VertCoin (VTC) Mining on Old AMD Radeon R9 280X GPUs is Profitable

8 Feb
2021

We are back to VertCoin (VTC) mining using the new VertHash algorithm, but this time we are going old-school to AMD Radeon R9 280X and the performance these old, but gold video cards from the earlier days of crypto mining can deliver mining VTC at the moment. We have already tested mining VertCoin (VTC) on AMD Radeon 400/500 series of 4GB GPUs and the results were pretty good, but it seems that the R9 280X are still too early to retire even though they have been announced more than 7 years ago back in 2013. Hell, even going further back to the Radeon HD 7970 GPUs that were used for Bitcoin mining back in the early days of crypto we can get pretty much the same results as with the “newer” AMD Radeon R9 280X, so dig these up as well if you still have them around somewhere.

The VertHash algorithm is a memory-intensive one with a minimum requirement of 2GB of video memory, so even older video cards with 2GB or 3GB can be used for mining VertCoin (VTC) after its recent fork from the previous LyraRev3 algorithm. Mining with VerthashMiner on AMD Radeon RX 570 4GB GPU at stock settings gives around 350 KH/s and with modified video BIOS with optimized memory timings the hashrate goes to about 450 KH/s. The old AMD Radeon R9 280X with 3GB VRAM can manage around 360-370 KH/s mining VTC at the stock settings of 925 MHz for the GPU and 1375 MHz for the video memory, but overclocking it to 1050 MHz for the GPU and 1500 MHz for the video memory can easily get you around 400 KH/s mining hashrate. Checking the profitability of a 6x Radeon R9 280X GPUs in a mining rig, and after paying for electricity, can currently earn around $5-6 USD per day (depending on electricity costs).

– Make sure you use the latest VerthashMiner v0.6.2 For Mining VertCoin (VTC)…

Expensive ETH Desposits to Kraken, or Why Exchange Mining Should Be Avoided

8 Feb
2021

With the recent boom of crypto mining and more specifically Ethereum (ETH) mining there are a lot of new users joining the mining ranks and they start making newbie mistakes that we forgot about long ago. We are taking about the very easy direct mining to an exchange-generated Ethereum wallet address or with other words when the mining pool is directly paying the mined coins to a crypto exchange where you can sell or trade them. There is a big convenience in doing this, but there are also some pitfalls that may cause you to lose money and you may not even be fully aware of that fact.

Most crypto exchanges do not charge deposit fees to their users, but they do usually have a minimum number of coins to be deposited in order for the deposit to be credited to your account. They do however charge a small withdraw fee in order to pay the transaction fee, though some exchanges charge ridiculous withdraw fees that have nothing to do with the actual fees. The general rule is not to mine directly to an exchange and to transfer your crypto coins there only when you need to sell them or trade them, not to store them long term. Now we’ll get to a good example why currently it is not wise to mine Ethereum directly to the crypto exchange Kraken where there is a variable for ETH deposits and you will see in a moment why.

– To see the Kraken’s cryptocurrency deposit fees and minimums explained…

The Kraken crypto exchange has a minimum requirement of 0.05 ETH for a deposit to be credited to your account at all, so if the transaction is for a lower amount you will not see the coins in your account. There is also what they call a “Variable on-chain fee to move into Kraken’s wallet” that is only available for Ethereum deposits. This variable fee you pay apparently depends on the number of transactions on the Ethereum’s blockchain at the moment, when the number goes up, the fee also goes up. With the peaked interest in ETH at the moment as you can expect the fees are also very high, but this means that depositing Ethereum to Kraken at the moment can be pretty expensive to you, especially for smaller amounts or regular daily deposits from mining.

If you have scheduled a daily payout from a Ethereum mining pool with a low minimum of 0.05 ETH directly to your Kraken address, then at the moment you could easily get 0.01 or 0.005 ETH from that transfer deducted, because of the exchanges’ variable fee to move the coins you transfer from your exchange wallet to their consolidated wallet. That “small fee” currently means that you pay $8-$16 USD just to have your ~$80 USD deposited in the exchange, of course the fee will be very similar for both 0.5 ETH and 5 ETH, but for small amounts it is just way too much. So, be extra careful when mining directly to an exchange such as Kraken and make sure if you do you are aware of the specific requirements and fees that the exchange has!

