Bitcoin Forum

I discovered recently quite by accident that if I install the normal nvidia driver for my MSI notebook (has 1070 gpu), hashrates are at least 10% higher than with the notebook nvidia driver.  Both drivers identical versions.  Tried reverting and installing the nvidia notebook driver, hashrate dropped.  Put the standard nvidia driver in and hashrates back up again.

Fan speeds, temperatures, power usage identical.  Only hashrates change.

Not what one would expect!

Yes because this is probably working as expected. Notebooks/laptops are not really designed for mining or intense gaming because of their sleek and thin nature. They are meant to be used on the go and running intense tasks on them will really cause parts to overheat. Since notebooks lack the advantage of having fans and better cooling, the Nvidia notebook drivers you mentioned are probably throttled down to reduce the chance of overheating.

It is therefore recommended that you do not use your notebook to mine. Even if it has a 1070. You may end up breaking it before you even get close to ROI.

There is a huge chance that the hashrate is low due to the thermal throttling.  There is just no way a GPU/CPU on an average notebook/laptop that can handle 100% GPU load for a long time. Never mine with such hardware.

i think vendor uses modified driver, maybe he run gpu on lower frequencies due to prevent overheat

Yeah yeah but note the temperature and fan speeds are IDENTICAL with both drivers!  I could certainly understand if there was a thermal difference that would explain it but there isn't.  The laptop is not getting any hotter and the fans are not running any faster.  GPU core and memory clocks run identically with either driver.


Well it's been hashing 24/7 for 3 months so it seems to be handling it pretty well.  This is with a +120/+675 core/memory overclock.  Mining equihash does around 500 sol/s with a power efficiency of around 4 sol/watt.  Power consumption (measured at the plug) is identical with either driver.