Posts Tagged ‘Ethash mining performance’

Mining Ethereum with ASUS TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 3080 Video Card

19, Feb 2021

We’ve managed to get a Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 GPU to play around with mining Ethereum and other cyrpto coins, though here we are going to be focusing on ETH mining. The RTX 3080 is really hard to find on the market at the moment and if you manage to find stock somewhere the price will be so high that you probably would consider buying a RTX 3090 instead. We managed to somehow get our hands on a single ASUS TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 3080 (ASUS TUF-RTX3080-10G-GAMING) video card to play around with it for crypto mining and below you can read what we have found out using this GPU.

This TUF Gaming RTX 3080 from ASUS is definitely not the greatest model you can find and definitely not as impressive as some other cards, but still, at the moment it is what you can find and you cannot be too choosy. The TUF RTX 3080 works and performs really well and the cooling manages to keep the card cool while mining even with stock out of the box settings. The ASUS TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 3080 comes with dual 8-pin PCI-E power connectors, 2.7-slot cooling solution that works surprisingly well with the three fans on top of the radiator. The default specifications of the ASUS TUF Gamin RTX 3080 are the ones that the reference design Nvidia RTX 3080 uses and although that may not be that great for gamers or PC enthusiasts it is perfectly fine as far as Ethereum mining is concerned.

The card comes with a 1440 MHz Base clock, 1710 MHz Boost Clock, 1188 MHz Memory clock (19 Gbps effective) and a 320W TDP. The RTX 3080 video card comes equipped with 10GB of GDDR6X video memory that has a 320-bit wide memory bus. There are 8704 CUDA cores, 272 TMUs and 96 ROPs in the large graphics processor that consists of over 28 million transistors. One hell of a graphics monster that is only bested by the even faster and better in terms of performance Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090, including the crypto mining performance as well.

Using the ASUS TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 3080 with its default out of the box settings for mining Ethereum (100% TDP, no clocks and fans at 100%) got us at 87 MH/s Ethash mining hashrate. This is a great result in terms of performance, though with default settings the GPU uses around 320W of power and that can be reduces with some optimizations for sure. With the cooling fans running at 100% even the 320W of power usage while mining is not much of an issue with the average GPU temperature at around 52 degrees Celsius. With a bit of tweaking however we can optimize performance and reduce power quite well making the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 even better for mining Ethereum for sure…

Reducing the power usage from the default TDP level of 320W to just 71% TDP got us to 230W of power usage for the RTX 3080 with even higher hashrate. We’ve set the GPU clock at -300 MHz and the memory at +1000 MHz in MSI Afterburner resulting in 97.5 MH/s hashtrate mining Ethereum. The RTX 3080 can handle a bit higher overclock at +1100 for an extra megahash of performance, so you might want to try that as well, though we are fine with the lower clock as the cooling solution on this particular RTX 3080 form ASUS is not the best you can find on 3080 GPUs. And we like our GPUs not pushed to the absolute maximum when mining, but at a bit more conservative settings, but running rock solid for a very long time and you should probably adopt the same philosophy as well.

Optimized RTX 3080 Mining Settings:
– TDP: 71%
– GPU: -300 MHz
– VRAM: +1000 MHz
– FANs: 100%

Since now we can measure the operating temperature of the GDDR6X memory chips with the HWiNFO tool we are going to be monitoring that as well as it is important to keep the video memory at the lowest possible temperature due to these new fast chips getting quite hot under load. We would not only want to avoid getting the memory up to a level when it begins to throttle (around 110 degrees Celsius) and starts dropping the hashrate, but also to have it running as cooler as possible. This is one of the reasons why we use 100% for the cooling fans, even though the GPU is not getting that hot at 52 C and can handle lower fan speed without increasing its operating temperature much.

