News How to Optimize Your GPU for Ethereum Mining

[scottsoapbox]

After reading this I tried it out and starting mining Feb 9th. NiceHash made it shockingly easy and the article helped tune the power of my MSI 3070 to 143 watts with a 31% fan speed.

So far I have made back $41 (minus $2 electricity) of the $570 card cost running 20-22 hrs/day for not quite a week.

 

[Ur5u5]

Tuning your card for the best performance and efficiency is important

How to Optimize Your GPU for Ethereum Mining : Read more

Speaking from experience, this article is seriously flawed in the #s it reports for accurate hash rate and power usage.

The results in the charts are not optimized. Watts can be lowered significantly and the hash rate boosted considerably (Optimized) far greater than this article misleads.

Obviously, the author has little or no experience with various miners and cards. Thus anyone turning to TomsHardware for information will be misled in what they see for actual results.

Advice for anyone looking to get into GPU mining - Do your own research, compare multiple resources, finding a good mining community with decent people, and objective information contributions.

@TomsHardware. Your mining estimations on a number of cards are not accurate and often at the lower end of the real-world hash rate as well as estimated profitability. Not to mention power consumption.

P.S. Nichhash = Renting out your hash rate to a third party. While it seems easy, you are not mining for yourself.

 

[JarredWaltonGPU]

Speaking from experience, this article is seriously flawed in the #s it reports for accurate hash rate and power usage.

The results in the charts are not optimized. Watts can be lowered significantly and the hash rate boosted considerably (Optimized) far greater than this article misleads.

Obviously, the author has little or no experience with various miners and cards. Thus anyone turning to TomsHardware for information will be misled in what they see for actual results.

Advice for anyone looking to get into GPU mining - Do your own research, compare multiple resources, finding a good mining community with decent people, and objective information contributions.

@TomsHardware. Your mining estimations on a number of cards are not accurate and often at the lower end of the real-world hash rate as well as estimated profitability. Not to mention power consumption.

P.S. Nichhash = Renting out your hash rate to a third party. While it seems easy, you are not mining for yourself.

Speaking from experience, you didn't bother to read:

"Here's a gallery of all the 'tuned' settings we used for the legacy cards. Use at your own risk, and know that some cards prefer different miner software (or simply fail to work with certain miners). Is it possible to improve over our results? Absolutely. This is just a baseline set of performance figures and data, using our specific samples. Again, non-reference cards often perform a bit better, and if you want to research VBIOS flashing and hardware modding it's possible to hit higher hash rates. But out of the box, these are numbers that just about any card using one of these GPUs should be able to match."

Our numbers are absolutely accurate for what we show, including in-line power measurements rather than relying on what GPU-Z or HWiNFO64 or the miner software reports as the power use. Nvidia's power numbers are relatively close to what we measured, AMD's RX 6000 series is close, all other AMD cards are often way off (far lower than reality), because they only report GPU power rather than total graphics card power.

 

[scottsoapbox]

Speaking from experience, this article is seriously flawed in the #s it reports for accurate hash rate and power usage.

The results in the charts are not optimized. Watts can be lowered significantly and the hash rate boosted considerably (Optimized) far greater than this article misleads.

Obviously, the author has little or no experience with various miners and cards. Thus anyone turning to TomsHardware for information will be misled in what they see for actual results.

Advice for anyone looking to get into GPU mining - Do your own research, compare multiple resources, finding a good mining community with decent people, and objective information contributions.

@TomsHardware. Your mining estimations on a number of cards are not accurate and often at the lower end of the real-world hash rate as well as estimated profitability. Not to mention power consumption.

P.S. Nichhash = Renting out your hash rate to a third party. While it seems easy, you are not mining for yourself.

Speaking from actual experience, I got the exact same power and hash numbers as this article. Hmm. Which raises questions on the rest of your self-assured statements about how wrong Toms article is.

 

[agentbb007]

I've running NiceHash on my Asus Tuf 3080 and have Power Limit at 53% +175 Core Memory -502, fans at 75% and am getting a around 68 MH/s while keeping my GPU Memory Junction Temp at a reasonable 91.2C average. For me running the memory at -502 (8999MHz) yielded the best results.

 

[lazyabum]

How to optimize your CPU Farm for Cinematic Graphics.

 

[Renato Cvikic]

Guy I copied this settings for my rx6800

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUGJiuSWTJI&ab_channel=SonofaTech
, I get 62 hash, but the problem is my pc keeps lagging from time to time.
like opening browsers, new tabs, anything. I read that you could mine and surf without problems..
What's wrong with my pc?
And yes for haters, I hate miners too, but when you pay 880e something that supposed to cost 600e , You wanna break that price difference..

