Archive for the ‘Mining Hardware’ Category

Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Comes With Reduced Mining Hashrate Too

7, Jun 2021

Just like the more recently released Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 that came with mining hashrate limiter enforced by Nvidia, the new GeForce RTX 3080 Ti also came out “with a reduced Ethereum hash rate” making them less desirable for miners. The just released Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 Ti is almost equivalent in terms of specifications to an RTX 3090 GPU, but with half the video memory, so only 12GB GDDR6X instead of the full 24GB. For the new RTX 3080 Ti in terms of CUDA cores there is a very slight reduction and memory clocks too, but the memory bus remains 384-bit, so in theory performance wise it should be very similar to an RTX 3090 and that goes not only for mining, but for gaming as well. There is the Ethereum hashrate limiter however that messes things up a bit for miners, but not for gamers and the reduced in half video memory should also be making it more affordable and more available to gamers compared to RTX 3080… in theory.

Trying to mine Ethereum (ETH) at stock settings for the RTX 3080 Ti shows a starting hashrate at about 100 MH/s that quickly drops down to around 53-55 MH/s with the default setting due to the enforced hashrate limiter for mining ETH by Nvidia. The default settings for the RTX 3080 Ti from Palit/Gainward we have tried give us 325W of power usage as reported by the miner. And although Nvidia talks about limiting Ethereum mining hahsrate other similar memory intensive mining algorithms may also be affected as well as we have seen already with the RTX 3060 GPUs that were the first to introduce the hashrate limiting solution by Nvidia.

Going for optimized settings to reduce power consumption for 265W and have higher hashrate (if there was no hashrate limiter in play) give us slightly lower starting hashrate a bit below 100 MH/s, but it drops down to around 60 MH/s and not below that like with stock settings. So, performance wise mining Ethereum (if there was no artificial hashrate limiter) the RTX 3080 Ti should’ve been normally capable of delivering the same hashrate as an RTX 3090 does currently. Something around 100 MH/s with stock settings and about 120 MH/s with clocked memory and reduced power usage could’ve been possible, but instead we are getting just around half of that in reality.

Now, Nvidia is talking about Ethereum mining hashrate limiter, though some other memory intensive crypto mining algorithms might also be affected as we already know, but there are still other algorithms that will be delivering the full hashrate without any artificial limiters in play. Here is an example with RavenCoin (RVN) mining on the RTX 3080 Ti where the hashrate is not being artificially reduced, you will be getting about 48 MH/s hashrate for KawPoW with the stock settings. And although this will make mining RVN more profitable than ETH on this particular GPU, if the artificial ETH hashrate limiter was not present mining ETH would’ve been more profitable. So, the new Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 Ti is not going to be an attractive option for Ethereum miners, though some other crypto miners not into ETH might be interested, but we are seeing starting prices for the Ti as for the non-Ti version where available. And unlike miners, gamers will not be very happy to buy at these inflated prices, do not forget however that gamers will be getting performance very close to that of the much higher priced (for the moment) RTX 3090 GPUs.

The New Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 Ti that should also be hitting the market in a few days from now is also going to offer a nice upgrade in terms of hardware specs over the older RTX 3070 GPU, but just like the RTX 3080 Ti it will also come with artificial Ethereum hashrate limiter. The most notable upgrade for the new RTX3 070 Ti over the old non-Ti model is the new faster GDDR6X memory which should in theory increase the mining performance for memory intensive algorithm, but due to the Nvidia hashrate limiter Ethereum mining will not be benefiting much and in fact we expect to see lower hashrate than on RTX 3070 thanks to the limiter in play. Again, some other memory intensive algorithms besides Ethash might be affected as well, though not all, and GPU intensive mining will probably not suffer and the performance there should be slightly better than on RTX 3070.

