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There is a new development version of the ethminer 0.11.0 (source) available that brings CUDA performance improvements especially optimized for GTX 1060 GPUs. People are reporting a couple of megahashes increase in the performance of GTX 1060 GPUs over what they are getting with the same settings from Claymore’s ETH miner, some slight, but less performance improvement is observed in GTX 1070. Unfortunately it seems that the performance optimizations submitted by David Li don’t do much good for GDDR5X GPUs like the GTX 1080 and GTX 1080 Ti.
Feel free to test it on your Nvidia mining GPUS and report what and if there is some improvement in the hashrate over your previous settings. If you do make sure you try different value for the --cuda-parallel-hash command line flag (default value is 4), but you can experiment with 1, 2 and 8 and see what works best for you. Again the highest benefits are apparently observed on GTX 1060 GPUs as the performance optimization is apparently targeted at them, though some other GPUs might still benefit a slight boost as well. You can download and try the Windows binary compiled from the latest source below.
– To download and try the CUDA optimized new ethminer 0.11.0 for Windows…
ASUS Mining P106 is a GPU for Crypto Currency Mining
27, Jun 2017
VGA card manufacturers seem to have finally started taking care for the crypto mining market that has been growing significantly lately due to the high profitability for crypto mining. ASUS, one of the top brands not only for VGA, but for other PC components as well has announced their Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060-based mining video card and the product is called ASUS Mining P106. We have already talked about Nvidia’s plans to release a crypto mining oriented GPU for miners based on their GTX 1060 GPU. Originally the plan was to have this product on limited markets and not available in the retail chain, but it seems that this plan can change with ASUS and other VGA brands joining with products that can become available through the usual distribution channels as well.
The ASUS Mining P106 is based on the NVIDIA P106-100 GPU and comes with 6GB GDDR5 that has probably been modified with custom timings in order to increase the hashrate for more memory intensive mining algorithm such as Dagger-Hashimoto (Ethash) used by Ethereum. The GPU Base Clock is 1506 MHz and the Boost Clock is 1708 MHz, the video memory is 8008 MHz GDDR5. The initial information was that the NVIDIA P106-100 GPU should be based on the 9 Gbps version of the GTX 1060, though this might still be true with the memory is apparently at 8 Gbps with more aggressive timings. As expected the ASUS Mining P106 GPU does not feature any kind of video outputs so it is essentially limited to only computing tasks such as mining and will not be an interesting product for gamers that might also want to mine, but still be able to play games.
Other interesting features on the ASUS Mining P106 include the dual ball-bearing fans that are IP5X-certified to be dust resistant and thus offer a longer fan lifespan and this is really important as far as crypto mining goes. ASUS also claims that they have used components that enhance efficiency, reduce power loss, decrease component buzzing under load, and lower thermal temperatures for unsurpassed quality and reliability. There is no mention about warranty period as initially Nvidia had plans to offer their mining GPUs with just 3 months of warranty, though we are hearing that other brands such as ASUS might actually be with 1 year warranty. No word about pricing either, though the mining GPUs should be cheaper than the consumer version of GTX 1060 in order to be more attractive to miners and we are probably going to be seeing them starting to appear on the some markets sometime next month.
ASUS has also announced a second GPU targeted at miners, but that one is really not that interesting like the NVIDIA P106-100 GPU is. The ASUS Mining RX 470 is essentially a standard AMD Radeon RX 470-based video card with 4GB video memory at 7000 MHz, there is no word about improved timings for mining that will result in better performance. The design of the AMD mining GPU is very similar to the Nvidia mining model, though here you have video output connectors and cans till use the card for gaming if you want to. The fans are the same and ASUS claims that the same improved components are being used to offer better reliability for longer term mining usage.
– To get more details about the ASUS Mining P106 GPU on the official website…
Do you remember how last year AMD Radeon R9 280X GPUs started dropping in terms of mining hashrate for Ethereum due to the growing DAG file size? Well, it seems that we are in for the same thing happening with the Radeon RX400/RX500 series of GPUs with 4/8GB VRAM in the next couple of months. We are currently at DAG epoch #129, but in the next 30-35 or so DAG epochs we are going to be seeing gradual drop in hashrate resulting in up to about 30% decrease from the current hashrate on the Radeon RX400/RX500 series of GPUs. It seems that other more powerful GPUs such as R9 290(x)/390(x) as well as Nvidia Pascal GPUs with more video memory (6GB/8GB+) will not be affected or the drop in performance will be much smaller to a level considered pretty much insignificant compared to what will happen with AMD’s Polaris GPUs.
You can easily check what will happen with your existing GPU mining hardware and if it will be affected in terms of performance and how much by adding the option -benchmark 130 to the Claymore ETH miner. Change the number 130 (the next Ethereum DAG epoch) to the DAG epoch you want to test with such as 140, 150, 160 and see how your hashrate will change or if it will change. The Ethash DAG changes every 30000 blocks which is roughly every 4-5 days and with Ethereum this is called a DAG epoch, so every few days we move to the next DAG epoch. As DAG epochs move further on they also grow in size and put more stress to the video cards that are being used for mining and as a result there is also some performance drop observed over time. The more powerful the GPUs is and the more video memory it has, the more likely it is to be able to handle better long term mining Ethereum.