 

[JarredWaltonGPU]

I get 62 hash, but the problem is my pc keeps lagging from time to time.
like opening browsers, new tabs, anything. I read that you could mine and surf without problems..
What's wrong with my pc?
And yes for haters, I hate miners too, but when you pay 880e something that supposed to cost 600e , You wanna break that price difference..

Mining is a GPU and memory intensive process, which likely means even if what you're doing isn't particularly GPU intensive, all of the data you're trying to access competes with the mining software for resources. System RAM, CPU cache, etc. I would expect there to be at least some impact on overall system responsiveness, but how much will vary by your hardware specs and mining settings. There are ways to reduce the intensity (and hash rate) of your mining in order to reduce the impact on system resources and improve responsiveness. It varies by mining software, so you'll have to add a launch parameter. Or just disable mining when you're at your PC -- there's a "mine while idle" option for some tools as well I think.

 

[takesgut]

I'm very anti mining:

1. It causes artificial inflation on component prices
2. It's bad for the environment in general. The mining in the world consumes energy for mining more than several of the largest states combined.
3. The biggest users of Crypto are buying stuff they shouldn't, or using it to blackmail people. It funds terrorist states like Iran and N.Korea.

poor soul

 

[takesgut]

I have a 3080 TUF for gaming but I don't seem why I can't use it for mining while at work. Keeps the study warm!

I don't think the results on this article are great though!

The best I get using Trex to mine ETH

MSI Afterburner
Power: 73%
Core: -200
Memory + 1300

ASUS RTX 3080
100.18 MH/s
T: 46C
P: 233W
F: 83%
E: 432kH/W


Actual income running 24/7 while not gaming is ~ $63 per week

what is the issue?
card pays itself back in about 12 weeks...and then, you have cash to buy another one. my 2060 and 2080 combined generate about 53$/week and I am happy

 

[nhouck]

.... Watts can be lowered significantly

I agree with this guy and I just came to comment on the Vega 64 numbers. It actually goes faster running at lower power, seems due to heat affecting the memory at higher power. I'm getting 39.5 MH/s at 109W by reducing the power level to -50% and lowering the GPU core MHz to 1100.

Not quite the 42 number in the article but the power and heat is way less and I'm not done tweaking yet. The electricity savings and fan noise and temperature abuse is also a bonus so losing 2.5MH/s is a good tradeoff. I don't know how you got that number actually as the more power I give it the slower it goes due to heat. I have the reference stock AMD GPU also.

 

[JarredWaltonGPU]

I agree with this guy and I just came to comment on the Vega 64 numbers. It actually goes faster running at lower power, seems due to heat affecting the memory at higher power. I'm getting 39.5 MH/s at 109W by reducing the power level to -50% and lowering the GPU core MHz to 1100.

Not quite the 42 number in the article but the power and heat is way less and I'm not done tweaking yet. The electricity savings and fan noise and temperature abuse is also a bonus so losing 2.5MH/s is a good tradeoff. I don't know how you got that number actually as the more power I give it the slower it goes due to heat. I have the reference stock AMD GPU also.

It helps to read the article:

"Also, our results on the reference blower cards are probably far less than ideal—just about any custom Vega card would be a better choice than these blowers. We experienced a lot of crashing on the two Vega cards while trying to tune performance."

I've added a note below the charts to further emphasize the fact that the GTX 1070/1080 and Vega 56/64 numbers we got are likely lower than what other cards can do. Four years old hardware, and I haven't tried to refresh the thermal paste or thermal pads.

 

[Galaji]

Tuning your card for the best performance and efficiency is important

How to Optimize Your GPU for Ethereum Mining : Read more

I'm a daily reader, but never felt the need to comment. I made an account for the sole purpose of letting you know that I am not pleased with you promoting mining. Especially given the negative impact it has had on the core PC enthusiast / gamer community.
If this is the audience you are going to cater to, then I am going to step away from your site.
I will be boycotting your site for a month to add emphasis to my point and sincerely hope you have corrected course by May 1st.

