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The service for leasing and renting mining rigs for different crypto algorithms – Mining Rig Rentals has added support for the Dagger-Hashimoto algorithm that is used by Ethereum (ETH) as well as some other coins that have since been forked from it. There are two categories for Ethereum mining rigs available and we need to clarify the difference as there might be some confusion as to why. Dagger-Hashimoto(G) is for rigs that support Getwork while Dagger-Hashimoto(S) is for rigs supporting stratum, most of the Ethereum mining pools do rely on Getwork, though there are a few such as Ethpool that support stratum over their own miner called qtminer as well as getwork with standard ethminer. There is also the option to use a stratum proxy that will translate to getwork requests as an alternative to a pools directly supporting a stratum implementation for mining. The current stats show that out of 55 available getwork rigs 22 are available for renting or about half, but there are no rigs with stratum support currently listed at the service.
– For more information about the Mining Rig Rentals service for renting crypto mining rigs…
There is a little trick that can help you get some extra hashrate out of your Nvidia GPU when mining Ethereum or another more memory dependent algorithm, though it will most likely not affect many of the other crypto algorithms. By default when running Compute applications on your GPU it does not go to the highest Power State of the card, meaning that you might not be able to squeeze the maximum performance out of the video card and that is without overclocking anything. Thanks to the Nvidia System Management Interface (nvidia-smi) command line utility you are able to force the GPU to work in P0 state (the highest power state) instead of staying at maximum P2 when running a Compute applications such as a crypto miner software. Do note that this specific lower maximum power state is only for Compute applications, so it is not needed, not it should affect gaming performance where the GPU shuld go up to P0 power state if the conditions allow it.
The nvidia-smi utility is part of the video drivers and you can find it installed in the folder “C:\Program Files\NVIDIA Corporation\NVSMI\” on Windows, so you need to run the command line (cmd) and navigate to that folder in order to be able to issue commands. What you should start with is running the following command to check the current P-state of your GPU(s):
nvidia-smi -q -d PERFORMANCE
Do note that the P-state changes dynamically, so you need to be running Ethminer or another application when you issue the above command to see the power state active under load, otherwise you might see a lower power state being active if the GPU is idle.
After you verify the maximum power state that your Nvidia GPUs use when executing Compute applications such as ones that rely on OpenCL or CUDA you need to check what are the maximum frequencies of the video card that are available for the maximum performance in the P0 power state. You can do so with the following command (make sure you are still in the NVSMI folder):
nvidia-smi -q -d SUPPORTED_CLOCKS | more
The above will list all of the supported frequencies in the different power states that your video card can use, but there is no need to check the complete list. All we need to note are the frequencies at the top of the list for the Memory and the Graphics, in this example we are using GTX 970 video card from Gigabyte and the values we need are 3505 MHz for the VRAM and 1455 MHz for the GPU. We’ll need these frequencies for the next step.
What we are going to do next is to force the video card to use the maximum performance operating frequencies by going to the P0 power state. In order to do that we need to run the following command:
nvidia-smi -ac 3505,1455
Note that the above command will apply the settings to all GPUs that you have in your system, normally that should not be a problem for most mining rigs as they are usually with a number of cards that are the same model, but there are cases when this is not true. So you might need to check the individual settings fro different video cards and apply the correct parameters for each of them separately. To do so you just need to add the card ID in the command line, so that the particular option will be executed only for the specified video card. This is being done by adding the “-i
nvidia-smi -i 0 -ac 3505,1455
nvidia-smi -i 1 -ac 3505,1392
The question that undoubtedly comes now is how we have increased the performance for mining Ethereum by following the instructions above. Well it is pretty easy to check by running a benchmark with Ethminer, or just running the miner and noting the new increased frequencies that you should now have and compare them to the ones you previously had. On the Nvidia Gigabyte GTX 970 WF3OC video card used in the guide we are normally getting about 17.31 MHS in terms of hashrate mining Ethereum when the GPU is maxing out at the P2 power state, when we force it to go to the P0 power state the hashrate increases to about 19.98 MHS. So this is a nice improvement in terms of performance that comes at a cost of just about 10W higher power usage from the video card. Do note however that while this will work with Ethereum for increasing performance due to the heavy usage of video memory in the mining process, doing it may not bring performance improvement in many other commonly used mining algorithms.
