Archive for the ‘Mining Software’ Category

zcash-nicehash

Here is a quick list of the latest CPU and GPU miners available for mining the Zcash (ZEC) that uses the Equihash algorithm used by the coin. Since most pools and miners are based on Stratum mining support you should be able to use them on almost all mining pools with support for ZEC. What you should be looking for is what works best on your hardware in terms of stability and what provides you with the optimal hashrate in order for you to maximize your profit. CPU mining is still viable as GPU miners are yet to be further optimized to be able to provide significantly higher hashrates, though you should know that the days of the CPU mining of ZEC are probably numbered.

Because of the slow start mining that Zcash has implemented the block reward is still growing, so even with price going down and the total network hashrate going up the overall profit for mining and selling Zcash remains pretty stable and most importantly pretty high compared to other crypto coins at the moment. Because of that it is a wise decision to mine and sell Zcash at the moment until the end of the slow start of mining when the block reward will stabilize at the maximum level of 12.5 ZEC and that should provide a more stable price per coin than at the moment. Mining ZEC coins now and keeping the coins may result in them loosing significant value at least in short term, though in long term it might still be a viable option, so consider what to do carefully.

Best CPU miners for Zcash:
NiceHash’s nheqminer v0.3a (also supports CUDA and OpenCL)*

Best AMD OpenCL miners for Zcash:
ZECMiner v0.6 by Genoil

Best Nvidia CUDA miners for Zcash:
NiceHash’s nheqminer v0.3a (also supports CPU and OpenCL)*

* The nheqminer is available with hardcoded pools from nicehash, suprnova and other mining pools supporting Zcash, so make sure you download the correct version for the pool you are going to be mining at.

Genoil’s latest ZECMiner is pretty much the fastest public OpenCL miner (Windows binaries only) for Zcash at the moment, though there are some stability issues with cards dropping to 0 Sol/s and the miner crashing. The situation improves with each new version, but the miner is still not that good stability wise. The latest Nheqminer supports OpenCL mining, but is slower than ZECMiner, even though stability wise it is better… it is much better for CPU and CUDA mining though. Hopefully soon there will be other faster GPU miners that will offer more stability and features along the improved mining speeds, but for now you will need to do with what is currently available.

ccminer-1-8-3-git

A quick update with a new Windows binary compiled from the latest ccMiner 1.8.3-git fork from tpruvot (source) with some improvement in the LBRY mining performance based on Alexis Provos work and basic implementation of the Veltor algorithm with some other minor fixes. The release below includes two versions of ccMiner, one is 32-bit binary for Windows that is compiled with CUDA 7.5 and with support for Compute 2.0 or newer Nvidia GPUs, and another that is 64-bit Windows binary compiled with CUDA 7.5 for Compute 3.5 or newer Nvidia GPUs. We have tried compiling the 32-bit version of ccminer with CUDA 6.5, but the resulting version did have some issues with LBRY, so we have compiled with 7.5 as well and it worked fine.

To download the latest ccMiner version 1.8.3-git by tpruvot 32/64-bit for Windows OS…

sgminer-5-3-0-gm

Today, Genesis Mining announced the release of sgminer-gm – an AMD GPU miner with support for the Ethereum network. Developed in cooperation with Wolf0, sgminer-gm incorporates the best of cgminer and sgminer in one easy-to-use package, and adds a long-awaited feature: stratum support for Ethereum (ETH), though you will be able to use the miner for other crypto currencies using the Ethash algorithm as well. All other Ethereum miners so far were custom and not based on the cgminer/sgminer functionality and now you will be able to work with the familiar feature set that sgminer comes with, including the API available for integrating support in other software for monitoring of your mining rigs for example.

Sgminer-gm can be compiled from the official Github repository (source); Windows executables are available for 32-bit and 64-bit operating systems; and a compiled Ubuntu binary. A sample configuration is provided for users, just make sure you set the mining pool and wallet/worker address in the sgminer.conf file before running the miner! Feel free to give the miner a try and then also report if you are having any trouble running it or what hashrate are you getting mining Ethereum and on what AMD GPUs.

Founded in 2013, Hong-Kong based Genesis Mining has become a world leader in providing hosted hashpower for cryptocurrency. In November 2015, a nationwide awareness campaign was launched in San Francisco, Chicago, Miami and LA by Genesis Mining, which highlighted the benefits of using Bitcoin. In March 2016, the company launched the Logos Fund: a private fund dedicated to investing into a wide range of Bitcoin-related businesses.

Further information about the company, its contracts and pricing can be obtained from their official website…


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