Pushing the GTX 1060 for Equihash

Hello Steemit.

I got interested in mining a few weeks ago, and I bought 2 GTX 1060 in order to start with the fun of being in that fairly new cryptocurrency world. As I was looking for the best hashrate for both these cards, I went into some tests that I hope will be interesting and will save some time for anyone that want to make such an investment.

First, here is the environnement I used : 

• Motherboard : ASUS MAXIMUS HERO VI
• 2 x MSI GTX 1060 3gb (dual fans) connected to the 16x PCI express
• EWBF miner 0.3.4
• NVIDIA Inspector (in order to overclock the cards)

Test conditions :

• Everytime I changed a setting, I restarted EWBF and waited for around 10 minutes everytime for the results to stabilize
• Each test reports 10 results, which are given every 30 seconds on EWBF miner
• These tests are made in order to maximize the SOL/W ratio. Results would have been different looking for the best SOL/S.
• Cards were running at 59 to 63°C
• 1 card was tested and the other was mining (So the one that is being tested is in a mining environment, with a "hot" card close to it)

First Batch

The 3 first batches of test consist in determining which parameter (memory, core clocks or power %) will act the most on the SOL/W ratio.

Memory Clock

In this test I only moved the Memory Clock from - 400 to +400 with 200 steps. I didn't do the +200 step as the function it gives is linear.

This gives pretty much a line, which coefficient is 1.25E-4 (SOL/W)/Hz

Core Clock 

Same test on the Core clock, from +0Hz to +220Hz (My driver was crashing after that). Memory remain constant at -400Mhz, and Power at 70%. The results show a line that has for coefficient 7.95E-04 (SOL/W)/Hz.

Power %

Power from 60 to 90% gives a linear fonction which coefficient is : -3.40E-02 (SOL/W)/%

Conclusion

Equihash hence depends on both Core clock and Memory clock. There is also one mechanism that I still need to study : the core clocks will scale on the Power Value (%) and on the Memory Value. Hence, Core clock having more impact on the SOL/W and on the SOLS, I will have to find one more protocol to find what are the best values for this card. If you have an idea about it, please share it !

I hope these values will help you find the sweetspot of your GTX 1060. Share your feedback !