Posts Tagged ‘AMD’

Luxcore (LUX) to Change PoW Algorithm to RX2 (RandomX-based)

3, Oct 2019

Luxcore (LUX) project also known as LUXCoin previously has announced their plans for an upcoming fork that will replace the currently used PHI2 algorithm to a new one called RX2 (essentially a variation of the lately popular RandomX algo). RX2 is Luxcore’s version of RandomX that has some small modifications to the RandomX parameters in order to suit some specific requirements (details are not yet revealed). The exact date for the introduction of the new algorithm has not been revealed yet, so it is sill “in the coming weeks”. This marks yet another crypto project that is going towards the RandomX algorithm in order to fight with FPGA and ASIC miners.

Since the RX2 algorithm is based on the RandomX it will also be more CPU-friendly for mining (will require a separate miner support apparently) as it will not work with any of the miners that currently support RandomX. It seems that so far the RandomX algo favors AMD’s latest multi-core Ryzen 3 CPUs in terms of performance over Intel’s products that are much more widely spread and used mostly by miners in the last years. This could help AMD’s sales of new processors if mining for RandomX picks up and offers decent profitability which is still not the case for the moment. If more projects move towards RandomX or variations of the algorithm, like LUX is apparently doing, the interest and profitability might as well skyrocket and spark a new wave of CPU mining oriented rigs to be built.

Quick Look at AMD’s Radeon RX VEGA 64 for Crypto Mining

14, Aug 2017

AMD’s new Radeon RX VEGA 64 GPU is now officially out in the wild and we have some first impressions from it to share regarding crypto mining. There were various pieces of information and rumors regarding the mining performance of the new AMD VEGA, but since we got out hands on one we are going to share what are the actual out of the box results that we got from it. The new HBM2 memory used in the AMD VEGA GPUs is probably the most interesting part in the new product line, but unfortunately out of the box it does not do great in memory intensive algorithms. Of course we all know from AMD’s Polaris range that with some tweaks and modifications extra performance will most likely be available to miners, but that could take some time.

Probably the most important performance that people what to know about is the hashrate for mining Ethereum (ETH) and other crypto coins based on the Ethash algorithm. Unfortunately the out of the box performance from Radeon RX VEGA 64 using the latest Claymore Dual Eth miner that comes with official support for Vega is just around 31-32 MHS. We’ve seen claims of much higher performance being theoretically possible, but we are yet to confirm if it is and if these claims are actually real or just speculation. The not so great thing is that this hashrate is achieved with pretty high power consumption and the higher the temperature of the GPU goes, the lower the performance drops and it is really easy for the air cooler VEGA 64 to get hot.

Here is the situation with Zcash (ZEC) mining using the new Radeon RX VEGA 64 GPU from AMD, just about 475-480 H/s. The not so great performance in these two more memory intensive algorithms, even with HBM2 memory is not what is the most concerning thing however. What we are more concerned with AMD’s new Radeon RX VEGA 64 GPUs is the fact that they are power hungry GPUs and quickly get hot, so cooling them properly for 24/7 mining might be a bit of a challenge, at least for the air cooled model. The amount of power used does not justify the level of performance we get for mining out of the box at this point…

You can say that the new Radeon RX VEGA 64 GPU out of the box at stock settings does manage to perform very similar in terms of performance to what a well overclocked Nvidia GTX 1070 can also deliver for ETH and ZEC mining. The AMD GPU however does it with significantly more power used when compared to what the Nvidia card requires to provide very similar performance for mining (double the power for the VEGA). As far as gaming goes, the Radeon RX VEGA 64 is apparently closer to GTX 1080 in terms of performance, but then again it still consumes more power than the Nvidia card.

What remains to be seen is what the initial availability is going to be and what the actual pricing of the new VEGA GPUs will be considering the fact that the demand from miners might not be that high, though you never know… with market prices of Polaris GPUs at the level they are available now the official recommended price of the VEGA 64 does seem unreasonably low, so expect higher initial prices for sure. On the other hand the Radeon RX VEGA 64 could also do better in more GPU intensive algorithms than it is doing for memory intensive ones. The option for dual mining with one memory-intensive and one GPU-intensive algorithm may also turn out to be pretty attractive alternative, even wiht the not so great performance in memory-intensive mining algorithms alone.

AMD Polaris ETH Mining Performance Drop Might Not Actually Happen

25, Jul 2017

If you remember last month we have warned that a possible Ethereum Hashrate Drop for Radeon RX400/RX500 GPUs is Incoming. The slow decrease of mining hashrate for Ethereum (ETH) on AMD Polaris-based GPUs was a bit puzzling as it was actually not related to the video memory, so 4GB and 8GB models were affected. Do note that at some point though cards with 4GB video memory might still start dropping in terms of mining performance anyway as the DAG size starts getting close to the amount of video memory available.

It turns out that AMD may actually be working on a driver fix to resolve the problem according to information published by Claymore on the Bitcointalk forum. Apparently the upcoming AMD Vega was also affected by the same problem, though it has been already resolved with driver fix and in two weeks or so a fix for Polaris may be release via a driver update as well. Hopefully a driver update that will not be WHQL and allow the use on AMD GPUs with modified video BIOSes as most AMD Polaris-based Ethereum GPU mining rigs are using modified memory straps for better performance.

On a side note, something regarding AMD’s new Vega GPUs for mining Ethereum from Claymore, in case you have missed it:

“Vega is … hot. In stock it takes about 400-450W in dual, 300-350W in ETH-only mode at about 33MH/s. And it’s throttling like hell. It’s very good in dual mining mode, but it’s too hot.”

So most likely the new AMD Vega GPUs will not turn out to be a great choice for mining, though who knows… people are using GTX 1080 Ti’s at 250W TDP or even more with some OC for mining and are happy with the results. Even though it might not be great for mining Ethereum, the new AMD Vega, just like with GTX 1080 Ti, might still end up a good solution for Equihash or any other popular altcoin algorithm for example.


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