Try the New VerthashMiner v0.6.2 For Mining VertCoin (VTC)

5 Feb
2021

If you have spotted the recently forked VertCoin (VTC) to the new Verthash algorithm and are interested in mining it, then you might head on to download the latest VerthashMiner v0.6.2 to do so. This is especially important for owners of AMD Radeon RX 400/500 series of GPUs with just 4GB of video memory as these really need an alternative to mining Ethereum (ETH) and pointing them towards mining VTC could be just what you need. While you can Still Mine Ethereum With AMD Radeon RX 400/500 Series 4GB GPUs the performance continues to drop with each new DAG epoch and these cards are soon to be retired or moved to an alternative and more profitable crypto coin and VertCoin could be that alternative.

The new VerthashMiner v0.6.2 doesn’t bring any performance improvements, but instead addresses one very important issue that the previous version 0.6.1 had. With the new release you now can generate the verthash.dat file needed for the mining process just using the miner itself – there is no need to download it or use the VTC wallet to generate it before you can start mining. What you need is to just run the new VerthashMiner with the gen-verthash-data command line parameter and the name of the file you want to use such as verthash.dat:

VerthashMiner.exe --gen-verthash-data verthash.dat

Do note that the verthash.dat file generation is a time-consuming process that on a quad-core Intel Core-i5 6500T CPU with a SATA SSD can take around 10 minutes to generate using VerthashMiner v0.6.2. The good thing is that you need to generate the data file just one and then when you run the miner with the normal mining command line parameters it just loads it and starts mining.

SimpleMining OS (SMOS) has just implemented VertCoin (VTC) mining support in their latest update and has added verthashminer-v0.6.2, though mining VTC is still not going to be perfect there as the verthash.dat file will be generated on each run of the miner, but hey, at least it works and you can mine VTC using the dedicated Linux mining OS.

– To Download the Latest AMD/Nvidia GPU VerthashMiner v0.6.2 for VertCoin (VTC)…

The Upcoming Ethereum ASIC Miners To Offer 2000+ MHS

3 Feb
2021

There is a lot of talk going on around the new generation of Ethash ASIC miners for mining Ethereum (ETH) that are expected to be released for order in the following few months, although nothing is official or really 100% confirmed, but both devices are expected to have hashrate higher than 2000 MH/s. We are talking about the Innosilicon’s A11 ETH miner and an upcoming device from a newcomer on the mining market, a company called Linzhi that has been getting some attention for a while now. Linzhi Inc was founded by Chen Min, the former CTO of Canaan, a popular name for everyone that has been into crypto mining for a while already as this is one of the first companies to be making Bitcoin ASIC miners – the Avalon miners.

Currently the Innosilicon A10 Pro ETH Miner is the best performing specialized non-GPU-based miner for Ethash with 500 MHS hashrate and 950W of power consumption and a price of $4388 USD　(or 0.125933 BTC) as per the official company website (currently all sold out). The alternative is using GPUs for mining ETH and you even might be able to get the same level of performance as the A10 Pro ETH Miner if you go for Nvidia GeForce RTX 3000 series – 8x RTX 3060 Ti or RTX 3070 or 5-6x RTX 3080 or 4-5x RTX 3090 video cards, but unfortunately pretty much all GPUs suitable for mining are currently hard to find and more expensive than usual.

F2Pool did an unboxing and a test of a sample Linzhi Phoenix ETH miner (the video above). The device is supposedly capable of 2600 MHS hashrate for Ethash with a power usage of 3000-3500W. The Linzhi Phoenix E2600M ETH mining devices are supposedly to be up for purchase around March-April this year with a price in the range of 13-15 thousand USD. The main problem with the Linzhi miner is that it has 4.4GB of memory and Ethereum’s DAG file is already over 4GB in size, meaning that the life expectancy of these miners for mining ETH won’t be very long. If they start shipping as announced and you are among the first to get the device you may still end up with just 4-5 months of use for mining Ethereum, though you would still be able to mine other crypto coins with the Ethash algorithm and smaller DAGs. So, maybe everything was great when they started development 2 years ago, but now 4.4 GB is not enough and if they do not manage to increase the available memory by the time of release to the market things might not be looking very good for their sales.

The Innosilicon A11 ETH miner is the other upcoming next-gen ETH ASIC miner. Supposedly the A11 Ethash miner will be delivering 2100 MH/s Ethash hashrate with just 2300W of power usage and should come with 8GB memory. The not so good thing here is that the price will be higher, probably in the range of about 15-16 thousand USD with shipping expected to start somewhere in April-June time. The Innosilicon is probably the better choice if the final end-product specifications turn out to be as the values we are expecting, as even though it may be slower in terms of hashrate, and more expensive as a price, but is also more power efficient and better equipped for long term use with enough onboard memory.

