How to overclock your graphics card when mining Ethereum
An important point: when overclocking and testing, always monitor the temperature of the video card. When mining Ethereum safely, the core temperature should not rise above 65 degrees. Higher temperatures are at your own risk.
The basic setup of video cards for Ether is quite simple.
- first of all, we determine at what frequency the memory will work as much as possible , with a step of +25 MHz. We find the one on which the video card driver starts to fly – that is, reboot – and retreat from it 50 MHz down to the stable region.
- we find the core voltage at which we are satisfied with the power consumption of the card. The lower the voltage, the less the card “eats”, but the lower the maximum speed. The dependence is disproportionate, because usually when consumption decreases by 20-25% of the nominal, the speed drops by only 10-15%.
- we find the maximum stable core frequency (also at +25 MHz) and retreat from it down to 25 MHz.
A finer tweak will give us 2-6% extra speed or 2-4% energy efficiency. We will not dwell on it in detail in this article.
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The above instruction works well for AMD graphics cards. For Nvidia video cards, setting up highly efficient mining is a little more complicated, so let's dwell on each series separately.
Mining with Nvidia on Windows (P2 and P0 modes)
An important point when working with Nvidia cards running Windows is that initially the memory of video cards at standard frequencies allows a small number of errors that are not critical when rendering images in games, but can be critical for accurate calculations. Therefore, for the operation of CUDA systems, Nvidia engineers have provided a special mode with a reduced memory frequency (P2).
The transition of cards to this mode is carried out automatically, however, miners often want to get the maximum hash rate and seriously increase the memory frequency to values of +700, +1000 and even higher.
As a result, two factors are added – a decrease in the frequency by the P2 mode and an increase by the miner. At the same time, the miner works successfully, but when the miner is turned off, the P2 mode switches back, and the plus frequency set manually remains. This leads to frequencies that the cards cannot hold and, as a result, the driver crashes when the mining program is turned off or restarted.
Miner Nvidia
Important: changing P2 to P0 does not increase the maximum speed, but only increases stability when turning on / off / restarting the miner.
It is best to disable P2 mode for CUDA – this is done through the nvInspector utility, or rather its nvProfileInspector subroutine. We find the CUDA parameter – Force P2 state, turn it off, then start the miner.
nvProfile
Another important point: the Force P2 state parameter is restored when any new Nvidia card is installed into the system, do not forget to double-check it.
Ethereum mining on Pascal architecture (GTX 10xx series)
Unfortunately, the 10xx series cards were not designed specifically for mining, so at the end of 2020, the 10xx series miners faced a slight drop in speed when mining Ether.
To maintain speed, power consumption had to be raised, which significantly changed energy efficiency.
Important: on the Nvidia GTX 10xx series, with each subsequent era of Ethereum – and they change every four days – the power consumption of video cards will increase slightly up to the maximum power limit of the video card. In approximately 1.5 years, the cards will start to run into the power limit.
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Please note that Nvidia decided not to update the Nvidia driver for 10xx cards for Windows 7, so this system cannot efficiently mine Ether on 10xx video cards (16xx, 20xx and 30xx video cards no longer have this problem). To mine Ether on the 10xx series, use Windows 10 or Rave OS.
Overclocking Ethereum Mining with Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 (6GB), 1070 and 1070ti
These cards work on the GDDR5 memory type, the overclocking algorithm is the same for them.
- We turn on the miner without overclocking. We gradually raise the memory frequency (+50 MHz).
We find the frequency at which the video card driver starts to fly off – to reboot – we retreat from it 50 MHz down to the stable region.
- we begin to decrease PL a little – somewhere by 1%. The video card will start to consume less, and the temperature will decrease, at some point the speed will begin to drop. Stop at a 5% drop in speed.
- we raise the core frequency a little bit, find the frequency at which the video card driver starts to fly, and retreat from it 25 MHz down to the stable region.
The speed lost at point # 2 should return completely. If you have not returned completely, you can slightly increase the Power Limit, but this will also increase the power consumption of the card.
