Considering trying to mine....

[deathman20]

was having lots of stability problems with the MSI z270 gaming M5 board. i bought it initially to be able to use the 6x PCIe plus the 2x M.2 for an 8-GPU board without the need for expanders. well after getting it setup, i found 1x PCIe slot to be non-functional, and neither of the m.2 ports worked with my pcie adapters. so i was back to the expander to get all 8 gpus working. then after a week or 2 i started seeing consistent crashing that i traced back to another PCIe port acting flaky. either this specific board was defective, or this line of boards just isn't great for mining.

Most people seem to like the ASUS Prime Z270-a/ar/p boards for 8/9 GPU setups. these aren't terribly expensive when in-stock, but not super cheap either. expect to pay $150-ish. So after looking around I found a youtube vid of a guy with the much cheaper H270-plus board and got 8 GPUs working. and it's about $100 so much better priced too. got it hooked up and got all 8 GPUs detected and working without much trouble.

stable for mining so far.

Wow such a cheap board. Really would of figured you'd want at least a mid range board to support the cards. $150 really isn't that bad but considering the CPU might cost more than the board I can understand

also, for anyone running windows, there's a new kid (ETH miner) on the block. Phoenix miner.
Windows only for now, Linux version in the works.
Developer seems pretty active and responsive to build updates.
Still new, but working pretty well for most people.
about 2-3% faster for me than Claymore AND has a lower dev fee (0.65%)

check it out: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2647654.0

Thats awesome. Always welcome new devs to the mix, and such a small Dev fee if its even slightly improved or the same speed it would be an improvement of still 1.5% because of the Dev fee. I might personally try it out on my 290 as I've been thinking of switching it over, even though its only a single old card running it, make more then zcash.

 

[Johan45]

OK , I'm really new to this and have a question about the command line to get that miner going. Been using nicehash cause it was convenient but this phoenix looks like it's worth a try but not sure how to get it up and running.

ethermine.org (ETH):
PhoenixMiner.exe -pool eu1.ethermine.org:4444 -pool2 us1.ethermine.org:4444 -wal YourEthWalletAddress.WorkerName -proto 3

I understand wallet but what is the worker?

 

[torin3]

OK , I'm really new to this and have a question about the command line to get that miner going. Been using nicehash cause it was convenient but this phoenix looks like it's worth a try but not sure how to get it up and running.

I understand wallet but what is the worker?

From what I've read, it looks like it is what you want to name your machine. So if you are mining on a second or third computer, you can give them different WorkerNames to be able to monitor problems and production easier. Name it what you want.

 

[deathman20]

Yes the WorkerName is what you want to name that PC or even graphics card/group of cards. Its an easy way to track it in pools if something odd is happening out of the norm and trace it back to a specific unit.

I name my PCs using this. Some just put like N1, N3, W1 or what ever they want in there just to give it something, I give it with some meaning at least.

BTW was downloading the Phonex miner and came back as having a virus in it... so I doubt there is but word of warning. Its new but the team/person seems very responsive in the thread posting so far.

 

[gsrcrxsi]

Wow such a cheap board. Really would of figured you'd want at least a mid range board to support the cards. $150 really isn't that bad but considering the CPU might cost more than the board I can understand

the Prime z270-a seems to be the most common, but this also causes it to be perpetually out of stock and/or overpriced when it it. it has 7 pcie slots and 2 m.2. being a z270 it has all the overclocking features and stuff. but those dont matter and most people mining just run the cheapest $50 CPU anyway. so i went with the cheaper end board that i could get working, still a 270 chipset, and had at least 1 sample of it successfully working for 8 GPUs. ASUS seems to have good support for this kind of thing add me to the list of success, so 2 samples now lol. I tried 2 MSI boards now and had poor experiences with both, both having non-functional or unstable PCIe slots.