 

[pavel.mateja]

Lame. VEGA64 can easily give over 49Mhash under 200W.
Just set something like 1085MHz VRAM, 920MHz GPU core and run AMD Memory Tweak (EIO.dll is missing release):
WinAMDTweak.exe --CL 19 --RAS 28 --RCDRD 12 --RCDWR 5 --RC 44 --RP 12 --RRDS 3 --RRDL 3 --RTP 4 --FAW 18 --CWL 6 --WTRS 4 --WTRL 9 --WR 15 --WRRD 1 --RDWR 18 --REF 17000 --RFC 248

 

[JarredWaltonGPU]

Lame. VEGA64 can easily give over 49Mhash under 200W.
Just set something like 1085MHz VRAM, 920MHz GPU core and run AMD Memory Tweak (EIO.dll is missing release):
WinAMDTweak.exe --CL 19 --RAS 28 --RCDRD 12 --RCDWR 5 --RC 44 --RP 12 --RRDS 3 --RRDL 3 --RTP 4 --FAW 18 --CWL 6 --WTRS 4 --WTRL 9 --WR 15 --WRRD 1 --RDWR 18 --REF 17000 --RFC 248

From the article text:
* - Our GTX 1070 and GTX 1080 are original Founders Edition cards from 2016 and appear to perform worse than other 1070/1080 cards. Our Vega cards are also reference models and were far more finnicky than other GPUs. YMMV!

We can only test with what we have, and my GTX 10-series and RX Vega cards were not great. I spent literally hours on the Vega models, with dozens of crashes, trying to tune performance. Probably just due to the age of the silicon and thermal pads.

 

[trance77]

I'm a daily reader, but never felt the need to comment. I made an account for the sole purpose of letting you know that I am not pleased with you promoting mining. Especially given the negative impact it has had on the core PC enthusiast / gamer community.
If this is the audience you are going to cater to, then I am going to step away from your site.
I will be boycotting your site for a month to add emphasis to my point and sincerely hope you have corrected course by May 1st.

I understand your anger at mining and GPU shortages but this article is only really helpful to gamers who are also interested in mining when not gaming, dedicated/hardcore miners will already know all this and have other sources of information.

 

[antus]

I just signed up at the forums to comment on this article after seeing a lot of people bashing it. I have been a long time reader looking for information and reviews about hardware, and came here today to get some more base settings for my primary and only display card, a 3080. I agree that Toms is for enthusiasts, and there is nothing here for pro level miners. They have enough in the game that they have figured out the best settings for their cards already.

In answer to digitalgriffin

I'm very anti mining:

1. It causes artificial inflation on component prices
2. It's bad for the environment in general. The mining in the world consumes energy for mining more than several of the largest states combined.
3. The biggest users of Crypto are buying stuff they shouldn't, or using it to blackmail people. It funds terrorist states like Iran and N.Korea.

1) Yes, this isnt good. But I dont think this article will change anything, only help gamers.

2) 100% agree. Its great that the Etherium community have recognized this and are progressing their tech to end mining. They are working to upgrade the network to make it more scalable, and swap from the original proof of work (mining) to proof of stake (owning Etherium, and running a node or a pool to do only signing of transactions, no computations just for the sake of it). https://ethereum.org/en/eth2/ and https://ethereum.org/en/eth2/vision/ . This is unlike bitcoin which has generally not innovated. If you think like this, you should like Etherium and their direction.

3) This also applies to cash, and anything of value that can be traded over the internet. A scaled up, and cheapened (lower fees) Etherium network will enable small and quick transactions. This will be more useful to regular people.

They have also recently approved EIP1559 (Etherium Improvement Proposal 1559) which means that instead of paying crazy high fees to miners, the fees are lowered (to users) and burnt (payed to nobody). This will reduce mining profitability as soon as July and prior to the switch of Proof of Stake which is likely to be 2022 (and end mining on the Etherium Network). https://medium.com/@TrustlessState/...ece-to-ethereums-monetary-policy-58802ab28a27

Regarding nicehash, check out the controversies section of their wikipedia page and then decide if you want to work with them. The founder has been prosecuted for a malware botnet. They also recently run a smear campaign against phoenixminer, you can read about that around here in the official thread. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2647654.msg56515763#msg56515763 . Its possible Nicehash is fully legit in 2021, but understand the risk you take.

I wouldnt recommend anyone buy hardware to mine. EIP1559 changes, network hashrate difficulty rising, and eventually switch to PoS will mean profits will keep going down. And I expecte smaller coins will be forgotten. But if you have a card for gaming and you want to hold on to a bit of Eth for a few years and see if it delivers what its supposed too (and maybe stand to pay a chunk off your mortgage if it overtakes bitcoin on its technical merits and greater usefulness) I say go for it.

 

[motomat]

I am kind of surprised, so much so I wasted 5 mins and made an account to ask what I feel is a very obvious question. Why do so many people bash on retail mining? I mean we live in a world now where everyone can be any gender they want, identify as reptiles and aliens and that all has to be accepted as the word of law or you are a nazi, but oh no, dont make a couple bucks on a video card while you are not using your computer?

For the critics who say it wastes electricity, awfully interesting the chirps stop when you replace mining with folding@home, then all of a sudden its for a good cause and its ok to waste electricity .