Another interesting feature that was more recently introduced in the HWiNFO tool is the ability to HotSpots on Nvidia GPUs, so that besides the average working temperature that all monitoring tools report for the GPU you can now know what is the hottest spot. This is especially useful for diagnosing potential issues with GPUs that have been mining for a while and are showing some instabilities due to things such as bad thermal grease or bad cooler contact. Here we see that the hottest spot of the RTX 3080 GPU is around 13-14 C hotter than the average operating temperature reported for the GPU and this is kind of normal, but then again this is a brand-new GPU.

The GPU Memory Junction temperature that we are measuring during Ethereum mining with overclocked VRAM with +1000 MHz in Afterburner is at 88 degrees Celsius with the fans at 100%, without the clock for the memory it runs at around 82 C, so the extra clock does not make things much hotter. For instance, on RTX 3090 we are seeing operating temperatures that are around 10 degrees higher than the ones measured here under similar conditions. This is due the fact that the RTX 3090 had memory chips on both sides due to the larger memory config, so the RTX 3080 is doing better, but the temperature is still pretty high in our opinion for 24/7 operation. Still, if you manage to get things running at under 100 C for RTX 3080/RTX 3090 it should be fine, but you should try to reduce the temperature of the hottest memory chip to around 90 at least with a better airflow for instance.

Getting 97-98 MH/s hashrate for mining Ethereum (ETH) using the Ethash crypto algorithm is easily achievable on Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 GPU with around 230W of power usage. This should be possible on pretty much all reference designs (specs wise) like the ASUS TUF that follows the base specifications set with the Nvidia Founders Edition GPUs. Some models with further increased operating clocks and voltages may require extra tweaking or different settings in order to achieve similar performance at the same power usage level, though they should still be able to get you the same hashrate if you manage to keep things running cool.

– For More Information about the ASUS TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 3080 GPU…
– What Hashrate to Expect from an ASUS EKWB GeForcce RTX 3090 Do Mining Ethereum…

Ethereum Mining on Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060, RTX 3070 and RTX 3080 Laptop GPUs

15, Feb 2021

Gaming laptops with the latest generation of mobile graphics cards from Nvidia in the form of their RTX 30 Series Laptop GPUs are popping on the market and apparently people are not only interested in playing games on them, but also using them for crypto mining. And similar to their desktop counterparts in the GeForce RTX 30 Series product line, the mobile versions of these graphics chips used in gaming laptops does manage to give you very good hashrates for mining Ethereum. The mobile GPU product line consists of the following models: Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 Laptop GPU, Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU and Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 Laptop GPU for the moment. Although the names are like on the desktop variants of these video cards, the mobile ones have a clarifying “Laptop GPU” after the product name, because it is not the same specs graphics processor or even video memory as used on the desktop cards.

So, while the RTX 30 Series Laptop GPUs should still do pretty well for Ethereum mining and probably other crypto coins that use different algorithm than Ethash, you should not expect them to be as fast as their desktop versions. We have just tested mining Ethereum with RTX 3070 Laptop GPU on a Gaming Notebook using the MSI GS66 Stealth 10UG 15.6-inch gaming notebook and shared some interesting insight about the mobile RTX 30-series GPUs in it, but there is more to talk about in a separate article and we are doing it here.

On the image above you can see the specifications of a Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU and on the right form Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 Desktop GPU. While these two are similar, they are not the same GPU specs wise and we are not talking about operating frequencies only. The Laptop GPU model has less CUDA Cores compared to the Desktop GPU and is also clocked much lower in terms of operating frequencies for both the graphics processor and for the memory. The video memory used is GDDR6 on both GPUs, but the mobile version has the memory running at lower frequency as compared to the desktop variant, just like the with the GPU. The more important thing here is that the memory bus is also the same 256-bit on both as memory-intensive crypto algorithms like Ethash do take advantage from a wider memory bus.

