Some Updates and Additional Tips for Mining Ethereum

14 Aug
2015

ethpool-no-new-users-accepted

Mining for Ethereum’s Ether (ETH) coins is turning out to be a problem as it is still in its very early stages, it is still hard for non-advanced users to get started with it. Evven when you follow a guide like our guide on How to Mine Ethereum on Windows yuo can get to another challenge like the mining pool refusing your connections. This has happened today with the ethpool stopping to accept new miners resulting in connections for users trying to use new wallet addresses getting refused while all older miners can still continue to use the pool. The problem here is that ethpool is still the only Ethereum mining pool, so now the only alternative for new users is to solo mine – we have prepared a guide on getting started with Solo GPU Mining Ethereum on Windows. With solo mining however the risks are higher, but the rewards can also be higher if you turn up lucky, there is however no point in solo mining with CPU as the hashrate will be pretty low and you will need a lot of luck to hit a block.

We have updated our mining package that includes the geth client for generating a local Ethereum wallet and also needed for solo mining to the latest version, it is compiled for 64-bit Windows. The package also includes two versions of ethminer (also 64-bit only), the standard one with CPU and OpenCL mining as a part of cpp-ethereum and a second one forked to support CUDA as well. Note that the CUDA version can be used to mine with the CPU, OpenCL and CUDA and you should be are able to use OpenCL on Nvidia GPU’s as well. The CUDA miner should work on GPUs with Compute 2.0 or later, but if you are having trouble running the CUDA miner you can try with the OpenCL one, the resulting hashrate should not be much different between the two implementations. Also we have discovered that adding the parameter “–gpu-batch-size 20” (without the quotes) to the CUDA version of ethminer (works with the OpenCL setting of that miner as well) can increase a bit the performance you get, so we have added it by default to the example bat files for the CUDA version. The hashrate improvement is actually pretty small on Nvidia GPU’s, but on AMD cards using OpenCL it can give better results. We got up from about 24.4 MHS on Radeon R9 280X to about 26.5 MHS by adding the parameter, be aware however that this parameter is only available in the CUDA fork of ethminer.

Another interesting tip regarding issues with low hashrate, either local or reported by the pool, is to try deleting the DAG files that are being generated the first time you run ethminer. Sometimes when you are playing with different settings for the miner it seems that the DAG files may not work that well, so deleting them and having the miner generate them again with the latest settings can bring back the usual performance. So if the locally reported hashrate by the miner suddenly drops or the pool reports only a small fraction of what your total hashrate should normally be you can try deleting the DAG files and having them generated again. On Windows you can find them located in the AppData / Local / Ethash folder under your computer’s Username in the Users folder (example: C:/Users/myPC/AppData/Local/ Ethash). You may need to enable the showing of hidden system files first in order to see the needed folders in Windows Explorer if you have not enabled it already.

– Download the latest geth and ethminer compiled for Windows and ready to be used…






Check Some More Similar Crypto Related Publications:

19 Responses to Some Updates and Additional Tips for Mining Ethereum

hello

August 15th, 2015 at 01:25

Is there a different flag that needs to be used to get multiple cards running at the same time with the cuda version?

-t 2 isn’t working anymore, only 1 card mines

hello

August 15th, 2015 at 02:12

I fixed it by moving -t 2 to the end of the command in the batch file. Not sure why that matters but apparently it does.

floppy

August 15th, 2015 at 04:46

I suddenly get only a fraction of the original hashrate.. Deleteing the DAG files or different settings have zero effect. Using nvidia.

zex

August 15th, 2015 at 05:24

I managed to get a bit more from 290x with
–gpu-batch-size 20 –gpu-workgroup-size 88

28Mh at default speed

Grim

August 15th, 2015 at 06:49

still underperforming on 750ti any fix?

750ti hashes at only 1,7 to max 2 mh :(

Grim

August 15th, 2015 at 06:53

maybe compiled with cuda 6.5 would help out the 750ti?

we know that both cuda 7.0 and 7.5 have a lot of issues

admin

August 15th, 2015 at 11:56

Have you tried running the GTX 750 Ti with the OpenCL mode of the ethminer to see if there will be some difference in performance?

mik57

August 15th, 2015 at 16:09

Like hello, i have only 8 mh on my rig 6*750ti. (with -t 6 …)

On my Workstation, i have 2*750ti and only 8 mh … (with -t 2)

all cards are detected with ethminer…

example Workstation with 2*750ti 2mo:
– ethminer -U –opencl-device 0 > 7 mh
– ethminer -U –opencl-device 1 > 0.4 mh

bathr

August 15th, 2015 at 16:47

The 750 Ti has the exact same hashrate in OpenCL mode as it has with Cuda. Which is why I think for some reason the miner started to run in OpenCL mode from all of a sudden.

mik57

August 15th, 2015 at 17:51

@bathr : it’s same in opencl mode … :(

Tadej

August 15th, 2015 at 20:03

Can someone post how many W is used by those cards mining eth? Is the GPU fully loaded like scrypt, and drawing max TDP?

hello

August 16th, 2015 at 05:03

@zex great find. I’m not sure if it affects the 280x but as long as a 280x hashes with a 290x there has to be room for improvement with a 290x either in configuration settings or the algo. Plus my 290x barely break a sweat compared to whirlpoolx, for example.

