Archive for the ‘Mining Software’ Category

New Sia GPU Miner for OpenCL Forked by Genoil Now Available

12, Jul 2016

sia-gpu-miner-genoil

Siacoin (SC) is getting a lot of attention lately and there is now a new fork of the miner available made by Genoil (source). The Sia GPU Miner fork by Genoil is for OpenCL, though it works on both AMD and Nvidia and provides some performance optimizations along with other interesting features such as the ability to load external OpenCL kernel file that might be useful for people that want to try modifying or optimizing the CL file. Genoil reports that his optimized OpenCL kernel is capable of providing roughly +18% performance increase on a 7950 and we are seeing some performance boost on Nvidia as well, though more like 3-4% boost on a GTX 970. Nevertheless the fork by Genoil does offer some performance improvement over the Siacoin default miner as it has taken that OpenCL Go miner kernel as a base and even more improvements could be possible for faster performance.

We have a working 64-bit Windows binary available for download below that you might want to try. We have tested it and can confirm that it works on both Sia Nanopool and Siamining pool, though for some reason the hashrate reported by the miner is a bit higher for Nanopool than for the Siamining pool. Do note that this miner does require you to run a separate instance for each GPU in your system, it will by default run only on the first video card it finds. So while things do look very promising for this fork it apparently can use a bit more work to become as easy to be used as the Siacoin Go miner and maybe even better performance wise.

– To download and try the Sia GPU Miner for OpenCL Forked by Genoil for Windows…

Sia CUDA Miner For Mining Siacoin (SC) on Nvidia GPUs

12, Jul 2016

sia-cuda-miner

Sia CUDA Miner is a GPU miner designed for mining Siacoins on Nvidia GPUs using CUDA instead of OpenCL like on the Siacoin Go pool miner. The Sia CUDA Miner is being developed by KlausT (source) and works pretty well already, though it still needs some more work in terms of available features and in terms of performance optimizations. Our tests have shown that using the Sia CUDA Miner on various Nvidia GPUs does result in a hashrate that is a bit lower than what you can get using the OpenCL miner on the same hardware. Another limitation that the CUDA miner has is that by default it runs on a single GPU and you will need multiple instances running to have it work on multiple GPUs. Also, although the miner supports pool mining it apparently only works with pools that have long pooling enabled and this means that for the moment you are limited to the Siamining pool.

We have compiled a 64-bit Windows binary using CUDA 8.0 available for download below, our tests have shown that this was the fastest performing versions after trying different versions of CUDA and 32-bit compilation. The Windows binary is based on the latest source code and is version 4.01 that should provide more stable and problem free pool mining as compared to earlier releases. You are welcome to try the miner and report your results, but as we’ve already said the OpenCL miner is still the better choice for Nvidia GPUs at the moment in terms of features and support as well as performance wise in terms of hashrate, so you might want to stick to the Sia Go Pool miner that uses OpenCL.

– To download and try the Sia CUDA Miner 4.01 for Nvidia GPUs on Windows…

CPU and AMD GPU Mining for LBRY Credits (LBC) Now Available

10, Jul 2016

sgminer-lbry-gpu-miner

LBRY is a new blockchain-based decentralized content-sharing platform geared towards content creators (filmmakers, musicians, writers, or software developers) who want to have full control over their own work. There are no ads, no corporate censors, and LBRY takes no portion of your income as a content creator and consumers can also benefit as there is finally an alternative to the big media stores. It has been in development for a while, but just recently it was launched in Beta, though you still need to request an invitation in order to be able to get early access. The LBRY network uses its own crypto token called LBRY Credits (LBC) that you can already mine, even if you still have not received your early access to the platform for the moment (while waiting to get it). Not to mention that there is also an operational market for LBRY Credits on Bittrex, so that you can also trade them when you mine some.

Initially LBRY Credits (LBC) mining was only possible with a CPU miner released by bitbandi (source), with compiled Windows binaries by the miner author available here. The CPU miner however is not very useful anymore as a GPU miner has been released shortly after in the form of an sgminer 5.4.0 forked to support the algorithm used by LBRY (source) that is much faster, you can find a downloadable 64-bit Windows binary release below that you can try if you are interested. Do note that the sgminer for LBRY currently works only on AMD GPUs, but with this big interest we are hopefully also going to soon see a GPU miner for Nvidia GPUs as well. There are already two mining pools available with more probably to follow, the first one was made available by Suprnova (not yet updated for the difficulty adjustment of the GPU miner and the GPU miner can provide lower hashrate as a result) and the second one is by Pool.mn that already adjusts difficulty for the significantly higher hashrate of GPUs.

– To download and try the sgminer fork for LBRY Credits mining on AMD GPUs (64-bit Windows binary)…


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