How to mine Ethereum on 4GB Video cards: Increasing the DAG file ( Best Fix): How to continue mining Ethereum on 4GB video cards after stopping mining due to the DAG file, the most profitable solutions – Unlike Bitcoin, Ethereum mining requires a lot of RAM. The “appetite” for this currency grows as new entries are added to the blockchain. One day, users discovered that 4-gig cards stopped mining Ethereum.
Miners encountered “CUDA error 11”. This error means that the Ethereum Dag file has exceeded the size of the mining program’s memory buffer. Sometimes the error occurs due to the failure of the mining software and you can get rid of it without upgrading the hardware. Let’s see why 4GB cards stopped mining Ethereum and can we fix it.
What Ethereum was mined on before: 4 GB cards that were popular among miners
Many have sold their old 4GB graphics cards to gamers or bundled with a computer. However, many miners are still mining cryptocurrency on 3 and 4 GB cards. Take a look at how many there are now, for example, in the Hive OS miner community:
- Radeon RX 570 4GB: 6,75%
- Radeon RX 470 4GB: 4.42%
- Radeon RX 580 4GB: 3.40%
- GeForce GTX 1060 3GB: 1,15%
This list includes only cards with a share of more than 1%. It turns out that it can be argued that 1 out of every 6 video cards in the Hive OS community cannot mine the most mined ETH coin.
Ethereum mining on 4gb video card stopped working: what to do?
There are only two solutions. The first is to buy another video card with more memory than the Ether DAG file. But, if you do not have money for another card, then you have a second option – to mine other altcoins, and then exchange them for ether. Here is a list of Ethash coins that are still more or less afloat, with the size of the DAG file in parentheses:
- QuarkChain – 2,1 Гб
- Callisto – 1.24 GB
- Expanse – 1.41 GB
- Metaverse – 1.45 GB
- Pirl – 1.68 GB
- Mix Blockchain – 1.85 GB
- Ether-1 (ETHO) – 2,59 Гб
PhoenixMiner – miner for 4GB cards for Ethereum, which needs to be configured correctly
If you are using PhoenixMiner, your graphics cards will no longer be suitable for mining ETH even before the DAG file size grows to 4GB. This miner has a parameter -rvram… It determines the amount of video card memory that cannot be used for mining cryptocurrencies. By default, this volume is 384 MB for Windows and 128 MB for Linux. But there is a solution to this problem – you can disable this “sharing” and, thus, get additional megabytes of memory for mining. This can be done in three simple steps:
- Open the miner .bat file
- Find the -rvram parameter
- Change its value to: -rvram 1
Memory sharing is disabled and your graphics cards will serve you until the DAG file reaches 4GB. And if you use TeamRedMiner, you don’t even have to configure anything extra.
If 4GB cards have stopped mining Ethereum, you can pay attention to other altcoins
Using calculators, it is easy to determine which altcoins are more profitable for mining, if mining ETH on 4gb is no longer profitable (profitability is indicated per day). As of May 29, 2021, the situation is as follows:
- Ergo (ERG) – $1.49;
- EthereumClassic (ETC) – 1,15$;
- Ravencoin (RVN) – $ 1.1;
- Bark (CTXC) – $ 1.05;
- Callisto Network (CLO) – 0.91$;
- Turtlecoin (TRTL) – 0,85$;
- Beam (BEAM) – $ 0.83;
The yield can change from day to day. It is better to give preference to reliable digital assets, and therefore constantly monitor the table of profitability. Cryptocurrencies that you should also pay attention to:
- RVN usually has an increase in watts relative to ETH, so it is important to take care of the temperature if you want to make the most of your profit. There are also many miners that support this coin: KawpowMiner, Gminer, T-Rex, TeamRedMiner or NBMiner.
- ETC – you can continue to use the same overclocking that you used earlier with ETH. As with the previous cryptocurrency, there are many miners: ethminer, lolMiner, PhoenixMiner, Gminer, T-Rex, TeamRedMiner, or NBMiner.
- Haven Protocol (ticker – XHV) coin on the algorithm – Cryptonight-Haven (variant of the Cryptonight-Heavy algorithm). The cryptocurrency can be mined well on cards from AMD, including those with 4 GB of memory. It is widely represented on crypto-exchanges, the most famous of which is KuCoin. For AMD cards of the Polaris and Vega families, the optimal miner is TeamRedMiner, for Nvidia it is CryptoDredge.
- Vertcoin (ticker – VTC). The cryptocurrency relatively recently changed its mining algorithm to its own – VertHash, which makes it difficult for ASIC and FPGA miners to receive rewards, which gives more people the opportunity to profitably mine cryptocurrency using video cards and CPUs. This coin is also well suited for mining cards with 3-4GB of memory. The coin is traded on medium and small exchanges, the most famous of which is Bittrex. For mining this coin on AMD and Nvidia, the open source miner VertHashMiner is available, as well as for processors and AMD cards SRBMiner-Multi.
- BTG is one of the bitcoin forks that appeared in 2017, according to the developers, as an attempt to return bitcoin mining to the masses, namely to video cards. The coin is still profitable for miners. There are several miners for Nvidia, the best are miniZ and Gminer. For AMD, lolMiner is the best option.
- BEAM is an interesting coin with a reasonable profit, and not too aggressive in terms of watts. There are also many pools where it can be mined. The best miners are miniZ for Nvidia and lolMiner for AMD.
But are these all the most profitable cryptocurrencies? There are some combinations that these calculators do not calculate, but they can still generate good profits. Some of these combinations are: ERGO, ETC + ZIL, ERGO + ZIL, and ETH in zombie mode.
Also, if you stopped mining Ethereum 4GB cards, then you can use multipools such as Zpool, Zergpool, NiceHash and the like. They offer a larger list of algorithms and, accordingly, coins for mining, incl. those that are suitable for mining on 3-4 GB cards. On these pools, it is possible to mine both a certain coin and receive a reward in it, and receive payment directly in BTC, ETH, ETC, DASH, LTC (the pool automatically sells your coins on exchanges at the current rate).
How to mine 4GB ETC?
You can mine Ethereum classic on 4GB cards. “Thanos” hard fork restored the ability to mine on older versions of video cards. As a result of the update, the size of the DAG file was reduced from 3.94 to 2.47 GB. This means that 3 and 4 gig video cards can mine ETC for about 2-3 more years.
Etherium is no longer mined on 4gb cards, but these Ethash coins are also not worth mining
Above, we have listed a list of profitable coins that are worth considering for mining on 4GB AMD video cards. Now let’s take a quick look at the rest of Ethash coins and why they shouldn’t be mined.
- DubaiCoin is the only coin on the list that can sometimes be mined. She has trading volumes per day ~ $ 1000 and sometimes she gets to the top 3-4 profitable coins for a day or a couple of days. The project’s Github is dead.
- Nilu – no bidding, dead project, Github abandoned.
- Akroma – the coin started its journey very actively, but is currently completely dead, without trading and with an abandoned Github.
- Ellaism – no trades, the coin is dead, Github is completely abandoned. But the most interesting thing is that sometimes it is included in the list of profitable coins for mining for 4 GB, while the trading of a coin per day does not exceed $ 20.
- MusiCoin is a coin that started very well, in which many miners believed at the beginning of its journey, but now, in fact, it is a completely dead project that has been removed from all exchanges. The coin is traded on only one trading floor with a daily trading volume of ~ $ 100. Github, as well as the others above, is completely dead.
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