New Ethminer 0.9.41-genoil-1.1.2 pre-release Windows Binary

2 Jun
2016

ethminer-0-9-41-genoil-1-1-2-pre

Here comes a Windows binary for another pre-release of Genoil’s ethminer 0.9.41 fork version 1.1.2 (source) that should be used by people with the latest generation of Nvidia Pascal GPUs such as GTX 1080 and GTX 1070. The release is compiled with CUDA 8.0 and has support for Compute 6.1 that is used by the latest Nvidia GPUs, however it seems that the performance under Windows is currently significantly lower that you would expect on the GTX 1080/1070, so it is recommended to use Linux for the best performance on these video cards for now (similar to the situation with GTX 750 Ti). Regardless, you would be able to run this version of Nvidia Pascal GPUs for mining Ethereum, but at just about 1/4 – 1/5 of the performance you would be getting if using Linux with the same GPU. On Maxwell and other older architectures there should be no notable difference in terms of performance however with this Windows binary compared to previous releases. Other new addition is the support for simultaneous mining on both AMD and Nvidia GPUs installed in the same system (you need to use the option X instead of G or U), prior to that you could only run OpenCL or CUDA, but not on both at the same time. Do note that the new mixed X mode for CL/CUDA mining does not yet support separate settings for optimum performance for the different GPUs such as local and global work per GPU. Again, this is a pre-release version with the idea for people to try and report how the new features work and if they find any bugs, so you are welcome to try it…

– To download and try the latest Ethminer 0.9.41-genoil-1.1.2 pre-release for Windows OS…

AMD Radeon RX 480 (Polaris) is Now Official and Looks Promising

1 Jun
2016

amd-radeon-rx-480

AMD today unveiled the first of its upcoming Polaris architecture-based Radeon RX series graphics cards – the Radeon RX 480 at a surprising price point, surprising at is it quite affordable compared to what you will have to pay for the latest generation of Nvidia Pascal GPUs. The AMD Radeon RX 480 as well as the other upcoming GPUs are all based on the 14 nm FinFET production process that the Polaris architecture utilizes. As a result what we expect to get is more performance with a lower power usage and at a more affordable price point and AMD delivers just that with the Radeon RX 480. The full specifications are not yet revealed, but we know the cards should be available on the market on June 29th with a price point of just $199 USD for the 4GB edition. The TDP rating of the new RX 480 GPUs is 150W, but we do not know all of the specifications yet, so it is hard to estimate what is the expected performance, especially for mining.

We already know that the RX 480 uses 256-bit memory bus and will come in 4GB and 8GB VRAM models, so the big question that many Ethereum miners are probably already asking is what performance can we expect from the new cards. Since Ethereum’s Dagger-Hashimoto algorithm is memory intensive one the speculated performance for Ethereum mining for the new AMD Radeon RX 480 is somewhere in between 20 and 30 MHS, hopefully around the full performance that Radeon 280x had with 1GB DAG files or around 26-27 MHS or more, but that is pure speculation for now. So we’ll have to wait and see some real numbers, but we are not going to be surprised if the lower priced RX 480 does manage to outperform the Nvidia GTX 1070/1080 at least for mining Ethereum, making the new Radeon the better solution for mining ETH. What you should not forget however is the fact that Ethereum mining is not going to last forever, sooner or later the coin will switch from PoW to PoS and you would have to switch to a different altcoin maybe with different algorithm where the RX 480 might not be the best choice…

Updated ccMiner 1.8-dev fork by tpruvot With X11 Evo Support

1 Jun
2016

ccminer-1-8-dev-tpruvot-x11evo

Here comes another interesting update of the ccMiner fork by tpruvot with a new Windows binary we have compiled from the latest ccMiner 1.8-dev (source) that comes with support for the new X11 Evo algorithm. The Windows binary is built from the Linux branch and is a 32-bit one compiled with CUDA 6.5 and with support for Compute 2.0 or newer Nvidia GPUs. Our quick test has shown pretty good performance from the ccMiner with X11 Evo support as compared to the sgminer fork for the X11 Evo algorithm supplied by the Revolvercoin (XRE) team, so Nvidia miners will have a serious advantage at the moment. While you can get about 2-3 MHS on a 280X 290X using the sgminer fork, with this release of ccMiner you can expect to see over 7 MHS on GTX 970 or over 10 MHS on a GTX 980 Ti, so significantly faster hashrate on Nvidia GPUs for the moment. So Nvidia miners might be interested in checking out the new Revolvercoin (XRE) altcoin as it is currently the only one that uses the X11 Evo algorithm and if you have some issue with X11evo support please report it…

– To download the latest ccMiner version 1.8-dev by tpruvot with X11 Evo support for Windows OS…

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