Crypto Mining Blog

Keeping an eye on the recent fork of Vertcoin (VTC) form Lyra2REv3 to the new Verthash algorithm the profitability has been nice, although not as good as mining Ethereum. The VertHash algo is a memory-intensive algorithm, so GPU performance is not as important as having fast video memory with wide memory bus. It is similar to Ethash in that matter, however the interesting advantage of VertHash is that it uses much less video memory and thus can be mined on older GPUs. This makes it quite interesting for owners of AMD Radeon RX 470, RX 480, RX 570 and RX 580 GPUs with just 4GB of video memory that are at the end of their life for mining ETH, though other older video cards with just 2GB or 3GB might also benefit.

While you can still mine Ethereum (ETH) with these 4GB Radeon GPUs in “Zombie Mode” with lower performance and diminishing profits. So, mining Vertcoin (VTC) with 4GB Radeon’s might be a viable alternative as things are at the moment, so definitely worth checking thing out. Event at the moment the profitability could be better than Ethereum mining at the moment with the current lower hashrate that the 4GB GPUs deliver, and that hashrate is going to continue to get lower in the following days.

We tested what a Gigabyte Radeon RX 570 4GB GPU can offer in terms of performance mining Vertcoin (VTC) using the Verthash algorithm. With stock settings we have managed to get just about 350 KHS in term of hashrate, though after a quick and easy mod of the video BIOS with faster video memory timings we jumped up to about 455 KH/s. Compare this to a single optimized Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Ti video card (TDP at 65%) doing 760 KHS with settings doing 58 MH/s for Ethereum and a single optimized GeForce GTX 1080 Ti doing 560 KH/s with the default memory timings and around 700 KH/s with the OhGodAnETHlargementPill with the same settings doing 44 MH/s for Ethereum (TDP tat 69%).

The same performance optimizations for Ethash should also work well with the VertHash algorithm as both are memory-intensive ones, but mining VertCoin is possible on GPUs with at least 2GB of video memory… remember those old Radeon 280 and 290, as well as 380 and 390 GPUs with 4GB or less video memory. The key is to look for faster memory and wider memory bus as this works best for memory-intensive crypto algorithms, though if it is profitable everything goes, right. The VerthashMiner could of course be improved for less stale shares and more importantly to generate the 1.2 GB verthash.dat file on the fly, just like other miners do with Ethereum’s DAG file on start, hoping to also see other miners also adopting support for the VertHash algorithm.

The latest Nvidia GeForce RTX 3000 series of video cards with GDDR6 (RTX 3060, 3060 Ti, 3070) and GDDR6X (RTX 3080 and RTX 3090) video memory is even better for VTC mining, just like they are for Ethereum as well. A power optimized RTX 3090 that delivers 120 MH/s for Ethereum mining (300W power usage) can give you a hashrate of about 1900 KH/s for VertCoin (VTC). The thing is that these video cards are still better off mining Ethereum at the current profitability, so no point in directing them at VTC, but GPUs such as the 4GB VRAM Radeons could benefit from their good mining performance for VertHash instead of having to retire them from mining.

You can check your mining profitability with a mining calculator, though 8x Radeon’s with 4GB able to deliver something like 3.5-4 MHS hashrate for VertHash at the moment they could be more profitable mining VTC than ETH at the moment and even more as the DAG size increases and the performance of these GPUs gets even lower. The catch here is that currently Bittrex – the largest crypto exchange in term of trading volume for VTC is in maintenance mode, so you are not able to deposit or withdraw VertCoin there. There are other smaller crypto exchanges that trade VTC and could have upgraded their wallets after the fork, so you might want to look for alternatives.

– To Check Your VTC Mining Profitability at the Minerstat Mining Calculator…