Bitcoin Forum

After being the first to market with the SAPPHIRE RX 570 16GB HDMI Blockchain Graphics Card specially designed for the GRIN Community. SAPPHIRE is first again with the only Grin solution that will support Cuckatoo 32 protocol as a result of the recent update to the ePIC Boost Miner software and in preparation for Grin migrating to C32 in January 2020.

Updated ePIC Boost software drivers are now available to download here: https://gpuminer.sapphiretech.com/software/
 

Unnecessary hype, you trolls at sapphire should focus on increasing the rma to at least 6 years, nobody will buy gpus for mining anymore, return of investment right now is over 4400 days, that is almost 13 years.

https://whattomine.com/coins/151-eth-ethash?utf8=%E2%9C%93&hr=30&p=130&fee=3&cost=0.1&hcost=199&commit=Calculate

Would be nice to see cards that are not fpga but built specifically for mining but has titan rtx or higher performance.

16 gb high memory bandwidth is good.
570 chipset is so outdated and slow on clocks.

Isn't ansd ASIC coming?  What are they thinking?

So a few replies...

Metroid: for GRIN COIN, the use of GPUs is the only source of mining right now and our 570 16GB card is the lowest cost card that can efficiently mine C31 for GRIN. So there are still some buying GPUs for mining.

Lunobird, I will pass your request along. The 570 is an older chip but a tried and true efficient miner.

Badbart, ASICs are still a ways out and even then might not be as cost effective, especially with the planned branch coming up that changes the mining to C32.

Thank you for the reply, please do keep in mind my suggestion, increasing the warrant would help in this market on selected gpus, aside from that, I know you guys can't do much other than what you are already doing, sincerely and to point it out, is a great initiative, Sapphire is not an Nvidia partner and as such the next amd's best thing is Navi and I think a plan on how to tackle the mining business with it is in progress. I do hope you guys as 1st amd partner can find ways to compete x nvidia cause the way things are, nvidia is winning and this market is only at the beginning as I sure think you at sapphire are well aware of it.

Radeon VII has 16GB of RAM, that should be the 1st choice for developing a GRIN mining soft

The reason we developed the 570 card was because it offers a more affordable solution for people to use. With a lower cost, lower power draw and that fact that the 470/570 has been overall one of the most efficient mining chips out this is a great product for those looking for a more cost effective solution.

No, the price makes it totally uninteresting compared to the VII.

Once grin gets to ASICs, VII will still have well enough computing power for other cryptos (on cryptonight 1 variant 8 it's amost 3 times the 570 HR), 570 will get smashed by Navi.

That's not accurate.  My VII does 4.59 at 160 watts on Grin29.  Sounds to me to be more efficient.

hey sapphire-team, please tell amd to implement/port a rocm driver for windows ...

without ROCm driver support amd is becoming a no go for blockchain-tech fans using windows ...

blockchain-tech is ALL ABOUT decentralization therefore it MUST support as many systems as possible, otherwise this tech is useless if it remains a niche only.

and windows support is gladly or sadly very important for decentralization (as is of course linux and also apple os)

the 570 is probably still more affordable =P

I think your post is the not accurate one. He said it was ONE of the most efficient chips, not THE most efficient. He was speaking from an affordability standpoint.

Buying a Radeon VII for mining is incredibly stupid for a number of reasons...the primary one being the cost. Buying one at all really isnt a great idea since NVIDIA cards are better in almost all gaming aspects as well.


P.S. My 2 year old ALREADY paid for GTX 1070s run about 4.1-4.2gps @ 150w without being $700 in the hole per card.....

0.47 GPS in Cuckatoo 31 @ 200 watts for rx570 16gb blockchain edition.  Price $400

1080 ti gets a tad over 1.0 gps at 150 watts.  Price $500-600 used

Sorry I'm not convinced yet on why the rx570 would be a better buy. 1080 ti and 2080 rtx smokes this in every way even if you had two of these rtx570 16gb cards.

Thanks everyone for the feedback. The 200 or so watts I mentioned is a single card total system load, not the card load, as some seem to have assumed.

its still a 5 series card, they sure as heck dont draw 200w just because of a few extra memory chips

I am curious why grin31 is being targeted when that is the ASIC friendly version of the algo, Grin29 is meant for GPUs

Why put out a product targeting an algo its not meant for? I am a bit confused by that.

From the mimblewimble github:

Grin POW Basics

Grin accepts 2 Proofs-of-Work. Both are variants of a concept called 'Cuckoo Cycle'.

    CuckARoo (or ASIC Resistant) is intended to be mined by GPUs. It can be mined using a 6GB+ GPU.
    CuckAToo (or ASIC Targeted) is intended to be mined by ASICs in the future. It can also be mined using 11GB+ GPUs.



While yes with 11gb GPUs its possible, but that still not what it was designed for.


Edit: And how will you support C32? That requires a minimum of 22gb of VRAM for its graphing from what I understand.

Fwiw Metroid, this time you might be the troll. ;)

Grin has been designed to support GPU with a phase-in of ASIC over the span of 2 years. I have several GPU's switched over to mining Grin and also one of the Sapphire cards.

ROI is 40 weeks or so as I running in in C31 which is the ASIC friendly algorithm. It's very ironic that a GPU is making money using the Grin ASIC branch.

Here's a breakdown of the algorithms and phased rewards. Yes it's in geek talk but these who understand will figure out how to make money.
https://www.grin-forum.org/t/on-dual-pow-graph-rates-gps-and-difficulty/2144

Don't confuse age with ability. I have an old mustang what will destroy my 911 on the track (with some supercharger and suspension enhancements).

