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First Impressions from the DualMiner USB Scrypt ASIC
27, Feb 2014
This week we have finally received a DualMiner USB Scrypt ASIC based on a single Gridchip GC3355 processor that is capable of mining both BTC and LTC or only LTC (SHA-256 and Scrypt), so we can share some of our first impressions already using the device for a day. The device uses a dip switch to switch between the mode active at the moment (LTC and BTC and LTC Only) and there are two virtual COM ports available – one for BTC or other SHA-256 and one for LTC or other Scrypt crypto mining (you need to install a virtual USB to COM driver from here). When you are in BTC and LTC mining mode you are supposed to get about 500 MH/s for SHA-256 (BTC) along with about 40 KH/s for Scrypt (LTC), however we are and you are also probably going to be more interested in the performance of the LTC (Scrypt) mining mode only as this way the ASIC uses less power and provides more performance and you better go with 70 KH/s LTC instead of 40 KH/s LTC and 500 MH/s BTC nowadays. One important thing is that when the device is in LTC mode only you need to use the BTC COM port (the first one) and when operating in Dual mode the first COM is for BTC and the second for LTC.
DualMiner USB Scrypt ASIC uses a modified version of cgminer that comes along with an extra GUI that might be more appearing to the new to mining users, however we prefer to use directly the cgminer from the console (version 3.1.1). The extra parameters you are passing to the cgminer include “–lo” for the LTC only mode (Scrypt only), “-S //./COM12” to set the COM port used by the device and “–dualminer-pll 850” to set the operating frequency of the chip. When you switch to LTC mode only the ASIC increases the voltage to 1.2V and uses 850 MHz to achieve 70 KH/s, in BTC & LTC mode apparently the voltage is 0.9V and the clock frequency is 550 MHz for 500 MH/s and 40 KH/s respectively. You can try increasing the MHz value a bit to about 900 to squeeze a bit more performance, though you should be careful as not all devices apparently can work at that frequency and you better have some sort of extra cooling.
Our tests show that when the device is used in a pool, the reported hashrate is a bit above 70 KH/s, the screenshot is from ScryptGuild with difficulty set to 16. You need to set the difficulty for the worker lower in order to get good actual performance due to the not so high hashrate of these miners. For the first 24 hours our DualMiner USB Scrypt ASIC has managed to get away with just about 0.15% HW errors running at 850 MHz with an extra fan for better cooling, s things are looking pretty good. We are going to perform some more tests and publish them here in the next few days, so stay tuned for more information abut these USB ASICs based on Gridseed’s GC3355 chips. And while we like how things are working with this low power Scrypt ASIC, we are not going to recommend the purchase of single units due to the low hashrate that each device provides and if you are going to invest in more of these USB ASICs, then you might want to check out the 5-chip Gridseed miners supposed to offer 300 MH/s per devices – these will cost you less for the same total performance. For the moment the price at which the DualMiner USB ASICs are being sold they are not that attractive choice, and we have ordered one just to play around with it. We are waiting for one of the larger 5-chip units to arrive in the next few days, so we are going to be reviewing it as well soon.
- In: Mining Hardware|Tests and Reviews
- Tags: bitcoin asic, BTC ASIC, Dualminer ASIC, DualMiner first impressions, DualMiner review, DualMiner test, DualMiner USB, DualMiner USB ASIC, DualMiner USB Scrypt ASIC, GC3355, Gridchip, Gridchip GC3355, Gridchip USB ASIC, Gridseed, Gridseed ASIC, Gridseed GC3355, gridseed usb asic, Litecoin ASIC, LTC and BTC ASIC, LTC ASIC, Scrypt ASIC, Scrypt USB ASIC, SHA-256 and Scrypt ASIC, SHA-256 and Scrypt USB ASIC, SHA-256 ASIC, USB ASIC
DarkCoin (DRK), now renamed to DASH, aims to be the first privacy-centric cryptographic currency with fully encrypted transactions and anonymous block transactions. These features are a work on progress and will be released in stages in the near future. DarkCoin (DRK) uses a specialized CPU and GPU miners, so you will need to download these in order to be able to mine this new crypto, download links are available below.
DarkCoin uses a new chained hashing algorithm approach, with many new scientific hashing algorithms for the proof-of-work. This is so that the processing distribution is fair and coins will be distributed in much the same way Bitcoins were originally. ASICs will be much more difficult to make for these algorithms and will take years, so GPU mining should be the main solution for mining these coins.
Website
– http://www.darkcoin.io/
Block Explorer / Crawler
– http://explorer.darkcoin.io/chain/DarkCoin
SPECIFICATIONS
- 0.00000% Pre-mined
- Super secure hashing algorithm: X11 – 11 rounds of scientific hashing functions (blake, bmw, groestl, jh, keccak, skein, luffa, cubehash, shavite, simd, echo)
- Block reward is controlled by moore’s law: (11111 / (((Difficulty+51)/6) ^ 2))
- CPU mining initially, now also GPU mining
- Block generation: 2.5 minutes
- Difficulty Retargets using Kimoto Gravity Well
- 84 Million Coins Max
- Block reward halves every year
- Encrypted transaction network: Work In Progress
- Anonymous blockchain using coinjoin technology: Work In Progress
DOWNLOADS
– Online Wallet
– Windows
– Mac
Source Code
– at GitHub
GPU MINERS
– sgminer for AMD GPUs
– ccMiner for Nvidia GPUs
POOLS
hhttp://www.drkpool.com
https://www2.coinmine.pl/drk/
http://pool.darkcoin.io/
http://cpu-pool.net/drk/
http://darkcoin.miningpoolhub.com/
http://dark.suchpool.pw/
http://dark.v2.dedicatedpool.com/
EXCHANGES
– Binance
– Bittrex
– HitBTC
– Livecoin
– Yobit
– Gateio
– Citex
– Crex
– Graviex
– Stex
– Txbit
- In: Crypto Coins
- Tags: Darkcoin, Darkcoin exchanges, Darkcoin info, Darkcoin miner, Darkcoin mining, Darkcoin pools, Darkcoin trading, Dash, DASH exchange, DASH info, DASH miner, DASH mning, DASH pool, DASH trading, DRK, DRK alt crypto, DRK exchange, DRK info, DRK miner, DRK mining, DRK pool, DRK trading, X11, X11 coin, X11 crypto, X11 mining
YACoin has started as a CPU mining coin, but now as with many other cryptos there is no point in mining it with anything less than a GPU. YACoin requires special miner software for OpenCL mining and it is called yacminer, a miner based around cgminer and designed for mining specifically YACoin with its Scrypt-jane algorithm. This miner software is intended for use on AMD GPU mining systems, for Nvidia GPU mining you better go for CUDAminer. As you can see from the screenshot above currently the hashrate you can get from a Radeon R9 280X GPU mining YACoin is not that high compared to some other cryptos, but that is due to the specifics of the algorithm being used here. Also note that the Intensity value is low, you need to keep it lower than you normally would mining other cryptos as higher value may start giving you HW errors. Below you can find the download link for the latest version of yacminer 3.4.2-yac2 for Windows.
– You can download yacminer 3.4.2-yac2 for GPU Mining YACoin for Windows OS here…