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It Is All About BTC, LTC, ETH, DOGE, KAS mining as well as other alternative crypto currencies
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Getting The Optimum Mining Performance on AMD GPUs
12, Mar 2015
If you are using AMD Radeon-based video cards for mining crypto currencies you have probably noticed that some algorithms have issues with various video driver versions or the performance you get may differ between older and newer version. Since the AMD miners use OpenCL there is an easy solution that can help you deal with driver version issues and to get the optimum hashrate for a specific algorithm. There is not need to reinstall the complete video driver, you can just copy the OpenCL DLLs from the respective driver version inside the same folder where the software miner is (cgminer or sgminer) and when you run the miner it will load the different OpenCL version, regardless of what video driver you have installed. Do note that you need to delete the compiled kernel BIN file for the respective algorithm or algorithms when replacing the OpenCL DDL files in order to get the kernel recompiled with the different version. You can download the different AMD Radeon drivers OpenCL version 13.12, 14.4, 14.6 RC2, 14.8, 14.9 and 14.12 in a single package from the link below and try out what performance you will get by replacing the DLL files inside the miner software’s folder.
– To download and try AMD OpenCL DLL files from different drivers for Windows OS…
New ccMiner fork with WhirlpoolX Algorithm Support
27, Feb 2015
There is now a Windows binary of a ccMiner fork available for mining Vanillacoin (VNL) that uses WhirlpoolX algorithm on Nvidia GPUs thanks to djm34. There is no source code released for the miner, only Windows binary that supports Compute 3.5 or newer Nvidia video cards. Do note that this version includes a 5% developer fee, so it will mine for the developer of the code to support his work! Also it seems that the miner only works on the two official VNL pools as well as the Suprnova Pool, it refuses to connect to to others. We are getting about 180 MHS on a stock GTX 980 GPU, though the author reports that is should reach up to about 200 MHS, probably with some overclock it will. You should expect about 60 MHS on a GTX 750 Ti GPU according to the author of the miner code. Recently there was a boom of interest in VNL even though it has not yet been added on an exchange, though C-Cex is apparently going to add it very soon, meanwhile MiningRigRentals and NiceHash have all added support for the new WhirlpoolX algorithm, so apparently the user interest continues to grow. If you are looking for a high performance AMD GPU miner, you can find the latest sgminer fork with WhirlpoolX support here, it offers similar performance to what the same class of Nvidia GPUs should provide using the ccMiner.
– To download the ccMiner fork for the WhirlpoolX algorithm by djm34 for Windows OS…
How to Effectively Mine on Multipe Vardiff Pools
26, Feb 2015
If you have a not so powerful mining rig or and ASIC and you want to be able to effectively mine on multiple pools that use variable difficulty instead of a fixed one it might be a bit of an issue. Usually on vardiff pools you start with a lower difficulty that might be right for the hashrate of your mining hardware, but the pool starts to increase the difficulty over time making it hard for your miner to keep up to its maximum performance, especially if using multipool that switches coins or solves blocks quickly. CGminer and the other alternative mining software products do come with strategies for effectively utilizing multipool scenarios, you just make sure you use the right one depending on your situation. By default the multipool strategy used by the mining software is set to failover, meaning that if the first pool stops responding the miner will move on the next one in the list until the higher priority pool is back online.
Obviously the above default scenario does not work for vardiff pools to keep your miner at the recommended lower difficulty level, so you need to use one of the different strategies in order to be able to do that. The right strategy for using multiple vardiff pools is the rotate strategy where the miner will automatically switch between the list of pools based on a user set time interval. So checking what time it requires for the pool to switch from the initial difficulty of lets say 128 to 256 and then to move to 512 will give you an idea on how many minutes you need to set for the rotate rounds. 128 and 256 difficulty is OK for Bitcoin ASIC miners that are in the range of 150-200 GHS for example, so setting lets say 5 minutes for the rotation interval should prevent the pool to go higher than 256 difficulty. What the miner will do is move to the next vardiff pool in the list for 5 minutes and then get back to the first pool for 5 more minutes and so on, keeping a difficulty of 128-256 on both pools. This is a great strategy for using with NieHash and WestHash for selling your SHA256 hashrate for example if you have a not so powerful ASIC miner.
Changing the multipool strategies is possible from within the already running cgminer or another miner forked from it or with support for the same options, but this will not be permanent – it will function until the restart of the miner. You can also set the rotate mode to be activated with a startup parameter of the miner by adding this to the command line --rotate 5, the example is for 5 minute rotation between the list of pools.