Posts Tagged ‘Sapphire’

What About the Sapphire RX 570 16GB GPUs With ePIC Boost Miner for GRIN

7, Mar 2019

Back in January this year Sapphire, a popular name among AMD GPU miners, has announced their RX 570 GPUs with 16GB of video memory intended for use for GRIN crypto mining and more specifically the Cuckatoo31 algorithm that requires more video memory and can take advantage of the extra VRAM on these GPUs. This might have sounded interesting for some miners at least initially after the launch of the GRIN network and the hype and high initial price of the Grin coins, but things look different now. Miner developers have been able to optimize and enhance performance on 8GB+ Nvidia GPUs for the Cuckatoo 31 algorithm and the $399 USD mining GPU from Sapphire with just 6 months warranty already seems like a total joke when you compare performance…

The latest version of the miner specifically optimized for Grin mining on the Sapphire RX 570 16GB mining video cards ePIC Boost Miner supporting both Cuckaroo29 and Cuckatoo31 is apparently capable of delivering up to 2.6 G/s for Cuckaroo29 at 163W and up to 0.47 G/s for Cuckatoo31 at 195W if you have a top specs computer used for mining and not what a traditional GPU mining rig looks like. These results are for a mining rig with i5/i7/i9/Ryzen Multithreading CPU, PCIe 3.0 with Atomics and AMD ROCm Linux driver. If you use a low-end Celeron/Pentium CPU, like most GPU mining rigs do, PCIe 2.0 bus for the GPUs and the AMD GPU Pro driver you will be down to 1.5 G/s for Grin29 and 0.35 G/s for Grin31 according to the latest official performance results.

Now, how does an Nvidia GTX 1080 Ti with 11GB of video memory compare with the currently fastest Cuckatoo31 miner NBMiner 21.0 under Windows 10 on a normal low-end mining rig with a Celeron CPU. You can easily get about 1.3-1.35 G/s with about 200W of power usage (lowered down TDP of the GPU, up to about 1.45 G/s with stock TDP) to get similar power usage as with the AMD. You get almost three times the performance with the Nvidia at the same power usage with two to three times the price of the AMD mining GPU from Sapphire and without a number of specific requirements that are not easy for a lot of miners.

The answer to the question are the Sapphire RX 570 16GB mining GPUs worth it at the moment is a simple NO! But what about the performance for the upcoming Grin Cuckatoo 32 protocol upgrade planned for 2020… well, who knows, but what will you be doing by then?

Crypto Mining With Sapphire NITRO+ Radeon RX 580 Limited Edition

24, Apr 2017

As promised last week after the official announcement we are starting a series of reviews of the new AMD Radeon RX 5×0 series of GPUs and the first card to go through is the Sapphire NITRO+ Radeon RX 580 Limited Edition. This is one of the top models of RX 580 from Sapphire that comes with higher factory clocks compared to most other RX 580 GPUs and some nice additional extras such as spare fans. Compared to the last year’s Sapphire RX 480 NITRO+ the new RX 580 counterparts do come with higher clocks and improved cooling solution… and a bit higher price as well. The new RX 580 cards that are more like the last year’s RX 480 from Sapphire are now called PULSE and not NITRO and hopefully we are going to soon have a PULSE card to check out, but for now let us see what the NITRO+ Radeon RX 580 Limited Edition has to offer…

SAPPHIRE NITRO+ Radeon RX 580 8 GB Limited Edition:
– 2304 stream Processors
– 14 nm FinFET, 4th generation Graphics Core Next (GCN)
– 1450 MHz GPU Boost Clock
– 8192 MB GDDR5 Memory, 256 bit Memory Bus, 2000 MHz Memory Clock
– Display Outputs: 1x DL-DVI-D, 2x HDMI 2.0b, 2x DisplayPort 1.4
– All-new Dual-X 95 mm fans, two ball bearing
– Power connectors: 1x 6-pin PCI-E, 1x 8-pin PCI-E
– Power consumption: 225W
– Dual UEFI BIOS

The new larger cooler is a welcome improvement as are the the additional spare fans included in the package of the RX 580 NITRO+ LE GPUs, though the non Limited Edition RX 580 and the RX 570 NITRO+ also come with the same new cooler. Other notable difference however is the additional power connector found on the NITRO+ RX 5×0 series, they all feature a single 6-pin and a single 8-pin PCI-E power connectors. The extra power connector is needed due to the higher clocks and increased power consumption, however it can be a problem for miners willing to connect 6 of these cards with a single power supply. So do have that in mind as well as the fact that the PULSE series are with a single and not dual PCI-E power connectors.

