I'm actually much more interested in seeing what the next-gen Radeon GPUs (Navi-2) are going to do mining-wise.  In just getting back into mining recently, i was very surprised to see the huge jump in mining efficiency between the RX 500 and 5000 series (nearly 2x hash-rate on ETHash with only ~25% more power draw).  If their Navi-2 cards can boost the eff rate even 20% more, it's going to make things very interesting, pricing aside. 

This latest market rally is indeed very interesting. Seems much more sustained and supported than the couple spikes we saw since the '18 crash.  If it keeps up, I expect we could start to see GPU shortages again soon. Maybe not to the degree of what happened back in 2017 but certainly there are some similarities. Current days to ROI on 5600 XT are just a bit more than 200 and if those and 5700 XT's go under 200 days, we could start to see some of the mass buying behavior that occurred in the 2017 boom.

I just got my first 5700 on a good deal and am leaning towards converting 1 of my 470 rigs over to full 5600XT/5700/5700XT before the Dec EOL for 4GB GPUs on ETHash comes.

Good to think ahead and I'm in a similar boat as you will 4 rx 470 4GB rigs that will no longer mine ETH come December.

However, regarding your concern about the apparent forthcoming ETH 2.0... while this implementation will likely eventually end ETH mining, there are a few things to keep in mind.  First, who knows when they will actually pull the trigger on this. They've already had many delays and even though it seems to be coming soon, I'm not holding my breathe.  In addition, they have already said that even when eventually implemented, it will be a hybrid model (meaning you can still mine) for some time.  Many people estimate this hybrid will last between 1-2 years. So, I expect ETH mining to continue to be profitable for 6GB+ GPUs for probably at least 1.5 years, assuming of course that prices stay on the high side ;-)

Ah yes, I should have clarified this... the rigs in question have Intel G3000 series CPU's, all of which have integrated graphics.  Most are using G3260, 3250 or 3240 but all these have GFX onboard, so must be another issue.

Hello everyone, as most of you know, the increased ETH DAG size has caused some problems for those of us mining with 4GB GPUs. I have successfully rectified this situation (for now) on 1 of my ASRock H81 Pro BTC boards by simply entering the BIOS and changing primary display to onboard/internal/integrated graphics, the running Phoenix miner 5.0e.  This worked the first time i tried it... just re-plugged the monitor into the VGA port on mobo after BIOS changed and good to go!

However, I have 2 rigs built on a Biostar TB85 mobo and for some reason, cannot get either of them to change successfully over to Internal Graphics (IGFX in their BIOS).

I tried the following combinations under:  Chipset --> System Agent Config -->

-  Primary Display = IGFX  (with IGFX "enabled")
-  Primary Display = IGFX  (with IGFX "auto")
-  Primary Display = Auto  (with IGFX "enabled")
-  Primary Display = Auto  (with IGFX "auto")

The "best" i am able to get when plugged into mobo's VGA port after these changes is a black screen with an arrow cursor visible but nothing else.

I've now tried this on both my Biostar rigs with the same result, so it seems likely a settings related issue as opposed to a faulty board.

Does anyone have a recommendation on the exact correct BIOS settings to enable this?  In addition to this area of the BIOS, is there another setting that needs to be changed?

Thanks in advance for your help!

Wow Phil, really sorry to hear about those health issues, especially with your wife.  I wish you and her the best for recovery and to stay safe and healthy!  These are certainly different times where priorities are completely different vs even 6 months ago for most people.  I'm glad for this crypto rebound and hope that it holds as (aside from the financial benefit), it has been a nice distraction from a some really bad things going on in the world.

Anyway, thanks for the feedback on the XMR CPU mining.  I don't think its a legit option for me as I really only have 1 higher end CPU (on my main PC, not a miner).  Most of the rest of Intel G3000 series, which i don't think will do much on XMR.