Thats awesome. Always welcome new devs to the mix, and such a small Dev fee if its even slightly improved or the same speed it would be an improvement of still 1.5% because of the Dev fee. I might personally try it out on my 290 as I've been thinking of switching it over, even though its only a single old card running it, make more then zcash.

give it a shot, but i've switched back to Claymore for now. I ran it for 24hrs and even though the miner reported faster hashrates than Claymore, I was submitting less shares, and getting less effective hashrate on the pool (where it matters). Not sure why, but even though it said it was working harder, it was doing less work. There are some features I'm waiting to get implemented (core/mem clock adjusts, target temp fan control, voltage control, etc) so I will watch it and probably give it another shot after it's matured a bit.

 

[Johan45]

Thanks guys, guess you'll be the guinea pig deathman.
So starting the miner will use all cards in the machine? No need for extra set-up?
What about CPU if I want to use that as well.

 

[deathman20]

Thanks guys, guess you'll be the guinea pig deathman.
So starting the miner will use all cards in the machine? No need for extra set-up?
What about CPU if I want to use that as well.

Ha
No just a single card in my remote rig. The 290 is the one I'd be using as all my Nvidia cards I get more money mining other currencies or at least the one I've been focusing on right now Zcash.
Unless magically this miner can take my 1060's with my crappy hynix memory and pump 24+MH/sec out of it I'll stick with Zcash. 1080ti is far to effective with Zcash and other equihash miners.

Edit and looking into why it was detecting a virus... its the new version doing it, and i need to use the new version to get around pool issues with the one I want to use so I got to sit tight and wait this out a little more.

 

[gsrcrxsi]

i tried it on my 2x 1060's

speed was exactly the same as claymore, but i didnt run it very long.

i only saw the speed increase on my AMD machine with 8 cards. went from 222 MH to 228MH. but like i said, effective hashrate was actually lower. so i've gone back to Claymore for now.

 

[Johan45]

OK so it only runs one AMD card?
I was planning to load a 5960x with a fury unlocked to furyX and an RX 580
So I was hoping to use all three if possible

 

[gsrcrxsi]

OK so it only runs one AMD card?
I was planning to load a 5960x with a fury unlocked to furyX and an RX 580
So I was hoping to use all three if possible

it will use all the cards if you dont specify what cards to use.

for Claymore add to your startup script "-di 02" this will tell the system to use GPU #0 and #2. #0 being the first card

Phoenix uses a different command and syntax
"-gpus 13"
this will tell the system to use GPU #1 and #3. #1 being the first GPU.

Claymore starts at 0, Phoenix starts at 1, but its essentially the same thing. but like i said, if you dont add anything special like this, it defaults to using all available cards

 

[Johan45]

So what can I do with the CPU or is it not worth it? 16 threads should do some work no?

 

[gsrcrxsi]

personally i wouldn't bother unless your electricity is free.

 

[deathman20]

Yeah CPU one is eeh for mining. Sure it can be done, though its $$ for very little $ in return. It turns a profit but not that much generally speaking. If you find the right one sure you might make bank on it, its just not like the GPU's it where you'll notice the results easily.

Just switched my AMD card to mining Eth using the Claymore Miner right now for a reference. Been 5 months since I've mined Eth.

So card runs around... Core 810Mhz / Mem 1250Mhz (right on the limit of the mem strap, going down or up I loose about 1MH/sec), with a -35% power limit. I dropped the power limit and aux power limit to -100mV each to help achieve the clock. I get roughly 22MH/sec. If I use stock power limit and up my clocks to 1050.... well I get a nice boost to around 25.5MH/sec average but temps jump 10C almost instantly to around 78C... no thanks It otherwise hovers right around 67-68C. If I drop the TDP any more it is a drastic drop to around 19MH/sec and lower as it really needs my core clock as that is what is driving the efficiency on this card. So this is my baseline that I will work with and I'll see what the pool says over a 24 hour window.
Will be sad to see my Zcash amount drop... but just switching this card over is an increase of ~$22.80 a month. Payout seems to be roughly 1 time a month with roughly .05 Eth payouts.
Might have to look into doing the custom bios on my card which I know can bring it from 25.5MH/sec to 30-32MH/sec (disabling video out, and some other stuff) with still a reduction in power.

