Ethereum mining: DAG file grows, RX series hashrate decreasing

thexmikkel (25)in #ethereum • 8 years ago

Growing DAG file equals more stressed GPU
So I noticed something by waking up this morning and seeing that my hashrate of my RX series GPU has decreased a tiny bit.
The same might have happened to you guys, so here is a explanation and what to expect as the DAG keeps growing.

How fast does the DAG file grow?
The DAG file grows every 30.000 block of Ethereum mined. Which is estimated by many mining pools to be around 5-4 days.

Yesterday Ethereum went on to DAG epoch 130, but what will happen with the hashrate in the near future?
I have done some benchmarks with my own RX 470 4GB and my RX 570 4GB.

GPU	Sapphire Nitro+ RX 470 4GB	MSI Gaming X RX 570 4GB
Clock	Core: 1100, Mem: 1990	Core: 1100, Mem: 2025
DAG >130	27.75 MH/s	28 MH/s
DAG 140	25.4 MH/s	25.5 MH/s
DAG 160	21.3 MH/s	21.6 MH/s

So I went onto TeamViewer, fired up Claymore miner and wanted to test out my hashrate after 10 and 20 DAG epoches, 140 and 160.

In my .bat file i add the command:
-benchmark {DAG-file}

Before DAG 130 (Benchmarked at DAG 129)
Sapphire Nitro+ RX 470 4GB (Modded BIOS: 28 MH/s)
rx 470.PNG
MSI Gaming X RX 570 4 GB (Modded BIOS: 28 MH/s)

After DAG 140
Sapphire Nitro+ RX 470 4GB (Modded BIOS: 28 MH/s)

MSI Gaming X RX 570 4 GB (Modded BIOS: 28 MH/s)

After DAG 160
Sapphire Nitro+ RX470 4GB (Modded BIOS: 28 MH/s)

MSI Gaming X RX 570 4 GB (Modded BIOS: 28 MH/s)

DAG 140: In about 50 days~~
DAG 160: In about 150 days~~
Don't hang me up on this calculation.

As of now, I haven't got any benchmarks from the 8 GB models, but I'm more than 100% sure, that they are affected by this aswell, but more lightly, as they can handle more stress, than the 4 GB models.

As a conclusion, in the nearest future we will see drops in our hashrate for every new DAG epoch. I would personally keep on mining Ethereum untill it isn't the most profitable coin anymore. Cryptocurrencies that doesn't include the Ethash DAG growing epoches would not affect the RX series hashrate - ZCash, Expanse and Monero as an example.

Who knows if the switch to PoS would change this RX problem.

#mining #hashrate #ethereumclassic #eth

8 years ago in #ethereum by thexmikkel (25)

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cccmikey (40) 8 years ago

Interesting. I'm not overly familiar with how Ethereum handles 'difficulty' compared to Bitcoin etc - I would have thought though that all miners would be equally affected by the increase in DAG size uniformly, and thus the overall hashrate would decrease, but along with it the difficulty would drop too so it would be a net even result?

I've just started mining it myself with an RX 460 and get a hash rate of 10Mh/s - does that sound right to you? It's an MSI card.

$0.02

1 vote

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thexmikkel (25) 8 years ago

I assume that the RX 460 MSI card that you have is a 4 gb version. 10 MH/s seems very good - I have seen people getting it to 13 MH/s, but this could cause a lot of GPU Memory errors, which is not good.

Well, difficulty could also rise the price of an ethereum, but yeah, when people stop mining ethereum because their hashrates drop, then we will see another coin go up, and the difficulty of ethereum would decrease aswell, which could lead to somewhere near this profit, that we are earning today, but who knows.

$0.00

2 votes

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cccmikey (40) 8 years ago

Thanks for replying :)

I'm pleased to know that's a fair speed for that card. I was trying to get something fair but not too expensive. Yes it's 4GB. What would you have picked if your budget was limited and you have Pci-e aux cables if needed?

Is it worth tinkering with it to try to get more speed? I'm not sure where to start with that of it is.

I wonder will price change because of difficulty change? I guess time will tell. I'm curious to see what happens closer to August. Will more move over from Bitcoin as a safe harbour...

$1.36

9 votes

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thexmikkel (25) 8 years ago (edited)

With a budget, I think I would have started with just 1 RX 470/570 cheap, and then when it has earned itselves back, I would have brought one more, but keep in mind of your price a kWh. Denmark which is where I live, charges $0.32~~ kWh. Very very expensive, but lately I have earned lots.
PCI-aux? Not sure what you mean here, but I would go ahead and buy a PSU which can handle mining.

I agree, I will hold my currencies and see what happens next, I mean, this is future. Ethereum just have to fix the ongoing lag because of ICOs.

Investing in Bitcoin would be a good idea, as segwit2x soon will be deployed in the BTC blockchain, but remember to store your Bitcoins safely! On your PC/usb... Keeping your coins on exchanges is not a good idea - it could get hacked, etc.

If I buy more GPU, I would go for NVIDIA cards, GTX 1060/1070 as they arent affected by the dropping hashrate.

$0.00

1 vote

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cccmikey (40) 8 years ago (edited)

Thanks for replying :) I appreciate it. I keep little on the exchange after losing 4 Bitcoin to a rogue exchange in 2014ish.

$0.00

1 vote

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thexmikkel (25) 7 years ago (edited)

Hi ccmikey, follow-up on the on AMD GPU Polaris slowdown here is a fix :) This should pump up your RX460 :) https://steemit.com/ethereum/@thexmikkel/unofficial-qucik-fix-for-amd-polaris-gpu-ethereum-hashrate

$0.00

1 vote

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ionlysaymeep (50) 8 years ago

meep

$0.00

1 vote

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andyhenry (44) 7 years ago

"then we will see another coin go up, and the difficulty of ethereum would decrease aswell"

That's actually not correct - Ethereum difficulty is not related to the amount of hashing going on - it's completely disconnected and growing fast now as they had intend to push miners off the currency so that they can move it from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake, so the difficulty is now rising exponentially.

However, they did decide to delay POS until next year, so hopefully they'll crank down the difficulty before the miners all leave before they're ready.

$0.00

1 vote

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