Z-Enemy 2.6.3 Beta Nvidia GPU Miner for KAWPOW Mining of Ravencoin (RVN)

21 Feb
2021

Last year Ravencoin (RVN) has successfully hardforked and switched to KAWPOW as a mining algorithm from the previously used X16Rv2 algo. The latest Z-Enemy 2.6.3 Beta version that was recently made available is an important update for everyone that has Nvidia GeForce RTX 30 Series of GPUs and uses them for crypto mining. This is a TEST BUILD of the software that adds support for Nvidia RTX 30×0 video cards with CUDA 11.1 and drivers ver. 456.81 or later. It is intended for RTX 3060 Ti, RTX 3070, RTX 3080 and RTX 3090 GPUs, if you have an older Nvidia GPU you should use the latest stable release Z-Enemy 2.6.2 instead. This official and not beta version works on CUDA 9.x and CUDA 10.x and it is recommended to make sure you’ve updated your NVIDIA video drivers to at least version 398 or a newer one.

The KAWPOW algorithm used by Ravencoin is a derivative of ProgPOW with parameters specific for RVN, so performance wise you can expect similar hashrate to what ProgPOW delivers. ProgPOW or Programmatic Proof-of-Work was designed in a way that it utilizes graphics processors to their maximum in order to provide an equal level performance without favoring a specific GPU manufacturer or being able to actually provide much faster hashrate if implemented on ASICs. The ProgPOW algorithm was made as a kind of evolution of the Ethash algorithm used by Ethereum and at some point ProgPOW was even considered as a replacement algorithm for Ethash for Ethereum. The idea here is that a cheaper GPU with better video memory will not perform better like in some cases for Ethereum, but instead the performance you get will be based on the overall GPU performance level – both of the GPU and the VRAM.

KAWPOW was based off ProgPOW as a means to drive away any FPGA and/or ASIC mining hardware that was starting to become available on the Ravencoin’s network and the fork was successful in doing so, but it took a bit of time for things to start moving again for RVN. The last few days we are finally seeing that things are moving with Ravencoin price seriously on the move and thus the interest in mining Ravencoin is peaking once again. Mining RVN has also become quite profitable due to the increase in the price of the coin, so people are considering switching some of their GPU mining power to mine RVN as profitability gets closer to that of Ethereum mining.

The KAWPOW mining algorithm uses both GPU and memory, so overclocking both can help you maximize performance, though you should start without overclock and see what your mining hardware can handle. This can however increase the power usage and operating temperatures for achieving optimal performance when mining RVN on the same hardware as opposed to mining ETH with optimal performance! Do note that KAWPOW and PROGPOW use DAGs like Ethash and currently the DAG size of Ravencoin (RVN) is at almost 3GB, so GPUs with 4GB as a minimum for mining will be required. Just as a reference, a single Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090 with settings optimized for 120 MH/s Ethereum mining can do almost 50 MH/s hashrate for KOWPOW mining. Also be advised that the GDDR6X memory temperatures on RTX 3080 and RTX 3090 while mining RVN are much lower compared to when mining ETH, so this may be an advantage especially for people that have trouble with the memory chips running too hot while mining Ethereum.

– To Download the Z-ENEMY 2.6.3 Beta RTX 30 Series GPU Miner…
– To Download the Latest Stable Z-ENEMY 2.6.2 Nvidia GPU Miner…

Mining Ethereum with ASUS TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 3080 Video Card

19 Feb
2021

We’ve managed to get a Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 GPU to play around with mining Ethereum and other cyrpto coins, though here we are going to be focusing on ETH mining. The RTX 3080 is really hard to find on the market at the moment and if you manage to find stock somewhere the price will be so high that you probably would consider buying a RTX 3090 instead. We managed to somehow get our hands on a single ASUS TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 3080 (ASUS TUF-RTX3080-10G-GAMING) video card to play around with it for crypto mining and below you can read what we have found out using this GPU.