Here is how things look according to GPU-Z for the GPU specs. The GPU clock is running perfectly fine at 1450 MHz and allows for some extra overclock to about 1500 MHz, though not much higher than that. The higher GPU clock comes with increased operating voltage of about 1.1750V and that also results in increased power usage, up to over 140W GPU only Power Draw according to GPU-Z. The video memory is running at 2000 MHz and we kind of expected to see Samsung GDDR5 memory used here, after all this is a more expensive top model from Sapphire of the new RX 580 and is also a Limited Edition one. Unfortunately Sapphire has opted to go for Hynix memory for this series and as a result you can expect not the best performance in memory intensive mining algorithms such as Ethash used by Ethereum or Equihash used by Zcash.

Now off to the benchmarks with some popular algorithms used by the most profitable to mine crypto currencies at the moment. Starting with Ethereum (ETH) mining using the latest Claymore Dual ETH miner version 9.2 and we are getting just about 22.5 MHS from the Sapphire NITRO+ Radeon RX 580 Limited Edition. This is with the stock settings, no memory modifications and is definitely a disappointing result, though considering that the memory used was Hynix at 2000 MHz it seems that the default memory timings are pretty relaxed in order to keep the hgiher operating frequency. Again going for Samsung memory on this Limited Edition model is a must do thing in our opinion, so we are wondering why Sapphire didn’t do just that…

We can see similar not so great result for mining ZEC using the latest Claymore ZCash AMD GPU Miner 12.4, but this is to be expected since the Equihash algorithm is also more memory intensive. The average hashrate we are getting for ZCash (ZEC) mining with this video card is about 296 H/s. The reason for the lower hashrate than what we have seen from some lower clocked RX 480 GPUs is again most likely the Hynix memory, but also the new driver that AMD has released with support for the RX 500 series might be responsible for the not so good mining hashrates and the official AMD Radeon Crimson ReLive Edition 17.4.3 driver for the RX 500 series is a WHQL one and may not be the best performing one for crypto currency mining.

Some more benchmark results at stock settings:
– Decred (DCR): 1.220 GHS
– CryptoNight (XMR): 600 H/s
– LBRY (LBC): 0.165 GHS
– Pascal (PASC): 0.830 GHS
– X11Ghost (SIB): 8.2 MHS

As far as optimizations go, you can play around with the memory straps and get better results. Furthermore reducing the GPU frequency from the default high value will also allow you to lower the voltage and achieve significantly lower power usage, especially if optimizing for ETH, though ZEC should also be fine with a bit higher voltage. Some people also report that the RX 580 LE card can run just fine on a single 8-pin PCI-E power, though should you try that make sure you have optimized the frequency and voltages of the GPU first in order to avoid overloading the power line…

As a conclusion we can say that the Sapphire NITRO+ Radeon RX 580 Limited Edition video cards although seemingly attractive for miners have been clearly designed for gamers and they will do pretty good for gaming with the higher operating clocks. Miners may also like the larger cooler and the extra fans in the package, but the two power connectors and the increased power usage is not something that is so great. At stock settings the RX 580 LE is a bit disappointing in terms of performance, though with some tweaking you can probably get better performance and low power usage. Then again you should be able to achieve the same result with a cheaper RX 580 or even RX 570 after you tweak the memory straps, reduce the clock speeds and operating voltages. So out of the box this is good for gamers, with some tweaking it can still become a miner friendly video card, though you should be careful what you do but the higher price of this particular model may make it not as attractive for miners as for example the GPUs from Sapphire’s PULSE series.

– More information about Sapphire NITRO+ Radeon RX 580 Limited Edition…


top