Ethereum Hashrate Drop for Radeon RX400/RX500 GPUs is Incoming

18 Jun
2017

Do you remember how last year AMD Radeon R9 280X GPUs started dropping in terms of mining hashrate for Ethereum due to the growing DAG file size? Well, it seems that we are in for the same thing happening with the Radeon RX400/RX500 series of GPUs with 4/8GB VRAM in the next couple of months. We are currently at DAG epoch #129, but in the next 30-35 or so DAG epochs we are going to be seeing gradual drop in hashrate resulting in up to about 30% decrease from the current hashrate on the Radeon RX400/RX500 series of GPUs. It seems that other more powerful GPUs such as R9 290(x)/390(x) as well as Nvidia Pascal GPUs with more video memory (6GB/8GB+) will not be affected or the drop in performance will be much smaller to a level considered pretty much insignificant compared to what will happen with AMD’s Polaris GPUs.

You can easily check what will happen with your existing GPU mining hardware and if it will be affected in terms of performance and how much by adding the option -benchmark 130 to the Claymore ETH miner. Change the number 130 (the next Ethereum DAG epoch) to the DAG epoch you want to test with such as 140, 150, 160 and see how your hashrate will change or if it will change. The Ethash DAG changes every 30000 blocks which is roughly every 4-5 days and with Ethereum this is called a DAG epoch, so every few days we move to the next DAG epoch. As DAG epochs move further on they also grow in size and put more stress to the video cards that are being used for mining and as a result there is also some performance drop observed over time. The more powerful the GPUs is and the more video memory it has, the more likely it is to be able to handle better long term mining Ethereum.






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46 Responses to Ethereum Hashrate Drop for Radeon RX400/RX500 GPUs is Incoming

miningdwarf

June 18th, 2017 at 19:33

is this just for the 4gb cards???

sepp

June 18th, 2017 at 21:40

What means DAG epoch?

ethminer

June 19th, 2017 at 02:59

This title is such click bait.

DAG size has a negative performance impact for GPUs without the VRAM capacity to store the DAG and it has to be swapped in. This is the cause of performance loss.

8GB GPUs will remain very competitive moving forward, this applies to 8GB 390, 390X, RX 480, RX 580 and the GTX 1060 (6GB) and 1070 onwards.

nvidia

June 19th, 2017 at 07:04

nvidia sales person trying to sell nvidia cards

James

June 19th, 2017 at 07:07

Hi All,

I’ve added the line -benchmark 150 to claymore’s miner and it’s still loading the dag of 129. I am using a pool though, do i need to disconnect?

Thank you!

James

June 19th, 2017 at 07:51

Fixed, thanks.

Adrian

June 19th, 2017 at 08:03

It’s more of a click bait article because it should’ve specified that every card that has less than 4GB VRAM will be affected by current epoch and in a couple of months the 4GB VRAM will be surpassed, BUT the 8GBs will take a very long time to be affected by the DAG size. Ethereum would have changed to PoS by the time the DAG is too big for a 6GB 1060 to handle… not to mention the 8GB AMD cards and the 1070.

Baseline, don’t buy under 4GB VRAM cards, so no 1060 3GB or gtx 970 or older AMD cards. This is for ethereum mining though, there are plenty altcoins, not as profitable, but you can still use your “old and less than 4GB VRAM” hardware to get some $.

Felix80

June 19th, 2017 at 08:19

Hi, this is the future hashrate or my rx 470 4gb.

Dag 130 – 27.400 Mh/s
Dag 140 – 25.100 Mh/s
Dag 150 – 22.500 Mh/s
Dag 160 – 20.100 Mh/s
Dag 199 – 10.000 Mh/s

Will be the same forse the 8gb cards?

plaasmyner

June 19th, 2017 at 10:03

This guy is going on as if ethereum will never reach proof of stake. What a joke!

chro

June 19th, 2017 at 10:14

good that there are other new ethash coins out there, some are even profitable

flavio

June 19th, 2017 at 10:46

seems there is no difference regarding hashrate drop between 8 and 4 gb on my rx 470

Defconx3

June 19th, 2017 at 11:00

Until this has been corroborated with results from other ethereum miners then the real question is whether this is a situation where Polaris doesn’t like the way claymore handles 130++ epochs, or is it actually a architecture issue.

I’m skeptical because the GTX 1060 doesn’t show the same issues, even though it has a smaller memory bus.

Claymore is looking into the issue to see if he can come up with a fix.

Maybe someone can try benchmarking the genoil ethereum miner and see how it responds to 130++ epochs. It has a similar benchmark function.

EchoOne

June 19th, 2017 at 11:01

And what about gtx 1060 3gb? What will happen there?

