Posts Tagged ‘Radeon R9 280X

We are back to VertCoin (VTC) mining using the new VertHash algorithm, but this time we are going old-school to AMD Radeon R9 280X and the performance these old, but gold video cards from the earlier days of crypto mining can deliver mining VTC at the moment. We have already tested mining VertCoin (VTC) on AMD Radeon 400/500 series of 4GB GPUs and the results were pretty good, but it seems that the R9 280X are still too early to retire even though they have been announced more than 7 years ago back in 2013. Hell, even going further back to the Radeon HD 7970 GPUs that were used for Bitcoin mining back in the early days of crypto we can get pretty much the same results as with the “newer” AMD Radeon R9 280X, so dig these up as well if you still have them around somewhere.

The VertHash algorithm is a memory-intensive one with a minimum requirement of 2GB of video memory, so even older video cards with 2GB or 3GB can be used for mining VertCoin (VTC) after its recent fork from the previous LyraRev3 algorithm. Mining with VerthashMiner on AMD Radeon RX 570 4GB GPU at stock settings gives around 350 KH/s and with modified video BIOS with optimized memory timings the hashrate goes to about 450 KH/s. The old AMD Radeon R9 280X with 3GB VRAM can manage around 360-370 KH/s mining VTC at the stock settings of 925 MHz for the GPU and 1375 MHz for the video memory, but overclocking it to 1050 MHz for the GPU and 1500 MHz for the video memory can easily get you around 400 KH/s mining hashrate. Checking the profitability of a 6x Radeon R9 280X GPUs in a mining rig, and after paying for electricity, can currently earn around $5-6 USD per day (depending on electricity costs).

Make sure you use the latest VerthashMiner v0.6.2 For Mining VertCoin (VTC)…

claymore-xpm-gpu-miner

Primecoin (XPM) was one of the crypto currencies that was able to hold the front for no GPU miners for quite some time and it was only mineable with CPU however for a few weeks already it is possible to mine it with GPU as well. The first GPU miner “available” was Primegpu, supporting only solo mining and requiring the users to buy a license for the miner at 25 XPM per GPU it dd not seem very reasonable thing to do, so we have skipped it. The good thing is that there is already a new open source project that supports GPU mining, so far only solo mining, that may not be the fastest solution, but available for free, so you can test it yourself. The third GPU miner available is called Claymore XPM GPU Miner and this one has two versions, one for solo and one for pool mining with support for ypool.net, this is the miner we have been testing the last few days. Do note that this miner has a 10% developer fee that goes to the author of the project in order to keep him motivated to develop it even further and we consider this approach to be the much better choice than to have to pay for a license. The only drawback is that the miner is only available for Windows.

If you are wondering what version to use, then you should consider what is the number of GPUs that you have available and want to throw at mining XPM. If you are using one or two GPUs then you probably will be better off using the pool version at ypool as it should give you more constant earnings. If you are going to be using more and more powerful GPUs you may try solo mining, it has higher risk, but can also bring you much better profitability. We have tested the miner with a single Radeon R9 280X GPU at the ypool in order to see what we can expect to get for 24 hours and we ran the test for 48 hours. The reason for that is due to ypool’s way of calculating share value – it is accumulated for the last 160 rounds, so you start with lower earnings per block and after 160 rounds you can get a better estimate on per round earnings you are going to be getting if you continue mining. This way the first 24 hours will bring you less mined XPM coins than what you will get in the next 24 hours and after that, so give it a bit more time in order to see what profitability is going to be just like we did.

GPU mining Primecoin with a single Radeon R9 280X:
– First 24 hours mining at ypool: 1.78 XPM or ~ 0.136 LTC
– Next 24 hours mining at ypool: 2.31 XPM or ~ 0.177 LTC
– 24 hours mining directly for Litecoin: 0.1164 LTC

So it seems that GPU mining for Primecoin (XPM) can offer a nice boost in terms of profitability over direct LTC mining for the moment. And with some good luck and ore GPUs you might be lucky enough to get close to double the direct LTC mining profitability. Solo mining with more GPUs could also prove to be a good thing to try, but as we’ve said the luck there plays a much bigger role, and the higher the risk, the higher the chances for even better profitability as well. Solo mining is not recommended for a single or two GPUs as there the risk is much higher as it may take significantly more time to find a block and you may give up early and loose some precious mining time ending up with nothing.

You can download the latest version of the Claymore XPM GPU Miner for Windows OS here…

cudaminer-scrypt-mining-nvidia-gpu

While GPU mining still does work better on AMD-based graphics processors using OpenCL, the latest versions of the CUDAminer software intended for use on Nvidia-based graphics cards has gone through a good performance optimization and it makes mining with CUDA a good option if you have some spare and unused Nvidia GPUs. The fact tha there are still shortages of the Radeon R9 280X graphics cards on the market – the all-round best performer for Scrypt GPU mining makes the alternative to mine coins with Nvidia GPU a decent alternative. Of course the price/performance ratio of an Nvidia GPU versus and AMD GPU for mining is still in favor of AMD graphics. You can expect to get about 550-560 KH/s from a stock (non overclocked) Nvidia GeForce GTX 780 Ti graphics card, while the same performance is easily achievable with a much cheaper stock AMD Radeon R9 280X card. If you however have a watercooled 780 Ti and overclock it well, you might be able to reach hashrate close to about 900 kHash/s according to the author of the software. Regardless, if you already have a CUDA-capable graphics processor why not put it to some mining work to get some extra crypto coins, it also makes for a good option to try out new pools or alternative cryptos…

One of the best things about the CUDAminer software is that it automatically detects the best settings for your graphics card, so that after yo run it the software can squeeze out the maximum mining performance automatically for you. This takes the guesswork and a lot of time spent for testing different settings, though you can still do that if you wish to fine tune things. One of the still missing important features from this miner is the failover pool switching to backup pools in case of a problem with the current mining pool. CUDAminer already has support for scrypt mining with N=1024 (LiteCoin and many, many other scrypt clones like DOGE for example), scrypt-jane mining (Yacoin and several clones), scrypt mining with larger N (VertCoin) and the recently released MaxCoin mining (SHA-3 i.e. Keccak256). So you will be up to speed even with the latest alternative crypto currencies such as VertCoin and MaxCoin that have generated quite some buzz in the last few days. Below you can download the latest binary for windows of CudaMiner or you can compile it yourself from the (source).

Update: CudaMiner is now an old and non supported anymore miner for Nvidia GPUs, you should switch to the more recent and supported ccMiner instead in order to get better support, including for newer mining algorithms and coins, as well as faster hashrates for your Nvidia-based GPU mining rigs!

Download the latest CUDAminer 2014-02-28 Nvidia GPU mining software…


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