Bitmain Teasing With the Upcoming AntMiner E9 Ethereum Miner

25, Apr 2021

Bitmain is teasing with the apparently soon to be launched new Ethash miner called Antminer E9 that is supposed to be offering 3 GH/s mining hashrate with 2556 Watts of power usage and 0.85 J/M power efficiency. This is what they claim to be the equivalent of 32 RTX 3080 graphics cards and it roughly is in terms of performance. So, the Antminer E9 is going to be offering similar performance to 32x Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 GPU mining rig mining Ethereum with GPUs optimized for close to 100 MH/s hashrate, but with power usage at just about 1/3 of what the GPUs will need. Hopefully with a price that is much less compared to how much these video cards will cost you currently, though there is still no exact launch date or pricing information released…

Bitmain however is not the first to upgrade their already outdated dedicated Ethash miner, namely the Bitmain Antminer E3 that has been around for ages. There are other competitors on the dedicated ETH miners market, namely Innosilicon and Linzhi. Innosilicon’s new ETH miner – the Innosilicon A11 is supposedly going to deliver 2100 MH/s Ethash hashrate with just 2300W of power usage, while the newcomer Linzhi and their Linzhi Phoenix ETH miner is supposedly capable of 2600 MHS hashrate for Ethash with a power usage of 3000-3500W. So, Bitmain is going to be doing better in terms of performance and with lower hashrate if the specs of their AntMiner E9 ETH miner end up to be right on the spot. It is very likely however that the price will also be reflecting the better hashrate and lower power usage as well, so it could be more expensive than the slower alternatives. You can visit crypto news sites like etherdale.com to stay updated.

Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 With Full Unrestricted ETH Mining Hashrate, But Only With Single GPU in a Gaming PC

15, Mar 2021

It seems that a workaround to the artificially enforced hashrate limiter for the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 GPUs mining Ethereum has been discovered and it is pretty simple apparently. You just need to use the developer driver version 470.05 where there is apparently no hashrate limiting being applied, unlike with the regular GeForce video driver that you would normally download for these video cards. This has been reported by some users and we can confirm that it is indeed working and you can get the full mining hashrate for Ethereum with this driver, however there is still a catch… read on below with the latest updates on what and how it works.However, if you are fond of online games, check out https://sickodds.com/lol.

We are getting 47 MH/s Ethash mining hashrate using the Nvidia developer driver version 470.05 with PhoenixMiner mining Ethereum, with the following settings in MSI Afterburner: 70% TDP, -500 MHz GPU, +1000 MHz video memory. You can check what performance does a Asus ROG Strix GeForce RTX 3060 OC Edition manage to provide you with with the limited hashrate regular drivers, though the limit is not for all crypto algorithms, but for memory-intensive ones such as Ethash and VertHash for instance.

The drawback is that the Nvidia developer driver version 470.05 does require you to register on the Nvidia website as developer and is currently still available for Windows only, but hey, it works and you get the full mining hashrate mining Ethereum and other algorithms such as Verthash used by Vertcoin that apparently also suffered from the hashrate limitation introduced by Nvidia for the RTX 3060. For VTC mining with the above settings the hashrate we are getting is around 810 KH/s instead of the reduced in half sub-400 with the regular driver.

Update: It seems that this “workaround” is still somewhat limited to just when using a single RTX 3060 GPU connected to a monitor, with more GPUs in a mining rig it does not seem to work for full hashrate on all of the video cards… If you do not have the hardware you can look for personal loans for bad credit and use it to buy the equipment that you need. When looking for help to apply for a loan and will match you to the best deal offered based on your application, you can visit a site similar to https://sunnyloansuk.co.uk/same-day-loans-direct-lender/ for more info!

Further researching into the matter with a single RTX 3060 GPU working with unrestricted hashrate, while multiple ones not working has revealed that there seem to be some conditions met. Having a single RTX 3060 GPU connected on a ь8/x16 PCI-E slot (no extenders) and a monitor connected to it. This makes us believe that Nvidia did not in fact forget to implement the protection in the latest developer driver 370.05, but has instead further improved their protection mechanism instead. What they could’ve done is to detect that you are using a single video card in a gaming setup and then no limitations, even for mining will be enforced, while if more GPUs on a slower PCI-E interface are present then this is a mining rig and the hashrate will be reduced.

– To download the Nvidia developer driver version 470.05 (free registration required)…


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