Felix80

June 19th, 2017 at 11:05

4 or 8 gb is the same. Nvidia does not seem to be affected

https://www.reddit.com/r/EtherMining/comments/6i1ulz/incoming_hashrate_drop_for_rx_400_and_500_cards/

Johnny

June 19th, 2017 at 11:24

The problem is not only with 4 GB VRAM RX400/500… it applies to the 8GB VRAM, too… just test and see for yourself… I hope that Claymore can work something out…

Some miner’s cards (both 4 GB and 8 GB) are already showing degradation in hash power (up to 0.5 MH per card)… with the newest DAG…

Felix80

June 19th, 2017 at 11:58

I tried the benchmark with Genoil using these commands but I do not know if it is correct. Output is equal for all values ​​up to 199

C:\Users\matte\Desktop\Mining\ethminer-0.9.41-genoil-1.1.7>ethminer.exe -G -M 199
Genoil’s ethminer 0.9.41-genoil-1.1.7
=====================================================================
Forked from github.com/ethereum/cpp-ethereum
CUDA kernel ported from Tim Hughes’ OpenCL kernel
With contributions from nicehash, nerdralph, RoBiK and sp_

Please consider a donation to:
ETH: 0xeb9310b185455f863f526dab3d245809f6854b4d

Found suitable OpenCL device [Ellesmere ] with 4294967296 bytes of GPU memory
Benchmarking on platform: CL
Preparing DAG for block #199
i W1a0r:m3i2n:g0 1u|po.p.e.n
clminer0 set work; seed: #00000000, target: #000000000000
i 10:32:01|openclminer0 Initialising miner…
Using platform: AMD Accelerated Parallel Processing
Using device: Ellesmere(OpenCL 2.0 AMD-APP (2117.13))
Printing program log

Creating cache buffer
Creating DAG buffer
Loading kernels
Writing cache buffer
Creating buffer for header.
Creating mining buffer 0
Creating mining buffer 1
Generating DAG data
OPENCL#0: 0%
OPENCL#0: 6%
OPENCL#0: 13%
OPENCL#0: 19%
OPENCL#0: 25%
OPENCL#0: 31%
OPENCL#0: 38%
OPENCL#0: 44%
OPENCL#0: 50%
OPENCL#0: 56%
OPENCL#0: 63%
OPENCL#0: 69%
OPENCL#0: 75%
OPENCL#0: 81%
OPENCL#0: 88%
OPENCL#0: 94%
Trial 1… 23751888
Trial 2… 23743978
Trial 3… 23751888
Trial 4… 23743978
Trial 5… 24093154
min/mean/max: 23743978/23816977/24093154 H/s
inner mean: 15948347 H/s

fdg789

June 19th, 2017 at 11:59

Good, this is what miners deserve. Graphics cards aren’t meant for mining but for rendering objects on the screen. Hopefully this happens to every cryptocurrency to null graphics cards useless. Miners are destroying the gaming economy.

admin

June 19th, 2017 at 12:27

If using Genoil’s ethmienr with the -M option to benchmark you are not setting the DAG epoch number, but the number of block to test against… so make sure you set the right block number, each DAG epoch is 30K blocks, so just do the math.

Felix80

June 19th, 2017 at 12:28

Ok thanks I will try again

Brusque

June 19th, 2017 at 14:19

“Miners are destroying the gaming economy.”

This is what happens when people who don’t understand economics port a reply about economics.

OMG! Computers where’s designed for gaming. Gaming is destroying the computers economy!!!!

big boye

June 19th, 2017 at 18:43

Thank god, maybe there will be some stock available for gamers soon.

xeridea

June 20th, 2017 at 00:18

big boye
Unlikely, if you bought a 470 for lower price, say $170 not long ago, its ROI would currently be 1 month. Extremely hard to argue that value. 1060s and 1070s are drying up also

spiz0r

June 20th, 2017 at 10:37

I have just tried it with DAG epoch over 200. it crash totally, anybody have a clue why? I tried it on both nvidia and amd cards.

Orpheus

June 20th, 2017 at 12:42

Max Dag value for me seems to be 190, or a little more, but 190 worked. On NV 6gb.

Niz

June 20th, 2017 at 13:06

do not worry soon will be 16GB and 32GB cards on market

Lastline

June 21st, 2017 at 00:16

making money on the comp is the best game of all!

Bertold Brecht

June 21st, 2017 at 01:09

Fdg 789: Computers are meant for computing, not for playing;) Football or tennis racket is for playing games…

hyt11

June 21st, 2017 at 02:03

as if they deserve it. lol gaming community be so toxic sometimes i rather have less GPUs available for future players. plus no one buys AMD cards these days.

QuintLeo

June 21st, 2017 at 09:05

Most serious gamers aren’t using the cards that are best at ETH mining anyway – they’re using the GTX 1080ti or in a budget pinch the GTX 1080, both of which are still somewhat overpriced compared to their ETH mining performance (though anyone SANE mines ZEC or other stuff like the Skein coins on those 2 GPUs as the GDDR 5x latency issues that kill their ETH performance don’t affect other coins much if at all).

AMD did have some interest out of gamers playing DirectX 12 games, as the RX 480/580 performs quite a bit above their weight on some of those titles – but most serious gamers were going NVidia or waiting on Vega and using older-gen cards they already have like the R9 390(x) and Fury(X/Nano).