Gigabyte AORUS GeForce RTX 3060 Ti MASTER for Mining Ethereum

7 Feb
2021

One of the most popular NVidia RTX 30 series of GPUS for mining crypto and more specifically for mining Ethereum (ETH) lately has been the RTX 3060 Ti, so no wonder these are hard to find as they are generally cheaper than RTX 3070, but have the same memory and performance for Ethash as the 70s. We’ve managed to get our hands on one Gigabyte AORUS GeForce RTX 3060 Ti MASTER (GV-N306TAORUS M-8GD) video card in order to play around with and share some interesting information, mining settings and performance results with anyone that might be interested.

The AORUS GeForce RTX 3060 Ti MASTER model from Gigabyte comes with a really huge cooler that has three fans with interesting overlapping design, plus it offers six video output connectors and one interesting feature – a user controllable LCD display on the side of the card. And as already mentioned, thanks to the 8GB GDDR6 memory with a 256-bit wide bus this RTX 3060 Ti should also be capable of delivering about 60 MH/s hashrate for mining Ethereum (ETH). The RTX 3060 Ti however has a more stripped-down graphics processor compared to the RTX 3070. While that shouldn’t be much of a problem for Ethereum mining, the video card however will be slower in more GPU-intensive algorithms compared to RTX 3070!

The user programmable LCD display on the side of the video card is controlled through Gigabyte’s RGBFusion 2.0 software that is also used for the addressable RGB operation for the motherboard RGB and fans connected to it. The software allows you to use the display to show things such as GPU Temp, GPU Usage, GPU Clock, Fan Speed, VRAM USAGE, VRAM CLOCK, TGP, FRAME-RATE and you can also put a custom image or animated GIF file to be shown on the display and some more. For a mining rig having a display that shows individual operational GPU temperature or FAN speed could be quite nice if you have the functionality already on the video card, no wonder the first thing with did with the LCD display was to set it to show the temperature of the GPU.

What about mining hashrate for this Gigabyte AORUS GeForce RTX 3060 Ti MASTER 8G video card? This particular model is with 240W TDP by default (the 100% setting in MSI Afterburner) and you can go down as low as 100W and as high as 270W (-58% to +13%) and it is also clocked higher. As a comparison the reference design RTX 3060 Ti from Nvidia has just 200W TDP, so 20% higher power usage by default for this Gigabyte card and we don’t need the extra power usage for ETH mining. Anyway, the out of the box performance this video card is delivering is around 51 MHS at stock settings, but why settle for it when you can easily push it to 60 MHS and even reduce the power consumption as we have already seen playing around with Palit GeForce RTX 3070 GameRock GPUs for mining Ethereum.

Starting to optimize settings for better performance and higher hashrate for Ethereum mining on the RTX 3060 Ti we went down to 60% TDP with reduced GPU clock (-500 MHz) and increased memory clock (+1150 MHz) in order to get the expected 60 MHS hashrate. With Palit’s RTX 3070s we’ve seen similar settings, though there the TDP was lower at 50% TDP for the same 60 MHS performance. Do note that we needed +1150 MHz for the video memory here, even though out sweet spot of 1100 MHz will do just fine for 60 MHS when using a mining rig as the test setup was with a single card and the display connected to it – this means higher power load and a bit of a performance drop. So, in a 6x GPU mining rig running the memory with +1100 MHz you should still be able to get 60 MH/s Ethash mining hashrate.

Here we tested with fans running at 100% due to the small mini-ITX case the GPU was running in and the not so good airflow, though you should easily be able to run the cooling fans lower with the GPU in a mining rig with good airflow and still get things running cool. The massive cooler and the three fans do great job in keeping everything cool, especially with the optimized settings for mining that put the power usage of the GPU down to just about 140W as reported by the miner compared to the stock TDP of 240W.

– If You Are Interested in the ETH Mining Performance of Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090 GPUs…

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