Archive for the ‘Tests and Reviews’ Category

Power Usage of Nvidia GPUs in Profitable to Mine Coins

6, Mar 2016

nvidia-power-usage-check

When calculating what crypto coin to mine you need to take into account not only the hashrate you get, but also the power usage for the specific algorithm used by the coin. When talking about Nvidia GPUs the two most popular ones used by miners are GTX 750 Ti and GTX 970 and there is a reason behind that – they offer good price/performance ratio to be used in multi-GPU mining rigs. Sure you can always go for a GTX 980 Ti or even GTX Titan X, but these although more powerful are also significantly more expensive and do not provide so good price/performance ratio.

We have decided to do a quick check of the current situation with a Geforce GTX 970 video card from Gigabyte (WF3OC) and a GeForce GTX 980 Ti reference design GPU and see how they compare in a power and performance check. The results you see in the table above are achieved with the latest ccMiner 1.7.4 from Tpruvot and with the latest fork of ethminer wth CUDA support from Genoil. The video cards are not overclocked further than their factory settings (the Gigabyte GTX 970 is factory overclocked) and they are forced to run CUDA applications in P0 power state to maximize performance in Ethereum.

As you can see from the results aside from Ethereum the GTX 980 Ti is faster with not that much more power usage, however the price of the 980 Ti is roughly double the price of a single GTX 970 and with two 970s you are sure to beat the hashrate of a single 980 Ti. It is interesting to see that a GTX 980 Ti (reference board) can be slower than a GTX 970 GPU, but with a non-reference design you can actually get about 20-21 MHS in Ethereum due to the higher clocks. Still the GTX 980 Ti is most definetly not the right video card for mining Ethereum, if you want to stick to mining Ethereum’s Ether coins with Nvidia you should go for the GTX 970 for sure as the best choice. Even though for Ethereum and other Dagger-Hashimoto altcoins AMD GPUs are still faster in terms of hashrate.

Report on Mining Burst and Using SIA for 5 Days

6, Feb 2016

burst-mining-earnings

Earlier this week we have checked out the current status of Burst, an interesting altcoin that uses free HDD space for mining as well as started using SIA – a Blockchain-based cloud data storage service that has its own crypto currency token used to pay users sharing their free hard drive space (also mineable). So now it is time to share what we have earned or should earn for 5 days of mining Burst coins and sharing our free space using the Sia and also to compare to what we have earned as a rewards for testing the Storj DriveShare service that we have posted about yesterday.

We are starting with Burst, for 5 days mining the coin with 100 GB plot size (rather small) in a mining pool we have managed to earn a little short of 180 Burst coins. These coins are immediately available in our wallet once they are confirmed, unlike with DriveShare where rewards are currently distributed on a monthly basis for the previous month and when the contract ends for hosing files on Sia. Looking at the current exchange rate for Burst is 19 satoshi per coin, so for 5 days this means we have managed to mine just about 3420 satoshi. An estimate for 20 days based on these earnings in order to be able to compare to the earnings from Storj means we should expect to mine the Burst coin alternative of about 13680 satoshi. Just as a comparison, for 20 days sharing the same 100 GB size of data on the DriveShare in the current beta we have earned as a reward a little over 12 SJCX coins or about 115000 satoshi. So even with the not so high rewards in the current Storj DriveShare beta you can earn more than mining Burst with the same shared free space. The catch with Storj however is that you need to invest in at least 10000 SJCX coins and have them in your wallet in order to be eligible for receiving rewards.

sia-usage-earnings

Moving on to Sia that is similar to idea to Storj’s MetaDisk and DriveShare services, however unlike with Storj’s services Sia is already operational and you can purchase contracts ans share files or host files of other users and pay or get paid for your services. After 5 days of running the Sia wallet and client sharing 100 GB of free space on the network we are at an estimated 520 Sia coins to be earned once our current contracts are over. This is with a set price of 100 Sia coins per GB of space per month which is below the average usually floating in between 130-160 Sia coins per Gigabyte per month price that can even go up to about 200. The current price of Siacoin is about 7 satoshi or this means that when we fulfill our hosting contracts we would have earned 3640 satoshi for 5 fays or an estimate of about 14560 satoshi for 20 days in order to compare with the Storj rewards.