Claymore has already stated in the bitcointalk thread for his ETH dual-miner that he doesn’t think a workaround is possible, but he’s still looking into it.
Somewhat academic point anyway right now, as the current “gouge” pricing seems to be moving miners away from the RX series cards into the NVidia 1070 and possibly the 1060.
Availability on the 1070 has dropped to *almost* RX 470/480/570/580 levels, and the pricing has pushed well into lower-1080 territory and is still climbing.

Going to be interesting to see what the P106-100 (and possible P104-100) do to availability – IF ANYTHING.

Topslop

June 21st, 2017 at 10:11

@fdg789

You’re such a retard. Rendering objects on the screen *is* actually computing. That’s all gpus ever do, they compute, just as a cpu does.

Is it written on the box you can’t use this for anything else than gaming?

God people like you get on my nerves with their selfish jealousy because they realised about mining too late or can’t play their stupid games. Just buy a damn xbox or a ps4 if you’re in such a craving for your gaming fix o_O

Bensam123

June 21st, 2017 at 12:25

Gamers have budgets too. Most aren’t going to be buying $500-700 hardware for gaming. You live in an entirely different world if you can always buy the best.

That aside, one of the reasons you buy a 480/580 over a R9-290 or such is because when the shit hits the fan you still have dual mining. Less profit on Eth means you crank up the intensity on the opposite side. It’s not going to be exact, but it’s a far cry from these cards losing 30% of their revenue.

Alex Schamenek

June 21st, 2017 at 17:56

“That aside, one of the reasons you buy a 480/580 over a R9-290 or such is because…”

Uhhh… I have 4 290s. They dual mine like a dream.

yok

June 21st, 2017 at 21:39

“Gamers have budgets too. Most aren’t going to be buying $500-700 hardware for gaming..”

Yes, processor $2000; graphic card $1000; motherboard, power supply, memory, disks, case $500

Nasdaq7

June 22nd, 2017 at 06:26

8GB or 4GB cards, it doesn’t matter, everyone’s hash rate is going crash.

Bensam123

June 22nd, 2017 at 07:48

“Uhhh… I have 4 290s. They dual mine like a dream.”

I bet they do, at double the wattage and still don’t end up with as good of hashrate.

Colin

June 22nd, 2017 at 14:43

Gamers have budgets too? If they were smart they’d mine while not gaming, my rx480 is paying for itself and it’ll be paying for my next upgrade too

Anton

June 24th, 2017 at 11:38

@Quintleo

Do you have a link to that btc thread with claymore responding.

Zorlofe

June 24th, 2017 at 19:58

Lol @ all the butt hurt gamers. Get over yourself already! I’m big into gaming too and I also mine. New GPU’s will be hitting the market soon. Just be patient, things will balance out soon enogh!

Arcanegrin

June 26th, 2017 at 08:49

What the f***? I was trying to get myself 12 1060 3GB and hear about this. I cannot afford 12 1060 6GB Wow… So much to mine plus the risk of the ethereum! Dammit, Can’t even see the worth of it!

Lankyman

July 4th, 2017 at 19:54

Hi, i would like to know how you can increase the hash rate on the RX470 4GB and 8GB verion card…. is bios flash the only way?
I have increased my memory and clock speed on the cards using MSI Afterburner

Wahid

July 5th, 2017 at 05:25

I’m using R9 290 for one month right now and my hashrate stiil 28MHz/s
But firstly I can get $5.6 per day. But today just $2.9
Why my hashrate keeping at 28M but my earning drop?

Someone Who knows how to Google

July 5th, 2017 at 14:52

@Wahid that is because the algorithm gets more difficult to solve, the longer it takes to solve, the longer it takes to mine coins off a block at the same hash rate. That is also excluding the fact that the exchange on ether has gone down since you started a month ago, which affects your earnings.

ronak

September 12th, 2017 at 07:40

the hashrate successfully recover on my rx580 pulse , now i got 29.800 mh/s

h

November 22nd, 2017 at 15:54

Thanks for the info, was wondering why im only getting 19.5mhz instead of 24mhz earlier half a year ago. Been having a long mining break.

Also it seems it now requires slightly higher GPU clocks to max out the cards, is that right?

Question to you guys with bios modded mem straps, what hash rate are you guys getting nowadays?

capillo

February 19th, 2018 at 01:27

For amd cards you must put this command in regedit for every card installed

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4d36e968-e325-11ce-bfc1-08002be10318}\0000]
“KMD_EnableInternalLargePage”=dword:00000002

Hashrates will not drop anymore and work on max hasrate

Kevin

March 16th, 2018 at 04:16

It’s not really a matter of VRAM size (of course it has been be enough to hold the dag file). It is the question of memory bandwidth. The RX 5xx series has 256bit bandwidth. As dag file size increases, hashrate will decrease. You can only fit so much through a half inch hose. The R9 series has 512bit bandwidth which is better. The vega series is even better. So the author is correct.

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