Archive for the ‘Tests and Reviews’ Category

Updated “Zombie Mode” for AMD Radeon RX 470/570 and RX 480/580 4GB GPUs for Ethereum Mining

8, Feb 2021

The “Zombie Mode” for mining Ethereum on 4GB AMD Radeon RX 470/480 and RX 570/580 GPUs had them brought back from the dead (hence the name) after the DAG size has reached the capacity of their video memory. Using it you can still not only mine ETH, but still make a nice profit doing so, even with the reduced hashrate you are getting. Even though the 4GB cards can still work their hashrate and profitability will continue to drop down with each new DAG epoch (current DAG is 393), the development of mining software and more specifically the “Zombie Mode” continues. Here comes the latest lolMiner 1.21 for Windows and especially LolMiner 1.22 for Linux that brings significant performance improvements for the “Zombie Mode” for mining Ethereum (ETH), currently doubling the hashrate and extending the mining life of 4GB Radeons for a couple more DAG epochs with higher hashrate. And if this all seems too good to be true, well, it kind of is as there is a catch…

Currently mining ETH with AMD Radeon RX 470/480 or RX 570/580 GPUs with 4GB VRAM should be giving you a hashrate of about 13-14 MHS for Ethash per GPU connected via a x1 PCI-E riser and using a mining software that supports “Zombie Mode” mining. Using the latest LolMiner 1.22 under a Linux especially you can get a significantly improved performance using the “Zombie Mode” on RX 400/500 GPUs for mining ETH… up to double what you are normally getting. It is even easier to try it with the help of Linux-based OSes such as HiveOS and SMOS that have already updated with support for the latest LolMiner. If you are trying HiveOS for a first time you can use the promo code CMB10USDPROMO to register that will give you $10 USD in your account balance.

We already mentioned that there is a catch. In order to get the extra performance gain you must use a high interconnect bandwidth to connect the VGA to the motherboard, so something like at least 4x, x8 or x16 PCI-E extender or the GPU connected directly to the motherboard. The extra performance gain will NOT WORK for video cards that are connected through low-bandwidth x1 PCI-E extenders as is the case in 99% of mining rigs unfortunately, so these will remain running with the same mining performance as with earlier versions of LolMiner using the “Zombie Mode”.

Trying the new LolMiner with MSI Radeon RX 470 VGA with 4GB video memory that is directly connected to the motherboard on a x16 PCI-E slot we got 27.27 MH/s hashrate. The same video card connected with x1 PCI-E riser does just 13.xx MHS, we get about than double the current hashrate and very close to what these 4GB GPUs were capable of delivering before the DAG size moved past 4GB. Do note however that this new performance boost will not continue forever, in fact it is going to be available just a few more DAG epochs and upgrading existing mining rigs with the GPUs connected to high bandwidth slots is another issue just making things much harder. And the extra performance boost will be available for just about a month and a half before you get back to the same level of performance you are currently getting with “Zombie Mode” on x1 PCI-E extenders.

New Zombie Mod Performance:
– DAG Epoch 393: 27 MH/s
– DAG Epoch 400: 21-22 MH/s
– DAG Epoch 405: 14 MH/s

– To Download the latest lolMiner 1.21/1.22 for Windows/Linux with Updated “Zombie Mode”…

Gigabyte AORUS GeForce RTX 3060 Ti MASTER for Mining Ethereum

7, Feb 2021

One of the most popular NVidia RTX 30 series of GPUS for mining crypto and more specifically for mining Ethereum (ETH) lately has been the RTX 3060 Ti, so no wonder these are hard to find as they are generally cheaper than RTX 3070, but have the same memory and performance for Ethash as the 70s. We’ve managed to get our hands on one Gigabyte AORUS GeForce RTX 3060 Ti MASTER (GV-N306TAORUS M-8GD) video card in order to play around with and share some interesting information, mining settings and performance results with anyone that might be interested.

The AORUS GeForce RTX 3060 Ti MASTER model from Gigabyte comes with a really huge cooler that has three fans with interesting overlapping design, plus it offers six video output connectors and one interesting feature – a user controllable LCD display on the side of the card. And as already mentioned, thanks to the 8GB GDDR6 memory with a 256-bit wide bus this RTX 3060 Ti should also be capable of delivering about 60 MH/s hashrate for mining Ethereum (ETH). The RTX 3060 Ti however has a more stripped-down graphics processor compared to the RTX 3070. While that shouldn’t be much of a problem for Ethereum mining, the video card however will be slower in more GPU-intensive algorithms compared to RTX 3070!

The user programmable LCD display on the side of the video card is controlled through Gigabyte’s RGBFusion 2.0 software that is also used for the addressable RGB operation for the motherboard RGB and fans connected to it. The software allows you to use the display to show things such as GPU Temp, GPU Usage, GPU Clock, Fan Speed, VRAM USAGE, VRAM CLOCK, TGP, FRAME-RATE and you can also put a custom image or animated GIF file to be shown on the display and some more. For a mining rig having a display that shows individual operational GPU temperature or FAN speed could be quite nice if you have the functionality already on the video card, no wonder the first thing with did with the LCD display was to set it to show the temperature of the GPU.