The lower operating frequencies are used in order to significantly reduce the power usage of the RTX 3070 Laptop GPU that uses between 80W and 95W in the gaming laptop we tested it on. Notebook manufacturers however have a wide range of GPU power usage to play with and thus operating frequencies from model to model may vary and performance can also be lower or higher. So, a larger 17-inch gaming laptop can allow for better cooling and thus the GPU can have a higher TGP rating and use more power than on a 15.6-inch model and that could result in a bit of extra performance boost.

What you should pay attention to here is that all of the RTX 30 series Laptop GPUs from Nvidia are using GDDR6 memory, there is no GDDR6X or a memory bus that is wider than 256-bit, even on the RTX 3080 Laptop GPU! There is also no RTX 3060 Ti mobile version, but a plain RTX 3060 Laptop GPU based on the upcoming RTX 3060 desktop counterparts at the end of this month. The RTX 3060 Laptop GPU comes with further reduced memory bus at just 192-bit, so that will mean lower Ethereum mining hashrate compared to the RTX 3070 Laptop GPU that uses the same GDDR6 memory, but comes with a 256-bit memory bus. The lower number of CUDA cores will not make a difference in terms of ETH mining hashrate, because the GPU has more than enough performance as far as Ethereum mining is concerned… even at the lowered clocks that the mobile GPUs have.

The biggest looser here is probably the RTX 3080 Laptop GPU that comes with GDDR6, instead of the GDDR6X video memory on the desktop version, and has just a 256-bit memory bus instead of the 320-bit for the desktop. This and with the lower clocks mean significantly reduced Ethereum hashrate and nowhere near what we’ve seen on the desktop RTX 3080 GPU that is probably the best in terms of price/performance (if you manage to get your hands on one at all) for ETH mining. With these specs the RTX 3080 Laptop GPU will perform more like what a desktop RTX 3070 GPU is capable of delivering as mining hashrate for Ethereum and not like what a “real” RTX 3080 video card does. With all that said, if you are going for a gaming laptop and plan on using it for crypto mining Ethereum (ETH) your best bet will most likely be the mid-range GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU, both in terms of price and in terms of performance.

How about the mining performance that each of the Nvidia GeForcve RTX 30 Series Laptop GPUs should be capable of delivering for Ethereum in terms of hashrate? Well, although things may vary a bit from laptop to laptop because of the variable power usage configured and the respective operating frequencies the numbers below should give you a good idea on what to expect from these Laptop GPUs as far as ETH mining is concerned. If used for GPU-intensive crypto algorithm, the mining performance will not be that much dependant on the video memory type, bus and frequency, but will also depend on the GPU’s number of CUDA cores and operating frequency as well and things may be different there. Here however the focus is Ethereum mining and the hashrate you get from these mobile graphics adapters found in the latest wave of gaming laptops that are just starting to become available on the market. We are using the latest PhoenixMiner AMD and Nvidia GPU mining software for our Ethereum performance tests and it has proven to work very well with the RTX Laptop GPUs as well as with their desktop counterparts in our experience.

GeForce RTX 3060 Laptop GPU:
– Stock ETH hashrate: 34 MH/s
– Optimized ETH hashrate: 38 MH/s

GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU:
– Stock ETH hashrate: 45 MH/s
– Optimized ETH hashrate: 50 MH/s

GeForce RTX 3080 Laptop GPU:
– Stock ETH hashrate: 49 MH/s
– Optimized ETH hashrate: 56 MH/s

The above hashrates are for GPUs in gaming notebooks with VRAM at 1500 MHz default for the RTX 3060 Laptop GPU and RTX 3070 Laptop GPU and 1750 MHz for the RTX 3080 Laptop GPU. The optimized hashrates are for overclocked video memory with +650 MHz in MSI Afterburner as this seems to be the sweet spot for mobile GPUs from the RTX 30 series, unlike +1100 MHz that seems to be the sweet spot for RTX 30 series desktop GPUs. the RTX 30 Series Laptop GPUs simply cannot seem to do as good as their desktop counterparts with +700 MHz or higher overclock, they just start to freeze, so the optimized mining hashrate is not that much higher with them as on the desktop versions.

