Nvidia CMP 170HX Mining Review: Benchmark/ Hashrate / Overclocking/ Ethereum/164MH/s -205W – What is remarkable about the Nvidia CMP 170HX video card when mining. Despite the cosmic price (more than 4000 USD), as of the end of 2021, Nvidia CMP 170HX video cards are among the best in the mining equipment market in terms of performance and energy efficiency.
This is due to the use of a variation of the top-end 7-nm GA100 chip, which, despite cutting off the number of computing cores to 54% of a full-fledged crystal, demonstrates excellent computing performance.
Let’s take a closer look at the technical characteristics, software and hardware features of Nvidia CMP 170HX video cards, as well as the hash rate on popular mining algorithms.
What are the characteristics of video cards Nvidia CMP 170HX
Nvidia CMP 170HX graphics adapters have the following specifications (compared to Nvidia RTX3090):
- Production start date – September 1, 2021 (09/01/2020);
- GPU – GA100-105F-A1 (GA102-300-A1);
- Architecture – Ampere;
- Technical process, nm – 7 (8);
- Number of transistors, billion – 54.2 (28.3);
- Crystal area, mm² – 826 (628);
- number of streaming multiprocessors (SM Count) – 70 (82);
- The number of shader cores (Shading Units) – 4480 (10496);
- The number of TMU / ROP units – 280/128 (328/112);
- GPU frequency, MHz – 1140-1410 (1395-1695);
- FP32 performance, TFLOPS – 12.63 (35.58);
- FP64 performance, GFLOPS – 6.317 (556);
- The amount of video memory, GB – 8 (24);
- Video memory type – HBM2e (GDDR6X);
- Memory clock frequency, MHz / effective frequency, Gbps – 1458 / 2.9 (1219 / 19.5);
- Memory bus width, bit – 4096 (384);
- L2 / L3 cache, MB – 8 / – (6 / -);
- Memory bandwidth, GB / s – 1493 (936.2);
- CUDA / OPENCL support – 8.0 / 3.0 (8.6 / 3.0);
- Hashrate on the Ethash algorithm, MH / s (according to the standard VRAM performance) – 186 (117);
- Consumption (TDP), watt – 250 (350);
- Energy efficiency, MH / s per watt (more is better) – 0.74 (0.33).
As you can see from the comparative characteristics of the Nvidia CMP 170HX and RTX3090 video cards, the latter has much more processing cores and operates at higher frequencies, although it has significantly lower memory performance.
In this regard, the 170th breaks far ahead when performing operations on algorithms that are memory-intensive, but lags behind in calculations that heavily load the kernel.
At the same time, given the large amount of memory on the RTX3090 video cards, as well as the powerful core, it is possible to parallelize the computations into several threads and, as a result, get a much higher hash rate, narrowing the gap with the CMP 170HX on the Ethash algorithm.
Information about the Nvidia CMP170HX video card according to the GPU-Z program with drivers from the CMP90HX:
Information about the Nvidia CMP170HX video card according to the nvidia-info utility:
Design features of video cards Nvidia CMP 170HX
Nvidia CMP 170HX graphics adapters are designed to work in well-ventilated server cases, or require a non-standard cooling system / rework.
Similar solutions are used in most professional Nvidia graphics cards, even the older Tesla K40s.
Nvidia CMP 170HX graphics cards are powered by an 8-pin Power connector type 6652208-T0009T-H with connectors rated for a maximum current of 7 amps each.
This is a connector that is usually used to power processors; it differs from the usual power connector for video cards not only in the mounting holes, but also in the pinout:
The shape of the mounting holes and the purpose of the pins of the usual 8-pin power connector for video cards:
The video card comes with a special adapter (1x CPU 8 pin male to 2x 8 pin PCIe female GPU Power splitter cable 030-0571-000), which ensures correct switching and allows you to provide an acceptable load on the power cable from the power supply:
The back of the Nvidia CMP 170HX graphics card is covered with a massive aluminum plate:
CMP170HX graphics adapters work fine through a riser, as they are sharpened for the PCIe 1.1 x4 standard, which is in demand among miners.
Hashrate of Nvidia CMP 170HX video cards in mining
To work with the Nvidia CMP170HX video card, you need to use the latest drivers for products such as Data Center / Tesla A-series (at least version 471.41 for Windows and 470.57 for Linux).
Nvidia CMP 170HX graphics adapters demonstrate the following mining performance (excluding cooling system consumption):
- Ethash / Etchash algorithm (Ethereum / Ethereum Classic coins) – 160-165 MH / s (210-220 watts);
- FiroPoW – 47 (250 watts);
- kawpow – 56-56.5 MH / s (260-280 watts);
- Cuckoo Cycle — 14 H/s (210 ватт);
- octopus – 67-72 MH / s (245-260 watts);
- autolykos2 – 400-420 MH / s (240-250 watts);
- equihash 125.4 – 85 sol / s (245 watts);
- equihash 144.5 – 140-145 sol / s (280 watts);
- equihash 150.5/BeamHash III — 48-49 H/s (210 ватт);
- equihash 192.7 (EquihashZero)— 85 H/s (280 ватт);
- equihash 210.9 (AION) – 550-560 H / s (235 watts);
- MTP – 5.5 MH / s (280 watts);
- ProgPow SERO – 54-56 MH / s (250 watts);
- CNGPU – 1.4-1.5 KH / s (140 watts).
As you can see from the data presented, the performance of the Nvidia CMP 170HX in mining Etehreum is fantastic, a rig of 8 such video cards produces a hash rate of about 1.3 GH / s:
Conclusion
Nvidia CMP 170HX video cards are currently among the most attractive in terms of performance for mining Ethereum and other cryptocurrencies on Ethash and similar algorithms.
At the same time, given the cosmic price of these adapters, in most cases it makes more sense to use less expensive and universal video cards (for example, RTX 3080/3090, CMP 70HX), collecting rigs on them.
When using Nvidia CMP 170HX video adapters, special attention should be paid to ensuring good cooling, since in the event of a chip / video memory failure, repair is almost impossible. This is due to the fact that all 8 Gb HBM-memory of the CMP 170HX is located on the same substrate with the video chip. In the event of degradation of semiconductors / chip dump due to overheating, the entire composite BGA chip will have to be replaced, which cannot be obtained at an affordable price.
You can read about mining on CMP 70 HX video cards in the article Nvidia CMP 70HX – an analogue of the GeForce RTX 3070 Ti video card without mining locks.
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