy more than two to fill a crate) and expects that they will still payoff at that late of an hour. As soon as you (and by that I mean any of us) can buy mass quantities of these GPUs some else already has which will make the difficulty curve even worse.

I think by October ETH mining goes from "make a profit on your GPU you bought for mining" to "make a percentage back on the gaming GPU you were going to buy anyway." ETH prices would almost have to double to keep the party going.

Yes I completely agree. All the people waiting for the optimal card are fooling themselves. Just like the people who sold all their old cards weeks before the 480's arrived in limited quantities.

One thing you have to keep in mind though (just had this argument with a friend) is you only have so many KW's of power and heat you can deal with in a single house. Unless you're getting subsidized power or have a real mining farm in a warehouse / data centre you have a maximum number of cards to mine with before you hit a brick wall.

My comfortable limit was 20 cards (all 390's and 290's). Depending on your living conditions, price of hydro, size of home this will change.

Therefore it's still imperative to sell the old gear and replace it with more power efficient mining gear for one major reason.

More Mh/W.

If I replace all of my gear with 480's I can mine at 50% faster hashing rates using the same amount of power and dealing with the same amount of heat waste. Given the difficulty this is necessary if you want to keep a decent payout.

 

[MrTeal]

Yes I completely agree. All the people waiting for the optimal card are fooling themselves. Just like the people who sold all their old cards weeks before the 480's arrived in limited quantities.

One thing you have to keep in mind though (just had this argument with a friend) is you only have so many KW's of power and heat you can deal with in a single house. Unless you're getting subsidized power or have a real mining farm in a warehouse / data centre you have a maximum number of cards to mine with before you hit a brick wall.

My comfortable limit was 20 cards (all 390's and 290's). Depending on your living conditions, price of hydro, size of home this will change.

Therefore it's still imperative to sell the old gear and replace it with more power efficient mining gear for one major reason.

More Mh/W.

If I replace all of my gear with 480's I can mine at 50% faster hashing rates using the same amount of power and dealing with the same amount of heat waste. Given the difficulty this is necessary if you want to keep a decent payout.

That's my basic thinking on it. I don't really want to expand my setup further, but I am looking at replacing Hawaii with Polaris. Even replacing 1:1, I won't be increasing my hashrate. I could fit more Polaris into the same power envelope, but then I would need to build out more rigs and get another rack shelving unit for them which I'm loathe to do. The only real cost (assuming the 470 and 480 hash at close to the same rate) to waiting a month to see what happens with new cards is a couple hundred bucks in power, which would easily be dwarfed by the possible US$80 savings of going with the 470. That's assuming of course that you can buy 480s today, which is unfortunately not the case at all.