New bfgminer 4.2.1 Release with Support for ZeusMiner Scrypt ASICs

17 Jun
2014

bfgminer-4-2-1-zeus-windows

The new fork of bfgminer with support for ZeusMiner’s Scrypt ASICs (Litecointalk development topic) that we have told you about a few days ago is seeing some nice development. The fork that is compatible with ZeusMiner, GAWMiners and Hashra Zeus-based Scrypt ASICs has been updated to bfgminer 4.2.1 and the driver has been reworked a bit including some changes to the command line options that are no longer the same as the initial cgminer release with support for ZeusMiner ASICs.

The latest release even has an option to “override” the maximum frequency of 382 MHz that the ZeusMiner ASICs are apparently limited to, however this only overrides the software check, but does not actually make the miner work at higher frequency (the 382 MHz maximum might be a hardware limitation). Also do note that there might be some issues running multiple miners in a single instance, so you might need to run 5 or more units in a single miner per instance of bfgminer configuration.

Below you can find a windows binary of the bfgminer 4.2.1 that you can try, just make sure to set the right number of chips depending on your miner model as well as the virtual COM port at which the miner is detected. The recommended operating frequency still seems to be 328 MHz for most people as a good balance in terms of performance and HW error rate, though you are welcome to play with it.

– You can download the new bfgminer 4.2.1 ZeusMiner binaries for Windows OS here…

Should You Modify Your ZeusMiner Blizzard Scrypt ASIC or Not

17 Jun
2014

zeusminer-blizzard-1

The ZeusMiner Blizzard Scrypt ASIC also available as the GAWMiners Fury is a nice little device that comes at a really attractive price for the hashrate it offers. They are the ideal choice for smaller miners that want to get a Scrypt ASIC miner, but don’t want to spend too much for it… and quite a lot of people like that already have purchased these devices. Being so attractive with their current prices and performance of about 1.3-1.4 MHS it is no wonder people are also interested in modifying them for even higher performance. The simpler thing that you could do is to try to improve the cooling with the addition of some heatsinks directly on top of the 6 ASIC chips to get a little more headroom for increasing the operating frequency with lower number of HW errors. The more complex thing is to try to do a voltage modification in order to allow for the chips to have no trouble operating at higher frequency.

People that have used or still use the smaller 5-chip Gridseed Scrypt ASICs and have done a voltage modification to them knwo that these small miners were able to handle a significant performance increase without trouble. The reason for that was the fact they they were originally designed to be used for mining both LTC and BTC, thus they could handle higher voltage and operating infrequence easily if you only used them for Scrypt mining. The case with the ZeusMiners however is not the same, it seems that their miners are already pushed quite high in terms of power usage and operating frequency not leaving you with much headroom for experimenting. Voltage modification of a ZeusMiner Blizzard or GAWMiners Fury is possible and can be done with the replacement of resistors just like on the Gridseed ASICs, however the advantage you can get in terms of hashrate increase is not going to be that attractive so that a lot of people would be willing to do it. There is a topic on the Bitcointalk forum where people are trying to modify their devices and are reporting some useful information and their experience and results, so you might want to check that out if you are interested.

– To see the topic at the Bitcointalk forum about Fury/Blizzard tuning and mods…

New sph-sgminer NIST5mod with Higher Performance for TalkCoin Mining

16 Jun
2014

sph-sgminer-nist5mod

There is now a new fork of sph-sgminer by djm34 optimized for higher performance for the NIST5 algorithm used by Talkcoin (source) that relies on the same kernel optimization method used by the x11mod fork by lasybear. This new fork of sgminer does improve significantly the performance you can get and our tests have shown that with it we are getting about 7 MHS hashrate mining TalkCoin (TAC) on Radeon R9 280X up from about 4 MHS with the previously available sgminer for TalkCoin that we have tried. We have compiled a windows binary from the source, so you can download and try it yourself as well and you might want to be fast while the price of TAC is still quite high.

– You can download sgminer 4.1.0 with optimized NIST5 support for Windows OS here…

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