The catch with Sia is that even though we are sharing 100 GB of free space for 5 days we have managed to get contracts for hosting only about 3.5 GB of user data. Interestingly enough with just 3.5 GB we have managed to get an estimated earnings of slightly more than when mining for Burst coins, but still significantly less than we have earned from Storj’s DriveShare beta rewards. IF we multiply the rewards for the 3.5 GB shared data to estimate what would the full 100 GB earn if we have sold the full size result in about 14872 Siacoins in earnings. That would mean that for 20 days if we managed to immediately sell the full 100 GB free space that we decided to dedicate to Sia we could have earned nearly 105000 satoshi. This would be significantly more than form Burst, but still lower than the DriveShare rewards estimated for the same time and with the same amount of free space shared.

So it seems that Storj’s DriveShare beta service and the rewards that are being distributed for helping in testing and developing the service is more profitable at the current exchange rates and the potential for even more earnings s there once the service is ready for official launch. The drawback however is that you need to invest a significant amount in at least 1000 SJCX coins in order to be eligible for rewards. Also once again the service launches it may face the same problem as Sia at the moment – not enough users to quickly take up all of the offered free space by hosters. Sia has good potential to develop and compete with the likes of Storj, but it needs more users and needs to address some important things that we have covered in our initial impressions. The advantage that Sia has is that you are able to mine Siacoins in a more traditional way, however this also needs work as currently it is only solo mining and there are quite a few inconveniences present there as well.

Then comes Burst, it also needs more work to become more user friendly and easy to get into by novice users. Burst has a lot of extra features, however they are not that well described or easy to be used or whatever, making their presence insignificant if they do not attract users or are being used just by very few people. Then again you may also say that the coin is undervalued at the moment, another possibility that results in low profit for mining Burst at the moment…

Storj DriveShare Rewards Report for January

5, Feb 2016

driveshare-stats

Last month we have decided to give out a try of the latest Storj DriveShare GUI and to participate in the beta testing of the service. We also wanted to check out the rewards that people are getting in return for their help in testing out the network and today Storj will be distributing the next bath of rewards. We have participated in the test for about 20 days with 100 GB of space shared on the network and according to the data published our reward for helping test the network in January is a little over 12 SJCX coins with about 94% uptime for the time duration. With the current StorjCoinX exchange rate this is about 115000 satoshi or about $0.45 USD, it may not seem that much, but do not forget that these are rewards for beta testing the service. Sharing more space for longer time with better uptime should bring you more rewards, though this should give you an idea on what to expect should you decide to help with beta testing. What you should know is that helping with beta testing won’t be that much profitable, but once the service officially launches what you get back in return for sharing your free hard drive space should be more rewarding.

For the moment however the users beta testing are required to purchase at least 10000 SJCX in order to be eligible for rewards and the rewards themselves are not that big unless you share a lot of space. The people sharing 25 TB of space each for the service are apparently getting about 1500 SJCX coins as a reward. So getting into the beta testing phase and participating in the reward program is more for people that do believe in the service and as a kind of a long term investment as well. You can of course participate in the testing of the service without having 10000 SJCX in your wallet, however this way you will not be eligible for receiving rewards for your help and support. So if you are interested in checking the service out you can head on to the official DriveShare website and download the GUI version of the software.

The number of unique participants in the beta testing of the DriveShare software in January is 533 that are eligible for rewards according to the official published rewards list. The list also includes 1222 more users that do not have 10000 SJCX coins in their wallet, meaning that they are participating without receiving rewards. As a comparison in December last year there were 420 unique wallets participating with at least 10000 SJCX and receiving rewards and 711 more that were not eligible for rewards. For November the numbers were 352 and 663 respectively, for October there were 342 and 393, so there are more users joining and helping test the service. Last week the service has announced the reach of another milestone in their testing phase, passing 2 PB of total storage shared and now it is already over 3 PB of storage shared.

– Visit the official DriveShare website for more details about the beta of the service…


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