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The latest two version of GMiner 1.69 Nvidia and AMD miner has added support for the BFC algorithm used by the Chinese Bitfree Cash (BFC) project. BFC s apparently based on Cuckaroo29 algorithm and the project does not seem to be that popular yet among English speaking users, so you might want to check it out. Have in mind that the dev fee for the BFC algorithm is currently set to 3% instead of the regular 2% for all other supported algorithms by the miner. Also finding a pool in English might currently be an issue, so you can go for uuPool for now. Do note that the latest NBMiner also has support for BFC for Nvidia GPUs, so you might want to check it as well and see what gives you better performance.
The GMiner miner requires an Nvidia GPU with CUDA compute capability 5.0 or later as well as CUDA 9.0 driver support, some algorithms are already supported on AMD GPUs as well, but not all. Do note that GMiner is a closed source miner for Nvidia and AMD GPUs with binaries available for both Windows and Linux, also there is a 2% developer fee built-in the software.
– To download and try the latest release of the Gminer v1.69 Nvidia and AMD GPU miner…
- In: Mining Software
- Tags: AMD Aeternity, AMD BEAM, AMD Cuckaroo29s, AMD Grin29, AMD SWAP, Beam, Beam miner, BFC, BFC algorithm, BFC miner, BFC mining, Bitfree Cash, Bitfree Cash miner, Bitfree Cash mining, c29, C31, Cuckaroo29, Cuckaroo29s, Cuckatoo31, CUDA equihash miner, Equihash 125-4, equihash 144-5, Equihash 150-5, Equihash 192/7, equihash 210-9, Equihash 96/5, GMiner, GMiner AMD, GMiner Beam, GMiner CUDA equihash miner, GMiner CUDA miner, GMiner Equihash, GMiner equihash miner, GMiner Linux, GMiner v1.69, GMiner Windows, Grin, Grin miner, Grin Nvidia miner, Grin29, Grin31, NBMiner, Nicehash, SWAP, uupool, ZelCash
Today is planned the first hardfork for the GRIN crypto currency and more specifically its Cuckaroo29 (C29) algorithm to the new Cuckarood29, the C31 algorithm remains unaffected by this hardfork. Grin is expected to hard fork at Block 262,080 which is estimated to happen at some point today (July 17th, 2019). All you have to do to be ready to continue mining GRIN after the hardfork is to update your miner to the latest version, most of the software supports autodetection of the algorithm switch and thus should continue working jst fine after the fork happens.
The miners that have already released updates to support the new Cuckarood29 algorithm to be sued by Grin after the hard fork include: GMiner 1.51, NBMiner 24.1, lolMiner 0.8.5, nanominer 1.5.1 for AMD and or Nvidia GPUs on Windows and Linux operating systems. You can of course also use the official grin-miner 2.0.0 as well, although it is not available for Windows operating systems (only Linux and Mac OS X), unlike all of the other alternatives mentioned.
Back in January this year Sapphire, a popular name among AMD GPU miners, has announced their RX 570 GPUs with 16GB of video memory intended for use for GRIN crypto mining and more specifically the Cuckatoo31 algorithm that requires more video memory and can take advantage of the extra VRAM on these GPUs. This might have sounded interesting for some miners at least initially after the launch of the GRIN network and the hype and high initial price of the Grin coins, but things look different now. Miner developers have been able to optimize and enhance performance on 8GB+ Nvidia GPUs for the Cuckatoo 31 algorithm and the $399 USD mining GPU from Sapphire with just 6 months warranty already seems like a total joke when you compare performance…
The latest version of the miner specifically optimized for Grin mining on the Sapphire RX 570 16GB mining video cards ePIC Boost Miner supporting both Cuckaroo29 and Cuckatoo31 is apparently capable of delivering up to 2.6 G/s for Cuckaroo29 at 163W and up to 0.47 G/s for Cuckatoo31 at 195W if you have a top specs computer used for mining and not what a traditional GPU mining rig looks like. These results are for a mining rig with i5/i7/i9/Ryzen Multithreading CPU, PCIe 3.0 with Atomics and AMD ROCm Linux driver. If you use a low-end Celeron/Pentium CPU, like most GPU mining rigs do, PCIe 2.0 bus for the GPUs and the AMD GPU Pro driver you will be down to 1.5 G/s for Grin29 and 0.35 G/s for Grin31 according to the latest official performance results.
Now, how does an Nvidia GTX 1080 Ti with 11GB of video memory compare with the currently fastest Cuckatoo31 miner NBMiner 21.0 under Windows 10 on a normal low-end mining rig with a Celeron CPU. You can easily get about 1.3-1.35 G/s with about 200W of power usage (lowered down TDP of the GPU, up to about 1.45 G/s with stock TDP) to get similar power usage as with the AMD. You get almost three times the performance with the Nvidia at the same power usage with two to three times the price of the AMD mining GPU from Sapphire and without a number of specific requirements that are not easy for a lot of miners.
The answer to the question are the Sapphire RX 570 16GB mining GPUs worth it at the moment is a simple NO! But what about the performance for the upcoming Grin Cuckatoo 32 protocol upgrade planned for 2020… well, who knows, but what will you be doing by then?