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Posts Tagged ‘Gigabyte’
One of the most popular NVidia RTX 30 series of GPUS for mining crypto and more specifically for mining Ethereum (ETH) lately has been the RTX 3060 Ti, so no wonder these are hard to find as they are generally cheaper than RTX 3070, but have the same memory and performance for Ethash as the 70s. We’ve managed to get our hands on one Gigabyte AORUS GeForce RTX 3060 Ti MASTER (GV-N306TAORUS M-8GD) video card in order to play around with and share some interesting information, mining settings and performance results with anyone that might be interested.
The AORUS GeForce RTX 3060 Ti MASTER model from Gigabyte comes with a really huge cooler that has three fans with interesting overlapping design, plus it offers six video output connectors and one interesting feature – a user controllable LCD display on the side of the card. And as already mentioned, thanks to the 8GB GDDR6 memory with a 256-bit wide bus this RTX 3060 Ti should also be capable of delivering about 60 MH/s hashrate for mining Ethereum (ETH). The RTX 3060 Ti however has a more stripped-down graphics processor compared to the RTX 3070. While that shouldn’t be much of a problem for Ethereum mining, the video card however will be slower in more GPU-intensive algorithms compared to RTX 3070!
The user programmable LCD display on the side of the video card is controlled through Gigabyte’s RGBFusion 2.0 software that is also used for the addressable RGB operation for the motherboard RGB and fans connected to it. The software allows you to use the display to show things such as GPU Temp, GPU Usage, GPU Clock, Fan Speed, VRAM USAGE, VRAM CLOCK, TGP, FRAME-RATE and you can also put a custom image or animated GIF file to be shown on the display and some more. For a mining rig having a display that shows individual operational GPU temperature or FAN speed could be quite nice if you have the functionality already on the video card, no wonder the first thing with did with the LCD display was to set it to show the temperature of the GPU.
What about mining hashrate for this Gigabyte AORUS GeForce RTX 3060 Ti MASTER 8G video card? This particular model is with 240W TDP by default (the 100% setting in MSI Afterburner) and you can go down as low as 100W and as high as 270W (-58% to +13%) and it is also clocked higher. As a comparison the reference design RTX 3060 Ti from Nvidia has just 200W TDP, so 20% higher power usage by default for this Gigabyte card and we don’t need the extra power usage for ETH mining. Anyway, the out of the box performance this video card is delivering is around 51 MHS at stock settings, but why settle for it when you can easily push it to 60 MHS and even reduce the power consumption as we have already seen playing around with Palit GeForce RTX 3070 GameRock GPUs for mining Ethereum.
Starting to optimize settings for better performance and higher hashrate for Ethereum mining on the RTX 3060 Ti we went down to 60% TDP with reduced GPU clock (-500 MHz) and increased memory clock (+1150 MHz) in order to get the expected 60 MHS hashrate. With Palit’s RTX 3070s we’ve seen similar settings, though there the TDP was lower at 50% TDP for the same 60 MHS performance. Do note that we needed +1150 MHz for the video memory here, even though out sweet spot of 1100 MHz will do just fine for 60 MHS when using a mining rig as the test setup was with a single card and the display connected to it – this means higher power load and a bit of a performance drop. So, in a 6x GPU mining rig running the memory with +1100 MHz you should still be able to get 60 MH/s Ethash mining hashrate.
Here we tested with fans running at 100% due to the small mini-ITX case the GPU was running in and the not so good airflow, though you should easily be able to run the cooling fans lower with the GPU in a mining rig with good airflow and still get things running cool. The massive cooler and the three fans do great job in keeping everything cool, especially with the optimized settings for mining that put the power usage of the GPU down to just about 140W as reported by the miner compared to the stock TDP of 240W.
– If You Are Interested in the ETH Mining Performance of Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090 GPUs…
- Published in: Mining Hardware|Tests and Reviews
- Related tags: AORUS, Gigabyte, Gigabyte AORUS GeForce RTX 3060 Ti MASTER, Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 Ti, Nvidia RTX 3060 Ti, RTX 3060 Ti, RTX 3060 Ti ETH hashrate, RTX 3060 Ti ETH mining setting, RTX 3060 Ti Ethash hashrate, RTX 3060 Ti Ethash mining hashrate, RTX 3060 Ti Ethash mining performance, RTX 3060 Ti Ethash mining settings, RTX 3060 Ti Ethereum hashrate, RTX 3060 Ti Ethereum mining settings, RTX 3060 Ti mining, RTX 3060 Ti mining settings
It seems that Gigabyte is getting more serious in trying to get more of the mining market share for motherboards after they have left AsRock to dominate the mining motherboard market for a long time. They even lost positions to their main competitor – Asus and many other smaller manufacturers that entered the mining market. Gigabyte has been trying to get back on track with the last year’s release of the affordable Gigabyte GA-H110-D3A 6x PCI-E GPU Mining Motherboard and now it seems the company is also targeting the market for more than 6/8/9 GPUs on a single motherboard as well with their new Gigabyte GA-B250-FinTech motherboard for up to 12 video cards.