This TUF Gaming RTX 3080 from ASUS is definitely not the greatest model you can find and definitely not as impressive as some other cards, but still, at the moment it is what you can find and you cannot be too choosy. The TUF RTX 3080 works and performs really well and the cooling manages to keep the card cool while mining even with stock out of the box settings. The ASUS TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 3080 comes with dual 8-pin PCI-E power connectors, 2.7-slot cooling solution that works surprisingly well with the three fans on top of the radiator. The default specifications of the ASUS TUF Gamin RTX 3080 are the ones that the reference design Nvidia RTX 3080 uses and although that may not be that great for gamers or PC enthusiasts it is perfectly fine as far as Ethereum mining is concerned.

The card comes with a 1440 MHz Base clock, 1710 MHz Boost Clock, 1188 MHz Memory clock (19 Gbps effective) and a 320W TDP. The RTX 3080 video card comes equipped with 10GB of GDDR6X video memory that has a 320-bit wide memory bus. There are 8704 CUDA cores, 272 TMUs and 96 ROPs in the large graphics processor that consists of over 28 million transistors. One hell of a graphics monster that is only bested by the even faster and better in terms of performance Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090, including the crypto mining performance as well.

Using the ASUS TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 3080 with its default out of the box settings for mining Ethereum (100% TDP, no clocks and fans at 100%) got us at 87 MH/s Ethash mining hashrate. This is a great result in terms of performance, though with default settings the GPU uses around 320W of power and that can be reduces with some optimizations for sure. With the cooling fans running at 100% even the 320W of power usage while mining is not much of an issue with the average GPU temperature at around 52 degrees Celsius. With a bit of tweaking however we can optimize performance and reduce power quite well making the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 even better for mining Ethereum for sure…

Reducing the power usage from the default TDP level of 320W to just 71% TDP got us to 230W of power usage for the RTX 3080 with even higher hashrate. We’ve set the GPU clock at -300 MHz and the memory at +1000 MHz in MSI Afterburner resulting in 97.5 MH/s hashtrate mining Ethereum. The RTX 3080 can handle a bit higher overclock at +1100 for an extra megahash of performance, so you might want to try that as well, though we are fine with the lower clock as the cooling solution on this particular RTX 3080 form ASUS is not the best you can find on 3080 GPUs. And we like our GPUs not pushed to the absolute maximum when mining, but at a bit more conservative settings, but running rock solid for a very long time and you should probably adopt the same philosophy as well.

Optimized RTX 3080 Mining Settings:
– TDP: 71%
– GPU: -300 MHz
– VRAM: +1000 MHz
– FANs: 100%

Since now we can measure the operating temperature of the GDDR6X memory chips with the HWiNFO tool we are going to be monitoring that as well as it is important to keep the video memory at the lowest possible temperature due to these new fast chips getting quite hot under load. We would not only want to avoid getting the memory up to a level when it begins to throttle (around 110 degrees Celsius) and starts dropping the hashrate, but also to have it running as cooler as possible. This is one of the reasons why we use 100% for the cooling fans, even though the GPU is not getting that hot at 52 C and can handle lower fan speed without increasing its operating temperature much.

Another interesting feature that was more recently introduced in the HWiNFO tool is the ability to HotSpots on Nvidia GPUs, so that besides the average working temperature that all monitoring tools report for the GPU you can now know what is the hottest spot. This is especially useful for diagnosing potential issues with GPUs that have been mining for a while and are showing some instabilities due to things such as bad thermal grease or bad cooler contact. Here we see that the hottest spot of the RTX 3080 GPU is around 13-14 C hotter than the average operating temperature reported for the GPU and this is kind of normal, but then again this is a brand-new GPU.

The GPU Memory Junction temperature that we are measuring during Ethereum mining with overclocked VRAM with +1000 MHz in Afterburner is at 88 degrees Celsius with the fans at 100%, without the clock for the memory it runs at around 82 C, so the extra clock does not make things much hotter. For instance, on RTX 3090 we are seeing operating temperatures that are around 10 degrees higher than the ones measured here under similar conditions. This is due the fact that the RTX 3090 had memory chips on both sides due to the larger memory config, so the RTX 3080 is doing better, but the temperature is still pretty high in our opinion for 24/7 operation. Still, if you manage to get things running at under 100 C for RTX 3080/RTX 3090 it should be fine, but you should try to reduce the temperature of the hottest memory chip to around 90 at least with a better airflow for instance.

