Couple ETH mining tips

[0x4452]

ETH mining is heavily memory bandwidth bound, to the point that incremental compute horse power doesn't really matter.

After some experimentation, here are my settings (for NVIDIA) that could make mining more "green" and prolong the life of your cards.

1. Set the power limit to 50-60%. This will decrease the GPU clock to about 1000 MHz, without affecting the memory clock. Mining speed degradation will be less than 5%, while your power bill will be cut to about half and your GPU will last 10x longer. My 1070 FEs are running at ~60 degrees Celsius and 0.8V core with this (from 82 oC and 1.05V).

2. Overclock the memory by 5-10%. Memory clock is proportional to mining rate.

In Windows, use MSI Afterburner, while in Linux, use the NVIDIA SMI tool.

I am currently getting 81 MH/s from 3 cards on Windows. Hope this helps!

 

[Raiju]

I was running max clock @ 0.8V which is 1443Mhz, I tried your dropping to 1000Mhz and I see a drop from 50W to 46W but also a drop from 13.33 Mh/s to 10Mh/S. This is with a gtx1050ti btw, 46C whithout a single fan in the system

Have you tried running max clock @ 0.8V?

If all goes well I should get a couple of GTX1060's next week, cancelled the rx580's because of future dag issues.

 

[0x4452]

Yes, low voltage is more important for power saving than clock due to the P = V^2 * F law.

I tried to simplify the tip for just adjusting the power setting. What clock do you get while mining with no clock offset, just power dialed down to 50%?

 

[Raiju]

I don't know since I adjust the curve and not the power setting in afterburner, I can't go below 72% anyway

 

[cybereality]

Thanks for the tips. Just got my first mining rig up and running today and started messing with the clocks. Decided to go with Ubuntu on the machine and it's working well.

Using 6x GTX 1060s with a stock Mh/s of 18 each. Power limit was a 140W (draw at 115) so I tried knocking the limit to 70W and that did seem to help with the thermals. Also the cost was about 5% in the hashrate, to 17.

However, once I started to try to overclock the memory, it needed more power and I was actually getting a worse hashrate of 16. So I opted to set the power limit back to normal and OC the memory rate.

I tried an aggressive +2000MHz on the memory, which got me to 23 Mh/s but the computer froze after a bit. Dropped down to a still somewhat aggressive +1500MHz and I'm getting 22 Mh/s solid on all 6 cards!

Total for the machine is 135Mh/s, which I'm happy with. Will let it run overnight and see if the OC holds up, but things look good so far.

 

[Riccochet]

Must be different for AMD cards. I don't see my hash rate change at all when OC'ing memory.

 

[shad0w4life]

Must be different for AMD cards. I don't see my hash rate change at all when OC'ing memory.

Change your memory straps

24MH/s to 28-30Mh/s with a timings change.

 

[Riccochet]

Change your memory straps

24MH/s to 28-30Mh/s with a timings change.

What do you mean? I have one option in MSI AB, and that's to adjust the memory clock speed. I can take it from 1500 to 1700 and I don't see a change in hash rate.

 

[shad0w4life]

What do you mean? I have one option in MSI AB, and that's to adjust the memory clock speed. I can take it from 1500 to 1700 and I don't see a change in hash rate.

You will need

ATIFLasher
the ATI Pixel clock patch
and PolarisBiosEditor by Jack

if you google something like "Radeon Memory Strap Mining" or "Memory Strap VBIOS" you should find a step by step and links to that software

backup your original Bios, change the memory timings in the bios editor and then load that new bios into your GPU, set your memory to about 2000 via Claymore command line -MCLOCK 2000 and probably set your -MVDDC 950 which is a 50mV boost to the memory voltage -CCLOCK 1200 and -CVDDC 950 will save you some power as core clock isn't overly important

it will change your performance quite a lot. to the point that if you have 6 AMD 470/480's it's an extra 24MH/s boost total.

 

[Riccochet]

You will need

ATIFLasher
the ATI Pixel clock patch
and PolarisBiosEditor by Jack

if you google something like "Radeon Memory Strap Mining" or "Memory Strap VBIOS" you should find a step by step and links to that software

backup your original Bios, change the memory timings in the bios editor and then load that new bios into your GPU, set your memory to about 2000 via Claymore command line -MCLOCK 2000 and probably set your -MVDDC 950 which is a 50mV boost to the memory voltage -CCLOCK 1200 and -CVDDC 950 will save you some power as core clock isn't overly important

it will change your performance quite a lot. to the point that if you have 6 AMD 470/480's it's an extra 24MH/s boost total.

Yeah, I'm not doing that. My 390X's are also used for gaming. I already get 30 MH/s out of each.