Still, a good deal of extra performance with the same power consumption as it is already pretty well optimized for the laptop and you cannot easily try to change it other than maybe flashing a different video BIOS, though this is not something that we would recommend as it can cause you problems including with properly starting up the laptop. There are some people that report successfully flashing video BIOSes from other gaming laptops with higher power limit and higher clocks, but although that may be helpful for gaming purposes, it will most likely not give you advantage for mining Ethereum. What might be more beneficial is if you manage to successfully flash a video BIOS for the same GPU model, but with lower power limit. This may help you get better efficiency while still maintaining the same level of Ethereum mining performance and can also help keep things cooler and quieter. But then again this should be avoided as it may render your laptop unusable if it ends up not working as you expected it!

– More on Mining Ethereum with RTX 3070 Laptop GPU on a Gaming Notebook…

720 MHs Ethereum Mining Rig With 6x MSI GeForce RTX 3090 SUPRIM X 24G GPUs

23, Jan 2021

The MSI GeForce RTX 3090 SUPRIM X 24G (Nvidia RTX 3090 or GA102 graphics processor) features 10496 CUDA cores with 1860 MHz Boost clock for the GPU, it has 328 TMUs and 112 ROPs, the SM count is 82, there are 328 Tensor cores and 82 RT cores. The card is equipped with 24GB GDDR6X video memory with 384-bit wide memory bus running at 1219 MHz with 19.5 Gbps effective memory speed for a whooping bandwidth of 936.2 GB/s. Normally the RTX 3090 GPUs are rated at 350W TDP and need 2x 8-Pin PCI-E power connectors, but these SUPRIM X cards have a TDP of 420W and feature 3x 8-pin PCI-E power connectors. This is important as it means that you would need 18x 8-pin PCI-E power connectors and a powerful enough power supply or actually two for that matter to make your life easier. The cooler of the video cards is massive and very effective, there is a backplate with heatpipes on the back and triple fans with dual ball-bearings to keep things cool and not very noisy even when running at 100% speeds. Keeping everything operating at low temperatures is very important when mining and especially with powerful GPUs that use a lot of power. The GeForce RTX 3090 SUPRIM X 24G is easily cooled as far as the GPU is concerned as the operating temperatures at stock settings are quite low, but the issue that needs to be addressed with RTX 3090 is also keeping the GDDR6X memory chips as cool as possible. The video memory gets hot, especially when using the card to mine Ethereum (ETH) and you can experience hashrate drops if they get too hot, not to mention that they can give you further trouble if not properly cooled while mining in the not-so-distant future.

Why use Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090 video cards for mining when they are much more expensive than Nvidia RTX 30 series GPUs and when we know that they are not going to offer us the best price/performance match for Ethereum (ETH) crypto mining. At the moment with all the GPU shortages on the markets it is you mine with what you can get and if it is RTX 3090 then it is RTX 3090. Of course, there are options that offer better price/performance ratio such as RTX 3080, RTX 3070 and even the RTX 3060 Ti, but the RTX 3080 is definitely the best choice you have, but then again it is also the hardest if not impossible to find at the moment. The runner up is the RTX 3060 Ti as it is the cheapest 30-series GPU to give you really high hashrate for Ethereum mining, but another one that is also very hard to find. So, it seems that the RTX 3090 are easier to find because of their very high price with RTX 3070 cards also more easily popping up from time to time, unlike the RTX 3080 or RTX 3060 Ti. The Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090 is definitely the fastest video card for Ethereum mining at the moment with its stock hashrate of roughly 105 MHS at default settings, but you can tweak it a bit to get up to around 120 MHS. If you manage to get your hands on RTX 3080 GPUs then do not hesitate as these are significantly cheaper and can still provide you with about 90-95 MHS hashrate with tweaked settings.

