Crypto Mining Blog

The Rigel Nvidia GPU miner is a newcomer among the mining software solutions for GPU miners and more specifically for Nvidia GPU mining rig operators, but it is doing quite well in terms of competing with other older and more established and widely used miners. It does not support that many algorithms, but it is quickly introducing support for ones that are gaining a lot of user attention and the performance is really good. Not to mention that the miner comes with a nice text-based terminal user interface, is quite easy to use and comes with the right number of features including full overclocking set for the GPUs.

The Rigel miner also supports dual mining with Zilliqa (ZIL) as a means to further increase mining profitability as this dual-mining mode supports not only ethash and ethash, but any single or even dual algorithm combination + ZIL. Triple mining is supported for ethash + kheavyhash + zil and etchash + kheavyhash + zil, but that one is not actually that interesting of a mode compared to the dual-mining any algorithm with ZIL. The reason for that is due to the way ZIL is being mined – just a very short period of time every two hours, so essentially you retain the full hashrate of the main algorithm for mining the rest of the time and the extra profit from the mined ZIL is not something to miss.

In the last few versions ZIL mining was broken apparently, though the latest update of Rigel 1.3.4 brings it back working properly, so we are going to do a quick overview on how you can dual-mine Kaspa (KAS) with Zilliqa (ZIL), so that you can maximize your profit and get more than just single mining KAS. Now, Kaspa (KAS) and its kheavyhash algorithm is GPU-intensive, so you can optimize performance with a significant reduction in power usage compared to the normal settings for your video card. On the other end however you have Zilliqa (ZIL) that is a memory-intensive algorithm that just like Ethereum or any other Ethash-based crypto coin like ETC that is still mineable doesn’t need a lot of GPU power, but can benefit from maximum clock of the video memory.

So, how to combine these two seemingly opposite algorithms for dual-mining while getting optimal performance mining both? This is what we are going to take a look at now with the below example for dual-mining KAS + ZIL on an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 GPU, followed by explanation what and why is being used like that (the example is for windows, but the same settings should work on Linux as well). Make sure that in the example you set YOUR_KASPA_WALLET, YOUR_ZIL_WALLET and YOUR_WORKER_ID in order for the mining to properly start and you get the mined coins credited. We are using WoolyPooly as KAS mining pool and ShardPool for ZIL, though others should work as well (make sure you have the right settings for them):

rigel.exe -a kheavyhash+zil ^
-o [1]stratum+tcp://pool.woolypooly.com:3112 -u [1]YOUR_KASPA_WALLET ^
-o [2]zmp+tcp://eu1-zil.shardpool.io:3333 -u [2]YOUR_ZIL_WALLET ^
-w YOUR_WORKER_ID --log-file logs/miner.log ^
--cclock 300 ^
--lock-cclock [1]1710 --lock-mclock [1]807 ^
--lock-cclock [2]1200 --mclock [2]1000

Now, the cclock 300 option above sets the GPU clock offset in order for the video cards graphical processor to run at a lower voltage (it is set for all coins mined), do note that the 250-300 setting generally works well on most RTX 3070 GPUs, so test on your mining hardware and find what works stable for you. Since the first coin we are mining is KAS and we have it marked with [1] above then the lock-cclock [1]1710 and lock-mclock [1]807 options refer to the video card settings for Kaspa mining, setting the GPU clock locked at 1710 MHz and the memory clock to the minimum supported 807 MHz in order to reduce the power usage from the memory that we do not need much for the kheavyhash algorithm. The other line lock-cclock [2]1200 and mclock [2]1000 refers to the GPU settings for the second coin we are mining and in this case this is Zilliqa where we don’t need a higher clocked GPU, but could use a +1000 MHz overclock of the video memory over its stock settings in order to get the hashrate up to about 60 MH/s for an RTX 3070 GPU.

You will notice that mining with the settings used in the example above on RTX 3070 GPUs you will be getting around 90-95 Watts of power usage per GPU while mining KAS and when the ZIL switch occurs the different settings that will be applied will bring up the power usage to about 115-120 Watts (these can vary from GPU model to GPU model). So, there will be a slight increase of power usage for a couple of minutes in total on a daily basis and thus there will be not much of a difference in the overall power usage. While mining ZIL you will not be mining KAS, but again the switch is for a short period of time and the earnings for the mined ZIL should be able to compensate for the time you will not be mining KAS.

But why not leave the GPU settings for KAS mining for ZIL mining as well some of you may ask? Well, the answer is pretty simple – the ZIL mining performance will be very low due to the low memory setting we are using to save power when mining KAS. While Kaspa can be mined without performance loss at 807 MHz for the video memory, that operating frequency will result in just around 5 MH/s of hashrate per RTX 3070 GPU compared to round 60 MH/s when the memory is overclocked with 1000 extra MHz over its stock frequency on the same GPU. So, while you might be saving a little bit of power the hashrate will be so low that you might not be able to send even one share during the ZIL mining timeframe and thus you might just be wasting your time, unlike what the GPU can do at 60 MH/s. Just as a reference, in a single ZIL mining period (every two hours) a 6x RTX 3070 GPU mining rig should be able to currently mine 1-2 ZIL (depending on the number of shares you get).

– To download the latest Rigel 1.3.4 Nvidia GPU miner with ZIL dual-mining support…