You should also consider the fact that Ethereum (ETH) will be switching from PoW (Proof of Work) to PoS (Proof of Staking) or with other words moving from mining to staking as a model of generating new coins. This transition has already been started, even though mining is still active and will be for maybe 2 years at least, but when looking for a long-term investment in mining hardware you should have things like that in mind. Not to mention that unlike the specialized ETH miners, going for GPUs allows for much better flexibility even though they may not be as efficient in terms of performance for a specific algorithm.

– Build of a 720 MHs Ethereum Mining Rig With 6x MSI GeForce RTX 3090 SUPRIM X 24G GPUs…

Mining VertCoin (VTC) With VertHash on AMD Radeon 4GB GPUs

2 Feb
2021

Keeping an eye on the recent fork of Vertcoin (VTC) form Lyra2REv3 to the new Verthash algorithm the profitability has been nice, although not as good as mining Ethereum. The VertHash algo is a memory-intensive algorithm, so GPU performance is not as important as having fast video memory with wide memory bus. It is similar to Ethash in that matter, however the interesting advantage of VertHash is that it uses much less video memory and thus can be mined on older GPUs. This makes it quite interesting for owners of AMD Radeon RX 470, RX 480, RX 570 and RX 580 GPUs with just 4GB of video memory that are at the end of their life for mining ETH, though other older video cards with just 2GB or 3GB might also benefit.

While you can still mine Ethereum (ETH) with these 4GB Radeon GPUs in “Zombie Mode” with lower performance and diminishing profits. So, mining Vertcoin (VTC) with 4GB Radeon’s might be a viable alternative as things are at the moment, so definitely worth checking thing out. Event at the moment the profitability could be better than Ethereum mining at the moment with the current lower hashrate that the 4GB GPUs deliver, and that hashrate is going to continue to get lower in the following days.

We tested what a Gigabyte Radeon RX 570 4GB GPU can offer in terms of performance mining Vertcoin (VTC) using the Verthash algorithm. With stock settings we have managed to get just about 350 KHS in term of hashrate, though after a quick and easy mod of the video BIOS with faster video memory timings we jumped up to about 455 KH/s. Compare this to a single optimized Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Ti video card (TDP at 65%) doing 760 KHS with settings doing 58 MH/s for Ethereum and a single optimized GeForce GTX 1080 Ti doing 560 KH/s with the default memory timings and around 700 KH/s with the OhGodAnETHlargementPill with the same settings doing 44 MH/s for Ethereum (TDP tat 69%).

The same performance optimizations for Ethash should also work well with the VertHash algorithm as both are memory-intensive ones, but mining VertCoin is possible on GPUs with at least 2GB of video memory… remember those old Radeon 280 and 290, as well as 380 and 390 GPUs with 4GB or less video memory. The key is to look for faster memory and wider memory bus as this works best for memory-intensive crypto algorithms, though if it is profitable everything goes, right. The VerthashMiner could of course be improved for less stale shares and more importantly to generate the 1.2 GB verthash.dat file on the fly, just like other miners do with Ethereum’s DAG file on start, hoping to also see other miners also adopting support for the VertHash algorithm.

The latest Nvidia GeForce RTX 3000 series of video cards with GDDR6 (RTX 3060, 3060 Ti, 3070) and GDDR6X (RTX 3080 and RTX 3090) video memory is even better for VTC mining, just like they are for Ethereum as well. A power optimized RTX 3090 that delivers 120 MH/s for Ethereum mining (300W power usage) can give you a hashrate of about 1900 KH/s for VertCoin (VTC). The thing is that these video cards are still better off mining Ethereum at the current profitability, so no point in directing them at VTC, but GPUs such as the 4GB VRAM Radeons could benefit from their good mining performance for VertHash instead of having to retire them from mining.

You can check your mining profitability with a mining calculator, though 8x Radeon’s with 4GB able to deliver something like 3.5-4 MHS hashrate for VertHash at the moment they could be more profitable mining VTC than ETH at the moment and even more as the DAG size increases and the performance of these GPUs gets even lower. The catch here is that currently Bittrex – the largest crypto exchange in term of trading volume for VTC is in maintenance mode, so you are not able to deposit or withdraw VertCoin there. There are other smaller crypto exchanges that trade VTC and could have upgraded their wallets after the fork, so you might want to look for alternatives.

– To Check Your VTC Mining Profitability at the Minerstat Mining Calculator…

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