Getting Started with Mining Expanse (EXP) on Windows
12, Feb 2016
With the recent book of Ethereum (ETH) one of the coins forked from it has also shown a great increase in interest and as a direct result a huge price increase as well – Expanse (EXP). This Ethereum fork is very similar in terms of usage and mining to Ethereum, though there are some differences, so we have decided to prepare a quick guide focused on setting up the Expanse daemon for local mining as well as using the GUI wallet that the coin has available and then how to start solo mining and pool mining. Again, since this is an Ethereum fork many of the things are very similar, so if you are already familiar with Ethereum, then getting into Expanse will be very easy for you, otherwise the guide should help you. We are going to be focusing on Windows in our example, though most of the things should be applicable to other operating systems as well. Do note that Expanse (EXP) is based on the Go Ethereum client and the GUI wallet is currently only available for Windows and Mac, for Linux you will have to stick to the console commands for using the wallet. Mining Expanse (EXP) is pretty much the same as with Ethereum, you are going to be using ethminer that is OpenCL-based, but works with Nvidia GPUs as well and there is also a CUDA version available. Both miners as well as the gexp and expwallet with some Batch files (.BAT) are included in the downloadable archive below to make it easy to get started with everything on Windows. Some good places to trade the coin include Bittrex, HitBTC, Yobit and Graviex.
Generating wallet address via the console:
– Open the expwallet-win folder and rungexp-console.batto start Expanse in console mode
– The software will need to download the blockchain data, it can take some time
– In the console type:personal.newAccount("password")
– Instead of password in the quotes above write your own password and remember it well
– In the console type:exp.accounts
– This will list your Expanse wallet address or addresses if you have multiple
– To check your account balance you can type:web3.fromWei(exp.getBalance(exp.coinbase), "expanse")
Generating wallet address via the GUI wallet:
– Open the expwallet-win folder and rungexp-console.batto start Expanse in console mode
– The software will need to download the blockchain data, it can take some time
– Click on the NEW ACCOUNT button and enter a wallet password, then repeat it and remember it well
– The GUI wallet will show you the current ballance and provide you with an easy way of sending transactions
– Curently the GUI wallet is only available for Windows and Mac users, Linux users will need to go the console way
Sending Expanse to another wallet via console:
– First you need to unlock your account by typing in the console the following (replace password with your password):personal.unlockAccount(exp.accounts[0], "password")
– In the console type:exp.sendTransaction({from: exp.accounts[0], to: 'recipient_address', value: web3.toWei(1, "expanse")})
– In the above code replace your_address and recipient_address with the respective addresses, the example is for sending 1 Expanse, but you can change the value depending on your needs
Sending Expanse to another wallet via the GUI wallet:
– Go to the Transactions tab and you should see a familiar graphical interface for sending coins
– The From Address field should have your main wallet address selected by default and offer a dropdown if you have multiple wallets
– Enter the To Address of the recieving party, should use copy and paste in order to avoid mistakes
– Select the amount of EXP you want to send and click on the Send Transaction button
Starting gexp for solo mining:
– To listen for connections only on the local system type:gexp --rpc --rpcaddr "localhost" --rpcport 9656
– To be accessible on the local network type:gexp --rpc --rpcaddr "192.168.0.123" --rpcport 9656
– Make sure that for local LAN accessibility you replace the rpcaddr IP address to the one that of the machine gexp is running on, the 192.168.0.123 is just an example
– To be accessible on the Internet type:gexp --rpc --rpcaddr "x.x.x.x" --rpcport 9656
– Make sure that for Internet accessibility you replace the rpcaddr IP address to the one that of the machine gexp is running on, the x.x.x.x in the example will not work, also make sure that the 9656 port (or another one you decide to use) is forwarded
Starting ethminer for solo mining:
– For local system mining with ethminer on the same PC that gexp is running on use:ethminer -G
– For mining on a system in the Local LAN where gexp is installed and running use:ethminer -G -F http://192.168.0.123:9656
– Make sure that for local LAN mining the IP address of the system gexp is running on is set correctly on the miner, the 192.168.0.123 is just an example, also make sure that there is no Firewall blocking connections
– For using mining rig to mine over the Internet on a PC with gexp running in your local LAN use:ethminer -G -F http://x.x.x.x:9656
– For Internet access make sure that instead of the x.x.x.x in the example you set your external IP address and that the 9656 port is properly forwarded between the external IP and the system running gexp
Pool CPU/GPU mining using ethminer:
– Open the ethminer folder and edit the three bat files with your wallet address
– For solomining locally run the following BAT for CUDA/OpenCL:EXP-local.bat
– For mining on a pool run the following BAT for CUDA/OpenCL:EXP-suprnova.bat
Due to the much lower total network hashrate that Expanse (EXP) currently has it is viable to try solo mining the coin if you have multiple AMD or Nvidia GPUs in order toget better profit than mining solo. Do note however that solo mining depends on your luck as well, so if you want to be on the safe side you can stick to pool mining.
– To download gexp, gwallet and ethminer compiled for Windows and ready to be used…