Mining Ethereum with Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 and 1080ti
1080 and 1080ti cards have high-timing fast GDDR5X memory, which initially significantly outperformed GDDR5 memory during Ether mining. However, the ETHlargementPill-r2 pill was released quite quickly, reducing timings for this type of memory, after which they became very effective for Ether.
The tablet makes the memory work less stable and reduces the possible maximum overclocking. For many early revisions of GTX 1080 (Rev. A) cards, the tablet is unstable even at the nominal frequencies, therefore, for the stable operation of such cards, the video card memory frequency has to be lowered .
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Even if lowering the frequency did not lead to stable operation of the miner program, then for such cards, instead of a tablet, you must use a soft analogue. This is the -mt parameter in the t-rex miner, which varies from 0 to 6. The higher this parameter, the more aggressive the decrease in timings – but also the lower the stability.
After successful activation of the tablet or selection of the -mt parameter, the overclocking of these cards is similar to the cards 1060 and 1070.
Mining Ethereum on Nvidia GeForce GTX 16xx and 20xx
These cards do not have problems with placing large amounts of data in the video card memory and at the same time have very powerful cores.
The overclocking algorithm is very simple:
- Reduce PL to a minimum.
- We gradually raise the memory frequency (+50 MHz).
We find the frequency at which the video card driver starts to fly and retreat from it 50 MHz down to the stable region.
- We check that an increase in PL does not lead to an increase in the hash rate.
If an increase in PL increases the hash rate – this is true for some 2080 and 2080ti models – then we find the hash rate to which PL can be raised. Then we take the following steps.
- We begin to decrease PL a little – somewhere by 1%. As a result, the video card will start to consume less, and the temperature will decrease, and at some point the speed will begin to drop. Stop at a 5% drop in speed.
- We raise the core frequency a little bit, find the frequency at which the video card driver starts to fly and retreat 25 MHz from it down to the stable region.
Nvidia GeForce RTX 2070
The speed lost at point # 2 should return completely. If you have not returned completely, you can slightly increase the Power Limit, but this will also increase the power consumption of the card.
Mining ETH of Nvidia GeForce RTX 30xx
The cards 3070, 3080 and 3090 are the most capricious of all NVIDIA cards in terms of overclocking, we will dwell on them in detail.
Let’s note right away that the overclocking of the 3060 and 3060ti is similar to the overclocking of the 20xx series.
Mining Ethereum on Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070
When overclocking the 3070 – like all older cards of the 30xx series – it is important to feel what the card lacks. The card consistently gives 60 MH / s, while overclocking the memory, you can stably get 63-64 MH / s. The card has a very powerful core, which is not particularly necessary for ether mining: 700-800 MHz is enough for it. Therefore, the card’s gluttony can and should be limited.
Overclocking the 3070 is not difficult: first of all, we overclock the memory to a stable maximum, then lower the PL.
- We gradually raise the memory frequency (+50 MHz). We find the frequency at which the video card driver starts to fly, retreat from it 50 MHz down to the stable region.
The final effective memory frequency according to MSI Afterburner should be 8100-8400 MHz. - We begin to reduce PL by 1%, the video card will start to consume less and the temperature will decrease. At some point, the speed will begin to fall, we return it back to plus a couple of percent.
Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070
At some point, when PL is lowered, the core frequency can start "jumping", periodically dropping below 1 GHz and returning back in a second. This means that the card does not have enough power limit..
This effect is called “trotting” (from the English verb “slow down”). An important point: at the same time, t-rex miners and others can show high speed, but the effective speed will be 4-5 MH / s lower than the displayed one.
When the card heats up and the fans are overclocked, the PL should be slightly increased. This is due to the fact that the fan consumption of Nvidia cards is also taken into account in PL and the card core may start running out of the remaining power.
Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070
Conclusion: Do not restart PL. Normal consumption of 3070 when mining is 130 watts at 63 MH / s speed.