Grin mining for Cuckatoo31 or c31 on GPU's favors large frame buffers. It's been designed to run in 12 or 14 gb memory which is why the sapphire board trying to target. Otherwise you have deploy a memory paging or solver overflow routine which decreases fidelity (real life performance).

From what I've seen in the labs, the sapphire board outperforms the 1080ti mining C31 undermining pool conditions even though 1080ti reports 10% better performance.

Takes a long time to understand Grin as by design, it tries to address many of the deficiencies of today's cryptocurrencies.

To answer your question of why mine c31 on a gpu, it's very simple ... ARBITRAGE!  You point your GPU resources where it has the  highest leverage or the highest potential returns ... which is exactly what GPU miners do jumping from algo to algo or coin to coin.

c31 has 2 operating modes, mean (big memory for GPU) and lean (smaller memory for ASIC's). The return on c31 (basic-friendly algo) is much higher than on c29 (asic resistant algo) because of the network hash rate. I remember it was 15x more hashing power on c29 than on c31 meaning there is less competition on c31 and therefore higher rewards.

What is particularly interesting is that the returns on c31 increase about 1% a week and the returns on c29 fall 1% a week. My conclusion after doing the math is that c29 will be unprofitable soon whereas c31 becomes more profitable.

The other point to note is that all the grin return calculators seem to be incorrect as they do not model the return dynamics over time and are simply ports of existing calculations using todays static return.

Metroid, my apologies for the slight jab in my previous post.

I think it's great that Sapphire took the plunge to release a unique product for Grin while others are running away from GPU's.

Nvidia seems to be getting all the attention nowadays and it may get worse in ETH if and when they change to Progpow. I certainly hope that Navi puts AMD and Sapphire back in the race.

C31 has a higher return on investment, by putting the focus here we allow the miner to get the best return for the investment of time made.

You still should lower the price, even if the 16GB RX570 might ROI in theory (at current difficulty levels) before GRIN goes ASIC only, very few people are ready to pay 400$ for an outdated GPU ASIC. C31 ASICs are coming within a few months, then the ROI will be crushed.

I mine with RX570s, but they mine efficiently just a few algos. My last purchase was a 4GB Sapphire RX570 Gaming for les than 140€ shipped in january (2019). I will not pay 3 times the price for the same GPU with more RAM. Even if buyers think to use it as a gaming card later, it's too compute bound and one won't take avantage of the 16GB RAM.

If you develop a program that squeezes the power of the VII, you'll get big sales.

Do you warranty all graphics cards that have been used for mining?

is the team looking at all at opening up their miner to other large AMD cards? some of us still have Vega FEs, Radeon Pro Duos (dual 580s with 16GB apiece), and even the new Radeon VII's. It doesn't seem like it would be too terrible to port over, particularly the Polaris Pro Duos since it's the same architecture? They'd still be collecting the dev fee.

not if the 570 is $400 as retailed on sapphires website.  not a smart choice at that price.

wondering about this cards mining performance on other coins :) Anyone who have this card, could you run some kind of benchmark ? :) ( ETH, ZCash, Monero )
Or can we get some "official info" from "Sapphire_Ed (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=2558264)" ;)

thanks for passing my information along. Nice to have manufacture representatives communicate with the mining community. I think what your doing is a great start, Breaking away from the traditional gaming market with only gaming spec hardware,  Theirs such a big demand for specific blockchain gpus that has not been tapped into yet.  For your next hardware if you can deliver a product that satisfies the performance needs for blockchain processing. If you can do that convincingly, you got yourself a huge hit.  All it needs to be is cheaper and/or  faster then a gaming spec gpu. Not much to ask.  That simple.  I think team green gots you guys beat with their rtx cards and even 10 series in terms of overall mining performance.

Cmon Sapphire you can do better than that.   Its cool the Sapphire card can mine C32 in the future but that's betting on one algo and being a one trick pony.  It's just makes more sense to get a 1080ti or 2080 rtx and mine grin much faster right now. Or get a vega vii and not have to worry about slow clocks holding you back.

N2DCRYPT: At this time our focus with ePIC Boost is on our 570 16GB card.

Lunobird: I am looking at some data right now that is showing over the long haul we actually mine C31 faster than a 1080ti with our 570 card. I need some time to get more info on the stuff I am being told but this looks promising.

XXCSU: Our focus right now is on Grin but I will see what we can do about getting some testing with other coins.

Sapphire Ed, think I met you once at Microcenter in Brentwood MO at the launch of the RX480.

At anyrate, I am going through a range of GPUs right now for PROGPOW, GRIN, BEAM, ETHASH, UBIQHASH, RVN, VEIL and more. Most of its been covered live on Bitsbetrippin Twitch Channel, and recaps posted on YouTube.

Drop me a line and I can add the Sapphire 16gb in the fold for testing. If you guys can send a test unit out, I will return it after the livestream. I don't recieve to many test units from AIB partners given the core consumer is not miners, however, I attend CES each year, talk with all of your (amd and other AIB partners) about mining along live testing purchased gear since 2013 on YouTube.

Additionally, wouldnt say a hookup is in order on this one, but if you google "2500 GPU mining farm bitsbetrippin" you will see me sitting in our (330) 7 card rig farm which is filled with RX470, RX480 and RX580 Sapphire Mining Edition GPUs. LMK

So PM sent and we will see about getting together, your just up the road :-)