admin

August 16th, 2015 at 10:23

Ethereum is currently not too power hungry, it uses about 60-70% TDP of the card. This means that there should be a room for improvement thus an increase in hashrate is most likely possible. This is also the reason why the performance of 290X is not much faster than that of 280X as well as GTX 970, 980 and 980 Ti are very close in performance as well.

admin

August 16th, 2015 at 10:52

As for Bittrex, they have a guide posted here: https://bittrex.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/207489067-Depositing-Ethereum-into-your-Bittrex-account
You can download the latest development geth version compiled for Windows from: https://build.ethdev.com/builds/Windows%20Go%20develop%20branch/

Kraken had initially followed the same path for addresses, but they came to their senses and switched to Hex addresses to make everything easier for users… and not tell them to get (compile it) the latest dev version that may not be as stable and have other issues just to be able to deposit coins to an exchange.

chavv

August 17th, 2015 at 13:59

Can you release for download the previous version (0.9.40)
It seems the rpc problem is introduced with 0.9.41

admin

August 17th, 2015 at 14:28

chavv, If you are having issues with the version we have posted you can download an earlier build from: https://build.ethdev.com/builds/Windows%20C%2B%2B%20develop%20branch/

We have posted the latest 0.9.40 dev ethminer (opencl) that does not have issues compiling under Windows, the cuda version is older.

If you are having trouble connecting to ethpool it is probably because they have stopped accepting new miners (new wallet addresses) a few days ago.

David

August 22nd, 2015 at 22:21

Hi I was mining ether 12 hours and when I checked my balance web3.fromWei(eth.getBalance(eth.coinbase), “ether”) I saw nothing
is it normal to mine 12 hours with 3x gpu R9 290x and have nothing??? what could be wrong

admin

August 22nd, 2015 at 23:19

David, were you solo mining or mining in a pool? The Ethereum network hashrate is pretty high already and there is also luck involved when mining solo, so it is not impossible to not hit a block for 12 hours…

kojiren

April 12th, 2016 at 03:16

i am using ethminer 0.9.41, i have an r9 280x toxic 3gb and its always saying that i dont have enough memory, when i do and i can run nice hash miner but i want to mine an eth pool without nicehash i deleted the dag file and still cant get ethminer to work

C:\Users\kojiren 1\Desktop\ethminer-0.9.41-genoil-1.0.4b3\ethminer-0.9.41-genoil
-1.0.4b3>ethminer -G –list-devices
Genoil’s ethminer 0.9.41-genoil-1.0.4
=====================================================================
Forked from github.com/ethereum/cpp-ethereum
CUDA kernel ported from Tim Hughes’ OpenCL kernel
With contributions from RoBiK, tpruvot and sp_

Please consider a donation to:
ETH: 0xeb9310b185455f863f526dab3d245809f6854b4d

Listing OpenCL devices.
FORMAT: [deviceID] deviceName
[0] Tahiti
CL_DEVICE_TYPE: GPU
CL_DEVICE_GLOBAL_MEM_SIZE: 3221225472
CL_DEVICE_MAX_MEM_ALLOC_SIZE: 2952232028
CL_DEVICE_MAX_WORK_GROUP_SIZE: 256

C:\Users\kojiren 1\Desktop\ethminer-0.9.41-genoil-1.0.4b3\ethminer-0.9.41-genoil
-1.0.4b3>pause
Press any key to continue . . .

this is what get when i run –list-devices

and this is what it tells me when i try to run ethminer

C:\Users\kojiren 1\Desktop\ethminer-0.9.41-genoil-1.0.4b3\ethminer-0.9.41-genoil
-1.0.4b3>setx GPU_MAX_ALLOC_PERCENT 100

SUCCESS: Specified value was saved.

C:\Users\kojiren 1\Desktop\ethminer-0.9.41-genoil-1.0.4b3\ethminer-0.9.41-genoil
-1.0.4b3>setx GPU_USE_SYNC_OBJECTS 1

SUCCESS: Specified value was saved.

C:\Users\kojiren 1\Desktop\ethminer-0.9.41-genoil-1.0.4b3\ethminer-0.9.41-genoil
-1.0.4b3>setx GPU_MAX_HEAP_SIZE 100

SUCCESS: Specified value was saved.

C:\Users\kojiren 1\Desktop\ethminer-0.9.41-genoil-1.0.4b3\ethminer-0.9.41-genoil
-1.0.4b3>ethminer -G -F http://ethereumpool.co/?miner=20@0x0fcaA257a4eaEaA552Ebc
cCcd415974Ff4c04338@kojiren1
Genoil’s ethminer 0.9.41-genoil-1.0.4
=====================================================================
Forked from github.com/ethereum/cpp-ethereum
CUDA kernel ported from Tim Hughes’ OpenCL kernel
With contributions from RoBiK, tpruvot and sp_

Please consider a donation to:
ETH: 0xeb9310b185455f863f526dab3d245809f6854b4d

No GPU device with sufficient memory was found. Can’t GPU mine. Remove the -G ar
gument

C:\Users\kojiren 1\Desktop\ethminer-0.9.41-genoil-1.0.4b3\ethminer-0.9.41-genoil
-1.0.4b3>pause
Press any key to continue . . .

any help would be awesome thanks

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

top