I currently use a Radeon 5770 (please don't judge, electricity is not a big issue and we're in a bear market right now, so it's mostly experimentation for now) and Claymore CryptoNote GPU Miner v9.7.
GPU is overclocked to 960/1320 MHz (core/memory) and yields 176-177 H/s (stock 850/1200 clocks yield 165-166 H/s). According to HWiNFO64, GPU utilization is 99-100% and VRAM usage is ~800MB. This old and unsupported miner software is utilizing my old GPU to its full potential. :)
The thing is, I'm trying to prepare for the inevitable Monero v7 algo change (most altcoins will also adopt it) and I'm experimenting with different miner apps (xmrig-amd, xmr-stak).
Both xmrig-amd and xmr-stak (latest versions) only give me ~65 H/s, which is pretty low, even lower than my CPU*. :( Default hash count is 160 threads and if I try it to increase it to 320, then I get OpenCL errors that the memory capacity does not suffice. GPU utilization is 50% and VRAM usage is ~500MB. Something is clearly not optimal...
On top of that, these miners slow down my PC a lot, while Claymore v9.7 doesn't...
* My CPU (Q9550 overclocked to 422 FSB, 3587 MHz) yields 112-113 H/s with xmrig.
I'll post my configs with some comments in case someone can help:
-o ssl://server:3333
-allpools 1
-u wallet_address
-p w=desktop_PC_GPU
-a 3 #optimized mining algo for TeraScale/VLIW GPUs
-dbg -1
-li 1 #low intensity to be able to use my PC
-nofee 1 #I disabled the fee because it uses old pools that lose connection pretty often and thus mining stops altogether
-h 320 #320 threads 2MB each = 640MB VRAM needed
{
"algo": "cryptonight",
"background": false,
"colors": true,
"donate-level": 1,
"log-file": null,
"print-time": 60,
"retries": 5,
"retry-pause": 5,
"opencl-platform": 0,
"threads": [
{
"index": 0,
"intensity": 160,
"worksize": 8,
"affine_to_cpu": false
}
],
"pools": [
{
"url": "server:3333",
"user": "wallet_address",
"pass": "w=desktop_PC_GPU",
"keepalive": true,
"nicehash": false,
"variant": -1
}
],
"api": {
"port": 0,
"access-token": null,
"worker-id": null
}
}/*
* GPU configuration. You should play around with intensity and worksize as the fastest settings will vary.
* index - GPU index number usually starts from 0
* intensity - Number of parallel GPU threads (nothing to do with CPU threads)
* worksize - Number of local GPU threads (nothing to do with CPU threads)
* affine_to_cpu - This will affine the thread to a CPU. This can make a GPU miner play along nicer with a CPU miner.
* strided_index - switch memory pattern used for the scratch pad memory
* 2 = chunked memory, chunk size is controlled by 'mem_chunk'
* required: intensity must be a multiple of worksize
* 1 or true = use 16byte contiguous memory per thread, the next memory block has offset of intensity blocks
* 0 or false = use a contiguous block of memory per thread
* mem_chunk - range 0 to 18: set the number of elements (16byte) per chunk
* this value is only used if 'strided_index' == 2
* element count is computed with the equation: 2 to the power of 'mem_chunk' e.g. 4 means a chunk of 16 elements(256byte)
* comp_mode - Compatibility enable/disable the automatic guard around compute kernel which allows
* to use a intensity which is not the multiple of the worksize.
* If you set false and the intensity is not multiple of the worksize the miner can crash:
* in this case set the intensity to a multiple of the worksize or activate comp_mode.
* "gpu_threads_conf" :
* [
* { "index" : 0, "intensity" : 1000, "worksize" : 8, "affine_to_cpu" : false, "strided_index" : true, "mem_chunk" : 2, "comp_mode" : true },
* ],
* If you do not wish to mine with your AMD GPU(s) then use:
* "gpu_threads_conf" :
* null,
*/
"gpu_threads_conf" : [
// gpu: Juniper memory:384
// compute units: 10
{ "index" : 0,
"intensity" : 160, "worksize" : 8,
"affine_to_cpu" : false, "strided_index" : 1, "mem_chunk" : 2,
"comp_mode" : true
},
],
/*
* Platform index. This will be 0 unless you have different OpenCL platform - eg. AMD and Intel.
*/
"platform_index" : 0,
Is there any hope for TeraScale/VLIW GPUs (Radeon 5xxx/6xxx) after the Monero v7 fork?