The new mining motherboard is based on the Intel B250 Express Chipset and is meant for use with Intel LGA1151 processors and DDR4 system memory. It comes with DSUB and DVI video outputs for the built in Intel graphics inside the CPU and there are two extra onboard 4-pin Molex power connectors for use if you don’t rely on powered PCI-E risers (not a very wise idea for 12 video cards), so you may skip them and just stick with powered risers. The rest is pretty standard configuration, though we should note that the motherboard does not seem to have an M.2 slot, so no option for extra 13th GPU or the ability to use an M.2 SSD drive and cut on extra cables.
The key selling point for Gigabyte with their GA-B250-FinTech 12x PCI-E mining motherboard is the cost savings you get when you use 12 video cards on a single board compared to two rigs with 6 cards each. While this is true, it is also worthwhile noting that 12 GPU mining rigs are larger and harder to maintain and support in case of trouble such as failed cheap Gigabyte Windforce fans for example.
Gigabyte is providing the so called Mining Kit with the GA-B250-FinTech motherboard that consists of a Front Panel Switch Card that comes with Power and Reset buttons. While this seems usable and convenient, it is actually not that functional as the board plugs into the Front Panel connector on the motherboard, so it will most likely still end under a GPU or near a PSU and it will not be very convenient for use. Getting a power button or even a power and reset button would be useful if they are with a decent length cable and you get the ability to position the button(s) in a convenient position on your rig. There are number of different mining rig designs, so adding useful flexibility with a power and/or reset buttons might be really useful, but not that much in the case of the Gigabyte Front Panel Switch Card. Sometimes one would think that these companies just don’t know what they are doing with their products, but then again they can always ask for help and support some miners to give them advice on what and how to do.
The other piece of hardware, if we can call it like that, that you get with the mining motherboard as a part of the Mining Kit is the 3-in-1 PSU Power-On Adapter. It is essentially a cable that allows you to power on one or two extra PSUs as soon as the main power supply turns on and this one is actually useful to have, especially if you build 12x GPU mining rig as you will most likely need more connectors than a single or even two power supplies can provide (depending on the GPUs you are using of course). So good job on this one Gigabyte, but you still might want to rethink the idea you have for the front panel switch card or actually make it more useful and functional for a wider number of users.
The last probably useful feature in the new Gigabyte GA-B250-FinTech motherboard for miners is the Mining Mode in the BIOS. A setting that should in theory make it easier for miners to setup the motherboard for use in mining rigs without having trouble when using more video cards, up to 12, though you can still use this motherboard with a smaller number of GPUs as well. The Mining Mode in BIOS has been available for a while on some Gigabyte motherboards that were not designed especially as mining motherboards, but have been proven to work well as such, so it is nothing that new anyway. People that have used Gigabyte motherboards for building mining rigs are probably already familiar with using that mode in the BIOS.
– For more details about the Gigabyte GA-B250-FinTech 12x PCI-E Mining Motherboard…
The chances are not many of you have heard about the Gigabyte GA-H110-D3A motherboard that is intended for 6x GPU mining rigs and the reason for that is probably the fact that Gigabyte hasn’t been promoting this product much as a mining motherboard. Gigabyte is a bit late on the GPU mining front with a motherboard designed for mining rigs with the GA-H110-D3A, even though the motherboard comes with up to date specs. That however does not mean that the company hasn’t been offering other higher-end products that are good to go for use for crypto mining, there are quite a few of these already and we have been using some of the models ourselves. The GA-H110-D3A however is still new for us and we are going to be giving it a try and sharing our experience with the motherboard pretty soon anyway.
The key thing about the Gigabyte GA-H110-D3A is that it comes at an attractive price and has all the features you need in order to build a regular GPU mining rig with 6x video cards. It is a basic motherboard with 6x PCI-E slots (single x16 and five x1 slots) that needs to be durable and reliable and be cost effective, so no shiny extras that you won’t be needing anyway for mining. The motherboard comes with a M.2 slot allowing you to use SSD in that format and save some extra space and cabling, especially power cables as they may be a problem in some situations. There are also a couple of things to make the product more attractive marketing wise, though you probably won’t benefit much from them such as USB 3.1 Gen1 support, high quality onboard audio design or a Realtek Gigabit LAN with cFosSpeed internet accelerator software. Some of the extra features might be actually helpful however such as Humidity Protection Glass Fabric PCB, High ESD Ethernet & USB Port Protection or High Temperature Protection Lower RDS(on) MOSFETs Design as often mining rigs are not working in the best possible conditions.
Gigabyte has an interesting microsite for mining that is centered on the H110-D3A motherboard, but also has some more useful information for other of the company’s products that can be used for mining. The most interesting part is probably the table listing 12 different Gigabyte motherboards with information on what BIOS version to use for mining and how many GPUs can be used on the specific model. Do note that there are some motherboards that do require the use of additional M.2 to PCI-E adapter in order to reach the listed number of GPUs. For example the Z170-Gaming K3 is one of the board that we have used a lot for 6x GPU mining that did not have support for more than six video cards up until BIOS F22, but now Gigabyte seems to be saying that it will work with F23a using an additional M.2 to PCI-E adapter (something we need to test). There are even some motherboards for up to 9x GPUs with dual M.2 adapters like the Z170X-Gaming 5 and Z170X-Gaming 6, though you might actually have a problem using all 9 under Windows for example.
– Here is the Gigabyte microsite with some information and tips regarding mining motherboards…