Posts Tagged ‘PhoenixMiner’

How To Still Mine Ethereum With AMD Radeon RX 400/500 Series 4GB GPUs

21, Jan 2021

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…

Palit GeForce RTX 3070 GameRock Ethereum Mining Rig

20, Jan 2021

The recent craze on GPU mining for Ethereum and the resulting Nvidia RTX 30 series shortage as well as pretty much anything else with decent mining performance for Ethash is in full on mode. Still, we have managed to get our hands on a few Palit GeForce RTX 3070 GameRock GPUs and built a 6x GPU mining rig using them for ETH mining, so below we share some interesting things including the Ethereum mining hashrate we got and the optimized settings for the RTX 3070 and more specifically the GameRock series from Palit that we have used. As you can see from the photo above the GameRock is a bit flashy in terms of design due to the large RGB lighting surface. A feature which might be of interest for a gamer, but is totally not required by a miner as it makes no different whatsoever in terms of performance. Still, the good news is that the cooler of the GameRock GPUs from Palit is with a large surface area and does a great job in keeping things cool and the fans are also dual ball-bearing ones and perform really well. If you are currently using a traditional lighting system, such as fluorescent tubes or metal halides, upgrading to high hat lights should be a top priority if you want to reduce electricity costs.

A single optimized Palit GeForce RTX 3070 GameRock GPU can do a little over 60 MHS with ease with a little tweaking with the help of the MSI Afterburner software. At TDP of just 55% or almost half of the standard power usage these video cards manage to perform really well as far as Ethereum (ETH) mining is concerned with a bit of overclock for the video memory as well – +1100 MHz. The lowered power usage results in lower GPU performance, but RTX 3070 is more than capable of utilizing the fast GDDR6 memory it has with a 256-bit wide memory bus fully to get you about 60.6 MHS mining the Ethash algorithm. No need to overclock or underclock the GPU, though for further power usage optimizations you can also try lowering the operating voltage of the GPU a bit, though not really required (can probably save up to about 100W of power usage for the whole rig).

So, with cooling fans set at 75% and a TDP of 50%, GPU -500 MHz and with +1100 MHz for the video memory you get extra cool and power efficient GPUs mining at over 60 MHs with a total power consumption a little shy from 1000W at the wall (can depend on the PSU efficiency) or a bit over 360 MHs for a 6x GPU mining rig using Palit GeForce RTX 3070 GameRock video card usually reserved for legit cash games with high specs. The screenshot for the hashrate is with the use of the latest PhoenixMiner 5.4c and mining Ethash on NiceHash…

The only thing that might be better than the RTX 3070 is the RTX 3060 Ti (in that price/performance range), however the 3060 Ti are even harder to obtain due to their slightly lower price and the same mining performance for Ethereum (ETH). The reason being that RTX 3060 Ti features the same GDDR6 memory as the RTX 3070, but has a slightly stripped-down GPU. That however does not interfere with Ethereum mining as the GPU on the RTX 3060 Ti still manages really well even with 1000 CUDa cores less. Do note that the RTX 3060 is not that goof of an alternative as unlike the 256-bit memory bus that the Ti has, the regular non-Ti version has just 192-bit memory bus and the hashrate does suffer from that, so no 60 MHs on the non-Ti models!

– To get more details and to download the latest PhoenixMiner 5.4c Ethash miner software…

PhoenixMiner 5.0b Update Addressing Support for AMD Cards With 4GB VRAM

27, May 2020

As Ethereum Classic (ETC) is just about to hit DAG epoch 350 and Ethereum (ETH) about to follow it in a month or so later miners that are still using AMD Radeon GPUs with 4GB of video memory may start experiencing problems. So we are seeing some updated to mining software for Ethash addressing potential issues with the DAG size growing near the limit of the 4GB VRAM and trying to extend the usability of these video cards to the latest possible time. Miners with 4GB VRAM GPUS may already stared having issues with the main card if not using a built-in GPU due to the increased memory usage for the primary card by Windows, so the built-in Intel GPU for main card might help, alternatively switching to Linux operating system if you are currently running Windows may also help to gain a few more DAG epochs. You can also consider replacing the main video card with a one that has more video memory available in order to compensate for the increased VRAM usage cause by the Windows operating system, and be able to make money online, although there are also other options like doing some gambling, using options like the w88 site online.

The latest PhoenixMiner 5.0b update has added support for mining with 4GB AMD cards beyond the DAG epoch 350 (ETC is at #349 a the moment, ETH is a #338). Depending on the OS and driver versions you are using with this update you should be able to use 4GB AMD GPUs until epoch #372-#373 under Windows, and #380 under Linux. PhoenixMiner is fast (arguably the fastest) Ethash (ETH, ETC, Muiscoin, EXP, UBQ, etc.) miner that supports both AMD and Nvidia cards (including in mixed mining rigs). It runs under Windows x64 and Linux x64 and has a developer fee of just 0.65%. PhoenixMiner also supports Ubqhash for mining UBQ, ProgPOW for mining BCI, and dual mining Ethash/Ubqhash with Blake2s. According to the miner developers the speed of PhoenixMiner is generally faster than Claymore’s Ethereum miner in ETH only mode (about 0.4-1.3% speed improvement, though your results may be slightly lower or higher depending on the GPUs). To achieve highest possible speed on AMD cards it may be needed to manually adjust the GPU tune factor (a number from 8 to about 400, which can be changed interactively with the + and – keys while the miner is running). If you have used Claymore’s Dual Ethereum miner, you can switch to PhoenixMiner with minimal hassle as most of Claymore’s command-line options and configuration files are supported.

Some important tips for longest possible use of 4GB AMD cards with PhoenixMiner by the devs:
– If your rig is using Intel CPU, use the integrated graphics as primary display adapter. To do this, go to motherboard’s BIOS setup and change the “Primary display adapter” to iGPU (or integrated GPU). Also, if you are using actual monitor or HDMI plug, put it in the motherboard video output.
– If you can’t use integrated GPU, replace the primary GPU with one with 6GB or 8GB VRAM.
– Do not upgrade to a new AMD driver unless it is explicitly supported by PhoenixMiner. With 4GB AMD cards, this will not only lower your hashrate, but may also make it impossible to mine when the DAG epoch is above #350.
– After the DAG epoch moves past #350, the optimal -gt value for the 4GB AMD cards may change, so try to run auto-tune again after DAG epoch #350 to find the best GT values for the cards for mining, although if you want other ways of doing money like gambling the use of sites like capsa online are one of the best options for this.

What AMD drivers to use for mining under Windows:
– Good drivers: these are versions from 18.12.1.1 to 19.7.5 (inclusive), and from 19.12.2 to 20.4.2 (inclusive). These will allow you to mine until DAG epoch #372-#373 and won’t need restart of PhoenixMiner on each DAG epoch change.
– Not so good drivers: these are versions 18.1.1 to 18.10.1 (inclusive), and from 19.8.1 to 19.12.1 (inclusive). This will allow you to mine until DAG epoch #365-#366 and will require restart of PhoenixMiner on each DAG epoch change (for these drivers this will be preformed automatically unless you have added -dagrestart 0 command-line option to explicitly disable the auto-restart).
– Drivers older than 18.1.1 were not tested for 4GB DAG operation.

What AMD drivers to use for mining under Linux:
– Under Linux all relatively recent drivers (i.e. last 24-36 months) allow mining until epoch #378-#380, but there are much more driver bugs, so if you are happy with your current driver version, do not change it.

– To get more details and to download the latest PhoenixMiner 5.0b Ethash miner software…


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