It Is All About BTC, LTC, ETH, DOGE, KAS mining as well as other alternative crypto currencies
Dual-mining or mining two different crypto currencies at the same time is a good way to optimize the performance and profitability of your GPU mining hardware, especially at times like now when the profitability from mining is low. Zilliqa or ZIL has added a new level of the traditional dual mining where you normally mine a GPU coin and a Memory coin on the same GPU, because it is mined for just a minute every two hours. This way you can dual-mine ETC + ZIL without losing almost any of your hashpower for the second coin, but also you can add a third coin in the mix, a GPU-heavy coin and thus try to even further improve your profitability. Dual-mining is also possible on some ASIC miners as well such as the iPollo series of ETC/ETH miners where you can mine an Ethash or ETChash crypto coin together with ZIL, thus getting an extra 30% higher profit compared to just normal mining.
Kaspa or KAS is an interesting and still highly unnoticed project that is just recently starting to gain attention not only form miners, but from investors as well. A couple of days ago we have discussed how you can start mining Kaspa (KAS) and since then the coin has pretty much doubled in trading price and was going up in a market conditions where most other crypto coins were going down. So, if you still haven’t checked out Kaspa (KAS) and its very fast block times and transfer on-chain, then you should do so as it will become even faster in the near future. Also, do not miss your chance to mine some coins now as well and make some really nice profit in the future!
We are not going to focus on KAS now, here we are going to be talking about Dual-Mining ETC and KAS as well as Tripple-Mining ETC + KAS + ZIL. Etereum Classic (ETC) uses the memory heavy Etchash algorithm while Kaspa (KAS) relies on the kHeavyHash algorithm for mining which is a GPU heavy one, so they are a great combo together for dual-mining and adding Zilliqa (ZIL) on top of these two makes a great mining threesome for optimal performance and profit. You can of course use not only ETC, but other Ethash or ETChash crypto to pair up with KAS and ZIL for triple mining, so the choice is up to you. To answer your question before you ask, yes, we are currently mining ETC + KAS + ZIL on our Nvidia mining GPUs.
We are going to focus on using lolMiner for dual-mining and triple mining here (latest version 1.62), although other miners such as Gminer and Bzminer for instance also support dual and/or triple mining and the procedure there is similar, although the command line to run the miner might be different. Currently we like the stability and performance of lolMiner the best as far as Kaspa mining is concerned, but feel free to use a different miner if you prefer it over lolMiner. The examples below use the Ezil.me mining pool for Dual mining ETC + ZIL and the WoolyPooly pool for mining KAS, other mining pools should work, but may require a bit of a different configuration settings. Do not forget to replace ETC_WALLET, ZIL_WALLET, KASPA_WALLET and WORKER with your own wallets for the respecitve crypto currency as well as the name or number of your machine as worker.
ETC + KAS Dual Mining:
lolMiner.exe --algo ETCHASH --pool eu.ezil.me:3333 --user ETC_WALLET.WORKER --dualmode KASPADUAL --dualpool pool.eu.woolypooly.com:3112 --dualuser KASPA_WALLET.WORKER
ETC + KAS + ZIL Triple Mining:
lolMiner.exe --algo ETCHASH --pool eu.ezil.me:4444 --user ETC_WALLET.ZIL_WALLET.WORKER --enablezilcache --dualmode KASPADUAL --dualpool pool.eu.woolypooly.com:3112 --dualuser KASPA_WALLET.WORKER
Now, although we are showing you dual and triple mining configurations, it is really pointless not to take advantage of the triple mining option as it will only benefit you even more as ZIL mining hardly affects the mining performance of the two other coins and the extra profit it will bring you is definitely worth it!