The best results can be obtained on Windows 7 by fixing the core voltage in the region of 713-725 mV and lowering the core frequency. With good memory, we get a consumption of 121 W at 64.
6 MH / s speeds. This is a t-rex excluding devfee.
If you use the fixation of the mode in the nvidia inspector (command -forcePState: 0,0), then you can get 61 MH / s at 107 W or 570 MH / s at 1 kW of power. But in this case, after the reboot, you will first have to restore the operating mode, and only then turn on the mining, otherwise the driver will fly cyclically. In this case, saving 10 W from the card is not practical.
Mining Ethereum on Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080
When overclocking the 3080 – like all older cards of the 30xx series – it is important to feel what the card lacks. The 3080 card has a very powerful core, which is redundant for ether mining, so first of all we limit the core as much as possible – without throttling – and only then we overclock the memory.
Windows overclocking.
- We reduce the memory frequency to a minimum. Using MSI Afterburner, we fix the core voltage at 750 mV, save, check the memory frequency. It should be around 7500 MHz.
- We begin to fix the voltage at the lowest points (743 mV – 725 mV – 713 mV – 700 mV).
We are looking for the point at which the memory frequency drops to 5000 MHz (P3 mode), we retreat from it 1 step higher. We make sure that the memory frequency is again higher than 7000 MHz.
- Reduce the kernel to a minimum. We turn on mining.
- We gradually raise the memory frequency by +50 MHz.
Nvidia graphics cards
Then there are two options.
- Or we find the frequency at which the video card driver starts to fly, we retreat from it 50 MHz down to the stable region.
After that, you can add the core a little and check that the speed does not increase from this. If the speed increases, then we add the core, the main thing is not to reach the next option.
- We find the point after which the core starts to “jump” and fall below 1 GHz. Alas, we have a poorly powered card, we stop at this point and are content with the current speed above 90 MH / s.
Mining ether on Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090
The overclocking principle of the 3090 does not differ from the 3080 in any way, you just need to initially assume that the 3090 behaves like an overclocked 3080 with a weak power supply.
Mining Nvidia on the Kawpow algorithm
The Kawpow algorithm, the main currency of which is RVN, has burst into mining quite brightly. To illustrate the growing popularity of cryptocurrency, we present the graph of the Ravencoin hash rate on the 2Miners pool: over the month, the indicator has grown approximately five times.
Ravencoin hash rate of 2Miners
At the same time, the RVN rate jumped more than 500 percent in thirty days. On February 20, 2021, he set a record at 28.5 cents.
Ravencoin price chart for a month
The algorithm still works even with video cards with 3 GB of memory, it is not capricious (moreover, many capricious cards on other algorithms work confidently on kawpow), and the speed correlates well with the level of PL cards. Finally, RVN is listed on many major exchanges.
By a combination of factors, this algorithm confidently ranks second in importance and profitability after Ethash for mining on video cards.
Miner Ravencoin
For Windows 10, video cards with 4 GB or more memory are required. For Windows 7 and Rave OS, 3 GB of memory on the card is sufficient.
Overclocking video cards for the Kawpow algorithm
Setting up video cards for KAWPOW is quite simple.
- first of all, we determine at what frequency the memory will work as much as possible , with a step of +25 MHz. We find the one on which the video card driver starts to fly, and retreat from it 50 MHz down into the stable region.
- we find the core voltage at which we are satisfied with the power consumption of the card. The lower the voltage, the less the card “eats”, while the lower the maximum speed. The dependence is disproportionate, usually when the consumption decreases by 25-35% of the nominal, the speed drops by only 15-20%. This gives us unique opportunities for automatic overclocking of video cards in time for multi-tariff counters.
- we find the maximum stable core frequency – also up +25 MHz – and retreat from it down 25 MHz.
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A finer tweak will give us 2-6% extra speed or 2-4% energy efficiency.
Therefore, we will not dwell on it in detail in this articleсекретами заходите к нам в Телеграм-чат.
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