For critics that it hurts the hardware, yup, it might do that. but its not your graphics card either.

For critics that its bad for the environment, yup, and so is traditionally fiat transactions. It takes less energy for me to transfer crypto to pay for something then it does to run a credit card on amazon.

I do understand a lot of people are entitled and upset they cant have a fancy graphics card and little jimmy has 20 of them in his garage making coin and that makes you question your manhood. I get it, I totally get it. But demonizing something because of envy isnt going to change anything.

 

[USAFRet]

I am kind of surprised, so much so I wasted 5 mins and made an account to ask what I feel is a very obvious question. Why do so many people bash on retail mining?

Folding@Home may, in theory, cure cancer. Unlock the genetic code that causes Parkinsons. Etc etc.


What purpose does this serve?

 

[motomat]

Folding@Home may, in theory, cure cancer. Unlock the genetic code that causes Parkinsons. Etc etc.


What purpose does this serve?

free beer money

 

[USAFRet]

free beer money

You answered your own question...

 

[old_rager]

Hey Jarred,

Great article but my head is now swimming with ideas of what I can and cannot achieve when it comes to mining. I've been waiting for quite awhile to update my PC and was planning to go to a WRX80 Mobo until I learnt that I couldn't put a 3960X (4 channel) TR CPU in it... 😭

I liked the WRX80 because of all the useable PCIe lanes (128?!? Not sure if that's total or useable) as opposed to the 56 PCIe lanes which I believe are usable on the sTRX40 platform. So mu question for you as a GPU specialist if I may is of all the GPU's you tested, which single slot GPU's provided the best hash rates? My thoughts here are with respect to how many GPU's I could fit onto a mobo that would produce good scales of economy.

Like are there any good performing single slot GPUs. Or should I be looking at only double slot GPU's - which means I could probably get away with 3 double slot GPU's on the sTRX40 platform, or maybe 4 double slot GPU's on the WRX80 (which means I wouldn't be getting any good scales of economy.

Hope my question makes some sense to you... 😉

 

[JarredWaltonGPU]

Hey Jarred,

Great article but my head is now swimming with ideas of what I can and cannot achieve when it comes to mining. I've been waiting for quite awhile to update my PC and was planning to go to a WRX80 Mobo until I learnt that I couldn't put a 3960X (4 channel) TR CPU in it... 😭

I liked the WRX80 because of all the useable PCIe lanes (128?!? Not sure if that's total or useable) as opposed to the 56 PCIe lanes which I believe are usable on the sTRX40 platform. So mu question for you as a GPU specialist if I may is of all the GPU's you tested, which single slot GPU's provided the best hash rates? My thoughts here are with respect to how many GPU's I could fit onto a mobo that would produce good scales of economy.

Like are there any good performing single slot GPUs. Or should I be looking at only double slot GPU's - which means I could probably get away with 3 double slot GPU's on the sTRX40 platform, or maybe 4 double slot GPU's on the WRX80 (which means I wouldn't be getting any good scales of economy.

Hope my question makes some sense to you... 😉

There's no need for a ton of x16 slots with GPU mining -- you get x1 to x16 adapters and a board with as many x1 or higher PCIe slots as possible, and then you create some contraption that allows you to separate the GPUs for improved cooling. (I'm not recommending those specific riser cards, just something like that.) This also makes single slot-GPUs a non-requirement, which is good, because I can't recall the last time I tested a single-slot card. I think there are some liquid cooled cards that have a 1-slot cooler, but air coolers are all at least 2-slot thickness these days, and many even go for 2.5- to 3-slot widths.

That's why pictures of PC GPU mining farms always end up looking like this:

One thing you'll notice is that a lot of those PCs appear to be using five GPUs per system. That's probably because due to power requirements, if you want to do more than five GPUs, you end up having to kludge together a setup with two power supplies. Also, while mining boards with up to 18 x1 slots exist (eg, the Asus B250 Mining Expert), actually getting one of those configured and running can be more difficult than just using three separate boards -- with separate CPUs, RAM, storage, etc. Buying an extreme HEDT system for mining ends up putting way more money into the CPU, board, and RAM and generally isn't better or more cost effective than just using basic PCs.

 

[Neuspeed]

Pandering to the enemy.

We are not pleased.

"the enemy"

lol

 

[sharkbuilder255]

If anyone needs any advice or help optimizing their Radeon 6800xt GPU there is a youtube video I will post below that helped me reduce the temperature and increase the hashrate on my card. I also dropped my PSU consuption from 145-150 watts to 130 watts. I highly suggest watching.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52axoGzMP-Q&t=14s