So, with the above settings the miner will try to maximize the ETC mining hashrate and fill in the available GPU resources with some KAS calculations, thus you will be getting pretty much the same hashrate for ETC and about 1/4 to 1/5 of the usual KAS hashrate compared to KAS only mining. On a rig with 6x RTX 3080 GPUs that do 570 MH/s ETC only or 5500 MH/s KAS only we are getting around 565 MH/s ETC and around 1400 MH/s KAS hashrate in triple mining plus an extra up to 30% profit from the mined ZIL in triple mining mode (without the ZIL in dual mining only). On different GPUs your results may vary of course, especially on slower video cards, but the extra hashrate and profit should still be worth it.
In terms of the mining settings, you need to just return the GPU clock to its default value if you were downclocking it for ETC/ETH mining previously, the memory clock and the power limit levels should remain the same as for ETC/ETH mining. You could of course increase the power limit in order to get some extra hashrate for KAS, but that will also lead to increased power usage as well. The idea is to keep the ETC/ETH mining settings including the power limit, so that you would actually get more mined with the same power usage as if you were just ETC mining for instance.
The “Zombie Mode” for mining Ethereum on 4GB AMD Radeon RX 470/480 and RX 570/580 GPUs had them brought back from the dead (hence the name) after the DAG size has reached the capacity of their video memory. Using it you can still not only mine ETH, but still make a nice profit doing so, even with the reduced hashrate you are getting. Even though the 4GB cards can still work their hashrate and profitability will continue to drop down with each new DAG epoch (current DAG is 393), the development of mining software and more specifically the “Zombie Mode” continues. Here comes the latest lolMiner 1.21 for Windows and especially LolMiner 1.22 for Linux that brings significant performance improvements for the “Zombie Mode” for mining Ethereum (ETH), currently doubling the hashrate and extending the mining life of 4GB Radeons for a couple more DAG epochs with higher hashrate. And if this all seems too good to be true, well, it kind of is as there is a catch…
Currently mining ETH with AMD Radeon RX 470/480 or RX 570/580 GPUs with 4GB VRAM should be giving you a hashrate of about 13-14 MHS for Ethash per GPU connected via a x1 PCI-E riser and using a mining software that supports “Zombie Mode” mining. Using the latest LolMiner 1.22 under a Linux especially you can get a significantly improved performance using the “Zombie Mode” on RX 400/500 GPUs for mining ETH… up to double what you are normally getting. It is even easier to try it with the help of Linux-based OSes such as HiveOS and SMOS that have already updated with support for the latest LolMiner. If you are trying HiveOS for a first time you can use the promo code CMB10USDPROMO to register that will give you $10 USD in your account balance.
We already mentioned that there is a catch. In order to get the extra performance gain you must use a high interconnect bandwidth to connect the VGA to the motherboard, so something like at least 4x, x8 or x16 PCI-E extender or the GPU connected directly to the motherboard. The extra performance gain will NOT WORK for video cards that are connected through low-bandwidth x1 PCI-E extenders as is the case in 99% of mining rigs unfortunately, so these will remain running with the same mining performance as with earlier versions of LolMiner using the “Zombie Mode”.
Trying the new LolMiner with MSI Radeon RX 470 VGA with 4GB video memory that is directly connected to the motherboard on a x16 PCI-E slot we got 27.27 MH/s hashrate. The same video card connected with x1 PCI-E riser does just 13.xx MHS, we get about than double the current hashrate and very close to what these 4GB GPUs were capable of delivering before the DAG size moved past 4GB. Do note however that this new performance boost will not continue forever, in fact it is going to be available just a few more DAG epochs and upgrading existing mining rigs with the GPUs connected to high bandwidth slots is another issue just making things much harder. And the extra performance boost will be available for just about a month and a half before you get back to the same level of performance you are currently getting with “Zombie Mode” on x1 PCI-E extenders.
New Zombie Mod Performance:
– DAG Epoch 393: 27 MH/s
– DAG Epoch 400: 21-22 MH/s
– DAG Epoch 405: 14 MH/s
– To Download the latest lolMiner 1.21/1.22 for Windows/Linux with Updated “Zombie Mode”…
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…