What about mining hashrate for this Gigabyte AORUS GeForce RTX 3060 Ti MASTER 8G video card? This particular model is with 240W TDP by default (the 100% setting in MSI Afterburner) and you can go down as low as 100W and as high as 270W (-58% to +13%) and it is also clocked higher. As a comparison the reference design RTX 3060 Ti from Nvidia has just 200W TDP, so 20% higher power usage by default for this Gigabyte card and we don’t need the extra power usage for ETH mining. Anyway, the out of the box performance this video card is delivering is around 51 MHS at stock settings, but why settle for it when you can easily push it to 60 MHS and even reduce the power consumption as we have already seen playing around with Palit GeForce RTX 3070 GameRock GPUs for mining Ethereum.

Starting to optimize settings for better performance and higher hashrate for Ethereum mining on the RTX 3060 Ti we went down to 60% TDP with reduced GPU clock (-500 MHz) and increased memory clock (+1150 MHz) in order to get the expected 60 MHS hashrate. With Palit’s RTX 3070s we’ve seen similar settings, though there the TDP was lower at 50% TDP for the same 60 MHS performance. Do note that we needed +1150 MHz for the video memory here, even though out sweet spot of 1100 MHz will do just fine for 60 MHS when using a mining rig as the test setup was with a single card and the display connected to it – this means higher power load and a bit of a performance drop. So, in a 6x GPU mining rig running the memory with +1100 MHz you should still be able to get 60 MH/s Ethash mining hashrate.

Here we tested with fans running at 100% due to the small mini-ITX case the GPU was running in and the not so good airflow, though you should easily be able to run the cooling fans lower with the GPU in a mining rig with good airflow and still get things running cool. The massive cooler and the three fans do great job in keeping everything cool, especially with the optimized settings for mining that put the power usage of the GPU down to just about 140W as reported by the miner compared to the stock TDP of 240W.

– If You Are Interested in the ETH Mining Performance of Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090 GPUs…

Mining VertCoin (VTC) With VertHash on AMD Radeon 4GB GPUs

2, Feb 2021

Keeping an eye on the recent fork of Vertcoin (VTC) form Lyra2REv3 to the new Verthash algorithm the profitability has been nice, although not as good as mining Ethereum. The VertHash algo is a memory-intensive algorithm, so GPU performance is not as important as having fast video memory with wide memory bus. It is similar to Ethash in that matter, however the interesting advantage of VertHash is that it uses much less video memory and thus can be mined on older GPUs. This makes it quite interesting for owners of AMD Radeon RX 470, RX 480, RX 570 and RX 580 GPUs with just 4GB of video memory that are at the end of their life for mining ETH, though other older video cards with just 2GB or 3GB might also benefit.

While you can still mine Ethereum (ETH) with these 4GB Radeon GPUs in “Zombie Mode” with lower performance and diminishing profits. So, mining Vertcoin (VTC) with 4GB Radeon’s might be a viable alternative as things are at the moment, so definitely worth checking thing out. Event at the moment the profitability could be better than Ethereum mining at the moment with the current lower hashrate that the 4GB GPUs deliver, and that hashrate is going to continue to get lower in the following days.

We tested what a Gigabyte Radeon RX 570 4GB GPU can offer in terms of performance mining Vertcoin (VTC) using the Verthash algorithm. With stock settings we have managed to get just about 350 KHS in term of hashrate, though after a quick and easy mod of the video BIOS with faster video memory timings we jumped up to about 455 KH/s. Compare this to a single optimized Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Ti video card (TDP at 65%) doing 760 KHS with settings doing 58 MH/s for Ethereum and a single optimized GeForce GTX 1080 Ti doing 560 KH/s with the default memory timings and around 700 KH/s with the OhGodAnETHlargementPill with the same settings doing 44 MH/s for Ethereum (TDP tat 69%).

The same performance optimizations for Ethash should also work well with the VertHash algorithm as both are memory-intensive ones, but mining VertCoin is possible on GPUs with at least 2GB of video memory… remember those old Radeon 280 and 290, as well as 380 and 390 GPUs with 4GB or less video memory. The key is to look for faster memory and wider memory bus as this works best for memory-intensive crypto algorithms, though if it is profitable everything goes, right. The VerthashMiner could of course be improved for less stale shares and more importantly to generate the 1.2 GB verthash.dat file on the fly, just like other miners do with Ethereum’s DAG file on start, hoping to also see other miners also adopting support for the VertHash algorithm.

The latest Nvidia GeForce RTX 3000 series of video cards with GDDR6 (RTX 3060, 3060 Ti, 3070) and GDDR6X (RTX 3080 and RTX 3090) video memory is even better for VTC mining, just like they are for Ethereum as well. A power optimized RTX 3090 that delivers 120 MH/s for Ethereum mining (300W power usage) can give you a hashrate of about 1900 KH/s for VertCoin (VTC). The thing is that these video cards are still better off mining Ethereum at the current profitability, so no point in directing them at VTC, but GPUs such as the 4GB VRAM Radeons could benefit from their good mining performance for VertHash instead of having to retire them from mining.

You can check your mining profitability with a mining calculator, though 8x Radeon’s with 4GB able to deliver something like 3.5-4 MHS hashrate for VertHash at the moment they could be more profitable mining VTC than ETH at the moment and even more as the DAG size increases and the performance of these GPUs gets even lower. The catch here is that currently Bittrex – the largest crypto exchange in term of trading volume for VTC is in maintenance mode, so you are not able to deposit or withdraw VertCoin there. There are other smaller crypto exchanges that trade VTC and could have upgraded their wallets after the fork, so you might want to look for alternatives.

– To Check Your VTC Mining Profitability at the Minerstat Mining Calculator…


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