Posts Tagged ‘4GB Ethereum mining’

How To Still Mine Ethereum With AMD Radeon RX 400/500 Series 4GB GPUs

21, Jan 2021

AMD’s Radeon RX 470/480 and RX 570/58 with 4GB of video memory can still be used to mine Ethereum (ETH), even though the DAG size is already a bit over 4GB which is more than the video memory available on these GPUs. The current Ethereum DAG epoch number is #389 and the size of the DAG file is 4.04 GB and it will continue to grow, however with the current profitability mining ETH makes it worth to continue using these 4GB video cards at least a bit more. They can still be used in the so called “Zombie Mode” with a mining software that supports it in order to continue mining Ethereum for a bit more, even though the hashrate is going to be lower and continue to go down a bit by bit with each new DAG epoch coming.

At the moment an optimized AMD Radeon RX 400/500 series GPU with 4GB video memory should be capable of doing 17-18 MHS for Ethash mining with optimized memory timings and downclocked GPU with about a 100W of power consumption at the wall. So, do not be in a hurry to dismiss these “old” and “obsolete” 4GB video cards yet, they still have some life in them for mining Ethereum, you just need to play a bit more to make them work.

The AMD crypto mining software that supports “Zombie Mode” for AMD Radeon 4GB GPUs includes TeamRedMiner, lolMiner and PhoenixMiner and they are available for both Windows and Linux OS, free with some development fee built-in. You will need to add the following command line parameters for each specific miner to enable the “Zombie Mode” and make mining Ethereum work. Have in mind that the number might need to be changed up/down in order to find what works on your mining hardware. Currently we are using 4074 on our test video cards (Gigabyte RX 580 4GB), but on different cards and with a change in the DAG number you may need to set a different number, so do try what works for you.

– For TeamRedMiner: --eth_4g_max_alloc=4074
– For lolMiner: --4g-alloc-size 4074
– For PhoenixMiner: -daglim 4074

If playing with the miners directly is not your thing you may also try the SimpleMining or HiveOS Linux Mining Operating Systems that make it much easier for management of multiple mining rigs. They do come with support for the three miners we have mentioned and thus Zombie Mode for mining Ethereum (ETH) on 4GB AMD GPUs, so you just need to prepare a USB flash drive with the OS on it, plug it in the mining rig and boot from it. Then you continue from a web-based management windows through your browser setting up and monitoring your GPUs. Both SMOS and HiveOS are free to try with a limited number of mining machines and then you need to pay a small monthly fee for additional mining rigs, to continue using the OS. For HiveOS you can use the promo code CMB10USDPROMO that will give you $10 USD in your account balance to play with.

– For more about Simple Mining (SMOS) Linux Mining OS…
– For more about HiveOS Linux Mining Operating System…

Upcoming 4GB AMD Radeon RX 4×0/5×0 GPUs and ETC Mining Issues Under Windows

6, Apr 2020

GPU miners currently mining Ethereum Classic (ETC) on AMD Radeon RX 470/480 and 570/580 GPUs under Windows might start getting a weird low performance on their first mining video card while other GPUS seem to be performing as usual. The reason for that is pretty simple even though we are still far from the 4GB DAG limit, with current ETC #337 DAG Epoch supposed to take 3.63 GB according to Claymore’s miner… the first GPU uses more video memory as it needs to display the operating system GUI, unlike the rest that are just mining. As a result when using Windows the first GPU takes something like 140-150 MB more video memory on top of the other ones that are just mining, so with that the actually used video memory gets closer to the 4GB limit and instead of 20-30 MH/s you might be getting just 1-2 MH/s for the first GPU and soon it might even stop working.

Normally the rest of the GPUs should take around 3745 MB video memory at the moment according to GPU-Z while the first one about 3890 MB/s and after a bit of mining that number may increase a bit apparently. 8GB RX GPUs do take up a little bit more video memory at the moment apparently, but for them it is not a problem at all, they have more than enough video memory for the moment. What you can do to resolve the problem if you do not with to switch to Linux mining? Well, if your CPU has a built-in GPU and the motherboard can properly use it along with 6-8 or more mining GPUs you can try enabling it and using it as a main video card for Windows and thus free more resources and extend the time you have available for mining Ethereum Classic problem-free. Switching to Lunix-based OS such as Hive OS for instance might also help extending the live of your ETC mining rig with 4GB AMD RX GPUs as Linux generally takes up less resources than Windows.

For the moment Ethereum Classic (ETC) is still leading over Ethereum (ETH) with about 10 DAG Epochs, so the same problem will appear for 4GB mining GPUs that are mining ETH pretty soon as well. For now reduced performance for the first GPU only, or it stopping to mine at all, but not too long after that the 4GB limit would be problematic for all of the video cards with 4GB VRAM as the the DAG size continues to grow. Bitmain has recently addressed a similar issue with their Antminer E3 miners by releasing an updated firmware to free up a bit more memory as these miners also have just 4GB usable memory and thus extend their life for a couple more months for ETC and ETH mining at least.


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