As already mentioned, the MSI GeForce RTX 3090 SUPRIM X 24G GPU is capable of giving you around 105 MHS hashrate for Ethereum mining out of the box at stock settings and that means about 400W of power usage per GPU. With a bit of tweaking, you can get better hashrate and with a lower power usage – lower electricity expenses and better cooling for long term mining operation without problems. On the RTX 3090 it is a wise idea to go for 100% speed of the cooling fans, so make sure you get GPUs with good quality ball-bearing fans (yes, there are RTX 3090 GPUs with sleeve bearings being sold by some brands!!!). We start by lowering the Power Limit level down until we see the hashrate starting to drop below the MHS we get at stock settings, in the case of the MSI RTX 3090 GPUs this happened at around 65% TDP. So, with 35% less power used we can still get 105 MHS mining Ethereum (ETH) with RTX 3090, meaning there is no reason whatsoever to waste any extra power without any additional performance. Then it is time to overclock the video memory and at some point, we may also need to bump up the TDP level with a few percent to allow more headroom due to the increased memory power consumption for the extra hashrate. The settings below for the MSI RTX 3090 SUPRIM X GPUs provide us with a hashrate of 120.9 MHS per GPU mining Ethereum or for the whole 6x GPU mining rig we get a little over 720 MHS total and that is an impressive number for a single mining rig with just six video cards in it.

Optimized RTX 3090 Mining Settings:
– TDP: 73%
– GPU: -400 MHz
– VRAM: +1100 MHz
– FANs: 100%

With these settings PhoenixMiner reports a bit over 1800W of total power usage for the six GPUs with a little over 300W per GPU, but measuring the power consumption at the wall and taking into account the other components in the mining rig as well as the power supply efficiency the total power usage for the whole rig is more like 2100 Watts, the energy you end up paying for. This means that a single 2000W PSU such as Leadex Super Flower 2000W is not enough (we know, we tested it) with the following settings. If you drop down the Power Limit to about 65% you can manage with a single really good 2000W PSU, but it will be pushed near its limit, so not a good idea on the long term for a number of reasons. Not to mention the fact that a single even 2000W PSU does not come with enough 8-pin PCI-E power connectors and using cable splitters on such power-hungry GPUs is never a good idea as it could cause issues with the power cables or PSU connectors burning. What you need to just do is add a second less powerful PSU, so we ended up doing 4 GPUs on the 2000W Leadex and then added a second Corsair 1200W PSU for the remaining two cards. This way the mining rig can work well even at 100% TDP with full load without having trouble with the power supplies, just know to be on the safe side that even 2x 1200W power supplies might be on the edge, so consider going with a bit more powerful PSUs to be on the safe side.

Based on our experience so far, the +1100 MHz memory overclock seems to be the sweet spot for the RTX 3090 and also in general for other Nvidia GeForce RTX 30 series GPUs in terms of performance, stability and operating temperatures when using the cards to mine Ethereum. Sure, it is possible to get a bit higher operating frequency up to about +1300 MHz on some GPUs, but not all may work stable and frankly we are more concerned about the operating temperatures of the GDDR6X chips when overclocking too much. Higher operating frequency means higher temperature and more power used, not to mention that the extra boost of about 1-2 MHS you get by pushing the video memory further may not be worth the trouble. So, single MSI GeForce RTX 3090 SUPRIM X 24G video card doing 120 MHS at a little more than 300W of power used for mining Ehtereum (ETH) and a 6x GPU rug with Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090 cards doing 720 MHS in total is definitely impressive performance. The GeForce RTX 3090 GPUs are a little graphical performance monsters and that goes not only for memory intensive crypto algorithms like Ethash, but for more GPU intensive ones as well. That would of course need some more time testing and experimenting with and may need different GPU/VRAM/TDP settings for the cards in order to maximize performance in a specific algorithm…

– For more information about MSI GeForce RTX 3090 SUPRIM X 24G GPUs…
– To Download the latest PhoenixMiner 5.5b AMD and Nvidia Ethereum (ETH) miner…


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