Getting 97-98 MH/s hashrate for mining Ethereum (ETH) using the Ethash crypto algorithm is easily achievable on Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 GPU with around 230W of power usage. This should be possible on pretty much all reference designs (specs wise) like the ASUS TUF that follows the base specifications set with the Nvidia Founders Edition GPUs. Some models with further increased operating clocks and voltages may require extra tweaking or different settings in order to achieve similar performance at the same power usage level, though they should still be able to get you the same hashrate if you manage to keep things running cool.

– For More Information about the ASUS TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 3080 GPU…
– What Hashrate to Expect from an ASUS EKWB GeForcce RTX 3090 Do Mining Ethereum…

Nvidia Announced the CMP HX Dedicated GPUs for Professional Crypto Mining

18 Feb
2021

 

For crypto users around the world, it is very important comparing Coinbase and Gemini because they will certainly make the difference when working.

The latest news from Nvidia are quite interesting for both crypto miners and gamers, as apparently the company is taking drastic measures to make gaming GPUs available to gamers. With the upcoming launch of the new GeForce RTX 3060 video cards on February 25th the company wants to make sure that the new graphics adapters will be available to gamers and will not be purchased in bulk by crypto miners. The video drivers for the RTX 3060 GPUs are designed to detect specific attributes of the Ethereum cryptocurrency mining algorithm, and will limit the hashrate, or cryptocurrency mining performance, by around 50 percent. So, essentially you will be getting half the hashrate you normally would if the card is running at full performance. For mining the expected hashrate for RTX 3060 was in the range of 40-45 MH/s for Ethereum stock and with overclocked memory, so with the drivers cutting that in half you will be getting only 20-22.5 MH/s making the high priced RTX 3060 GPUs unattractive for miners, or that is what Nvidia believes will happen with this active action hey are taking.

Here come the Nvidia CMP HX Dedicated Crypto Mining GPUs as a solution to the problem, or at least what the green company thinks they have figured out. Nvidia will try to offer separate products dedicated for crypto mining and more specifically for Ethereum (ETC) mining for the crypto miners. The NVIDIA CMP, or, Cryptocurrency Mining Processor, product line for professional mining which does not do graphics (no video outputs) and thus should not impact the availability of GeForce GPUs to gamers.

Nvidia has announced 4 products in their new CMP dedicated crypto mining GPUs with two available in Q1 this year and the other two scheduled for Q2 this year. The Nvidia CMP 30HX mining GPU should be capable of 26 MH/s at 125W power usage and will come with 6GB and the Nvidia CMP 40HX will provide 36 MH/s at 185W of power usage and will come with 8GB video memory. These are the first two models planned for the first quarter of the year, the second quarter is for Nvidia CMP 50HX with 45 MH/s at 250W and 10GB VRAM and Nvidia CMP 90HX with 86 MH/s at 320W and 10GB VRAM.

These initially announced specifications for the mining GPUs are probably not going to be as interesting as Nvidia expects them to be, unless they do come at a significantly lower price compared to what the GeForce RTX GPUs currently cost. For reference an RTX 3060 Ti or RTX 3070 currently does 60 MH/s with 120-140W of power usage when optimized and at stock 200-220W they do 50+ MH/s. This essentially makes 30HX, 40HX and 50HX not really attractive unless they come much cheaper, so only the 90HX seems more interesting out of the four cards that should be based on the RTX 3080 and should be with GDDR6X memory unlike the rest of the CMP line. RTX 3080 is really hard to find currently, but it is no wonder considering the fact that it does about 95 MH/s with 240W of power usage when properly optimized, so again much better than the listed official specs of 90HX. Nvidia RTX 3090 optimized can manage to deliver about 120 MH/s with about 300W of power usage.

We’ll have to wait and see what comes on the market and what will be the prices and availability of the new CPM product line from Nvidia in order to get a better idea if the company made a good decision or something half-though and late like they did with the mining series back in 2017. It is quite possible that they did not thing everything well enough this time either, but let us not get ahead of the things and wait to see what the actual products will be and if Nvidia just set them at conservative settings and they will be capable of further optimizations or their performance will not be as attractive as desktop GPUs and people will continue to prefer them instead of dedicated mining products. The warranty period is also an important factor here, so the idea is to see normal warranty, not just 3- or 6-months warranty like the last time…

– More on the official page of the NVIDIA CMP HX Dedicated GPU for Professional Mining…

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