Edit: Actually my card shifted MH/sec and GPU clocks went up same TDP setting. Now sitting around Core 900Mhz / Mem 1250Mhz still. Pushing around 24MH/sec now! Temps went up slightly to 70C That being said pushes me almost into the territory of the 470/480/570/580 card... just a few more watts then them.

 

[gsrcrxsi]

hmm my GTX 1080 FTW2 seems to be having some speed problems.

used to mine equihash at about 600-640 H/s. but now it's sitting at ~575.

im not really familiar with the aspects of the Equihash algorithm when difficulty increases. does your H/s ever decrease over time? or does your H/s stay the same but chance of finding shares decrease? none of my settings have changed, and the card is at at the correct clock speeds.

 

[deathman20]

hmm my GTX 1080 FTW2 seems to be having some speed problems.

used to mine equihash at about 600-640 H/s. but now it's sitting at ~575.

im not really familiar with the aspects of the Equihash algorithm when difficulty increases. does your H/s ever decrease over time? or does your H/s stay the same but chance of finding shares decrease? none of my settings have changed, and the card is at at the correct clock speeds.

Speed shouldn't change on the card. Least the miner itself the card values are very very similar. The results on the pool might change but that just scales with the difficulty.
Are your clock speeds slower than in the past? Did you switch to a different miner program (can have a big difference). Looking into things because of "dev fee debate" going on I noticed my old equihash miners (zcash) actually didn't utilize my card as much as the one I'm using right now. Which lead to less H/s, roughly 5%.

 

[gsrcrxsi]

Speed shouldn't change on the card. Least the miner itself the card values are very very similar. The results on the pool might change but that just scales with the difficulty.
Are your clock speeds slower than in the past? Did you switch to a different miner program (can have a big difference). Looking into things because of "dev fee debate" going on I noticed my old equihash miners (zcash) actually didn't utilize my card as much as the one I'm using right now. Which lead to less H/s, roughly 5%.

the speed difference is reported from the software, NOT from the pool. its not a matter of bad shares or something like that.
no settings have changed, and the reported clock speeds clocks havent changed.
using the nicehash miner, which did recently update their mining program. theres no "dev fee" built into the nicehash miner that i'm aware of. the only fees I see is the 2% fee when transferring to my wallet.

i'll try a system reboot first. that's worked in the past for strange issues like this.
then i'll check drivers.
then i'll try rolling back to an old version of nicehash miner and see whats up.

 

[gsrcrxsi]

Looks like a reboot fixed me up.

 

[ZL1]

discussion on modding Polaris has been moved to dedicated thread here

 

[87dtna]

ok so has anyone noticed increased hashing power with faster ram speeds? Not talking on the card, the actual PC's ram. I went from DDR4-2800 to 3466 and my sol/s increased by 10 on my gtx 1070 and my 1060. Is this a fluke? It's been a few days now and the extra hashing power has been consistent.

 

[gsrcrxsi]

got the first 1080ti put in my main gaming rig, then used an extender to add the 3x GTX 1060's to that system, using one of my server PSUs to power the 1060's.

after some quick tweaking i got the box total to about 108HM on ETH.

1080ti - 39.5MH
ASUS (6GB) - 23MH
ASUS (3GB) - 24-25MH
EVGA (6GB) - 20-21MH

the asus 3GB surprised me, it has Samsung ram and seems to hold a +800MH offset and produce about 25MH. the EVGA card performs the worst and running the highest memclock at +1000, Hynix ram. the ASUS 6GB is average with +600, and Micron ram.

everything together pulls about 600W from the wall. the 3x 1060s alone pull about 315W.



i only set it up on ETH for now because it was fast to get going. I'll try out NH again to see what it does there.