Gigabyte GTX 970 WF3 With Different Versions of ccMiner SPMOD

20 Nov
2015

ccminer-spmod-gtx-970

Since we’ve been closely following the development of the different ccMiner forks and have been compiling Windows binaries for most of the updated versions we have decided to do an interesting test. We have picked up the last 20 releases of the ccMiner SPMOD fork for Maxwell and tested them on a Gigabyte GTX 970 WF3 GPU running at stock frequencies to see what has happened with the hashrate in the X11, Quark, NeoScrypt and LyraREv2 algorithms. The first version we tested with ccMiner 1.5.53-git SP is from early July and looking at the results it seems that the most notable improvement is with Quark as well as some slight improvement with X11. Lyra2REv2 support has been added in release ccMiner 1.5.60-git SP, so there are no results prior to that, it seems however that the initial versions and the last one have pretty much the same hashrate with some drop with some in-between versions. The NeoScrypt hashrate hasn’t changed much, there is some slight variance with different versions probably due to the Boost frequency of the GPU variating a bit. Do note that these are results with publicly available and open source code, there could be some higher performance private miners also available…

Mining Sweden with New Promo Codes and Lottery

18 Nov
2015

miningsweden-promo-lottery

The Mining Sweden Bitcoin cloud mining service has announced a lottery where existing customers of their S7 VIP shares as well as new ones that purchase such by the end of the month can win some extra mining shares. Along with the lottery there is a new temporary promotional code available that can be used only for for VIP shares that gives you 15% discount from the original price, you need to enter the coupon code MS-15 during checkout to get the extra discount. Do note that the 15% promo code will be active for a limited period of time, after that only the MS10 coupon for 10% discount will be valid. We have been using the service since May and there have been no problems and we are happy with what we’ve been getting from it.

Existing owners of S7 VIP mining shares are able to win 5 S7 VIP Shares extra if they find their username listed on a product page on the website, but if you see your username listed you will need to send an email to the service operator in order to claim the bonus. For new purchases of VIP shares every order for a pack of 10 VIP S7 Shares gives you 1 lottery ticket, 50 VIP S7 Shares get you 7 tickets and 100 VIP S7 Shares will get you 15 tickets for the lottery that will be drawn on the last day of the month. If you purchase VIP shares with Bitcoin you will also be added in an extra draw for 25 additional VIP S7 Share Pack. So what you can win is 1st prize with 100 VIP S7 Share pack, 2nd prize is 50 VIP S7 Share pack, 3rd prize is 25 VIP S7 Share pack plus 25 VIP S7 Share pack if your order is with Bitcoin.

– For more information about the service and to start cloud mining Bitcoins with Mining Sweden…

Innosilicon A4 Dominator Scrypt ASICs Might Be Coming Soon

17 Nov
2015

innosilicon-logo

Innosilicon is apparently looking for investors into their new A4 Dominator Scrypt ASIC (both chips and miners based on them) to help them bringing the new the next generation 14nm chips on the market in a few months time with 1.2 Watt power usage per MHS. It seems that they have already designed and taped-out the A4 Dominator chips and are now entering the next round of full mask mass production using apparently Globalfoundries 14nm production process.

A4 Dominator ASIC & Miner Specifications:
– A4 ASIC: 3 MHS per chip at 3.6W nominal, support DCDC less PCB
– Extreme Low Power: daisy chained ASIC running at 0.7V, only in 14nm
– Miner Performance: 600 MHS from 720W at the Wall or 850 MHS from 1020W
– PSU Requirements: common PCI-E 8 Pins/6+2Pins with 12V output
– Included: Reprisal Pi running the most user friendly A2 terminator Software

“We have opened our A4 ASIC/Miner production to committed partners in order to share in both the cost and the profit. Anyone who commits $1.5 million to this partnership will get to share our ASIC production masks or purchase miners at cost for your mining farms. We have fully de-risked the design by shouldering all the R&D and MPW costs for the testchips. Also, we will showcase our testchip and test miners in couple of months to demonstrate the A4’s unsurpassable efficiency. We need only 4 to 5 partners to participate in this incredible risk free win-win partnership round.”

Apart from the new A4 chips that will be for Scrypt the company is also working on new A3 chips for SHA-256 that apparently offer less than 0.2 Watt per GHS, so things should be similar to their first generation A1 for BTC and A2 for LTC mining hardware. In our opinion however Innosilicon will have to work on something else as well and that is securing partners to make their mining hardware more easily accessible to users and not only to large mining operations. They could also work on an approach similar to that of Bitmain to offer direct sales to end users as apparently they could be the new driving force behind Scrypt mining with SFARDS going completely silent and other companies just now starting to look for partners to work on development and not production.

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