Hey Phil... did I see you mention recently that you are still mining XMR?  If so, can I assume you are doing so with CPUs not GPUs?  Mining calculators indicate GPU-mining of XMR at a loss, even given it's recent price increase so I assume you are using other methods.  If using CPUs, would you mind sharing which you are using and their results?

THanks

Thanks for the feedback, i really appreciate it!  Regarding my concern about SMOS no being wi-fi capable... I logged onto their Discord yesterday and a couple regulars there were quite helpful in suggesting use of a PowerLine Ethernet Adapter, so I ordered 1 and will try it out over the next few days.  I hope I can get that option to work as I was very eager to try this out and salvage that rig.

That particular issue is not a problem for me since I already BIOS-modded-strapped all of my RX 470's.

However, I was just about to download the SMOS image and flash to my USB stick when i read on their site that this does not currently support Wi-Fi?!?!  Is that correct? 

That will be a problem for me as all my rigs are wi-fi based and spread throughout my house  to spread the heat out. 

Thanks Phil for the SMOS recommendation to circumvent my display/driver issues on my 470-4GB rigs.  I am at the point now where I am going to give SMOS a try, as I have fought even my other ASRock MB rig with insane driver issues and finally ended up with Win-10 getting corrupted beyond repair yesterday.

However, I do have a few questions for you or anyone else running SMOS, especially with 4-GB GPUs very recently...

General Usage/Install:  do i have this correct for using SMOS?
- Download SMOS to USB Stick
- Plug into USB MB slot on rig
- Enter BIOS and switch boot order to USB priority 1
- Reboot and then SMOS installs/loads?
- Then after install, so I need to keep that USB plugged in or is there some way port SMOS over to the SSD on that rig?

Specifically for a rig with only 4GB GPUs where i cannot as of yet switch the main display to Internal Graphics:
- Will SMOS still work to mine ETH if my primary display is still plugged into the 4GB GPU-0 in the x16 slot?

Finally, is it true that no separate driver or miner software is needed outside of SMOS?  If not, does that mean that all of these are already loaded in that OS?

Thanks again for all the help!

Hello everyone. A few days ago I posted about getting 1 of my RX 470-4GB rigs going again by using the latest Phoenix miner and switching my Primary Display to onboard/internal graphics through the BIOS of my ASRock Pro BTC MB.  That is still working perfectly, but I just tried doing the same on another 470-4GB rig built on a Biostar TB85 MB and can't seem to get the display switched over to internal.

Was hoping that some of you are running this or similar Biostar board and might be able to help.  These are the BIOS settings I have tried. Prior to this, all options were set to "Auto" with the monitor plugged into 1 of the 470's:

-  Primary Display = IGFX  (with IGFX "ebabled")
-  Primary Display = IGFX  (with IGFX "auto")
-  Primary Display = Auto  (with IGFX "enabled")
-  Primary Display = Auto  (with IGFX "auto")

In some combinations, it still shows video while connected to my 470 (when i made this change on the ASRock MB, it wouldnt display while plugged into my 470 immediately after applying the BIOS change and reboot, but when i plugged into the MB, it worked immediately).

When i switch the monitor cable over to the MB, once i got the screen to appear but it was super focussed (meaning the screen was magnified beyond use). When I rebooted i just got what appeared to be a windows hang, then a black screen where i could move my mouse cursor but do nothing else.

FYI:  I can get the BIOS screen to display with the monitor plugged into the MB's VGA port, just cant get a usable windows screen to appear that way.  Any suggestions would be highly appreciated!

Hello... first i would like to thank the dev team for continuing to update this miner... it is greatly appreciated!

I recently tried version 5.0e on 1 of my RX 470-4GB rigs and it worked flawlessly after I changed the primary display to Integrated Graphics through the BIOS.  That was on an ASRock H81 Pro BTC motherboard.

However, I am having an issue doing the same on a similar rig built on a Biostar TB85 MB.  In this BIOS, there are more display options than for ASRock, but I tried several combinations with no luck:

-  Primary Display = IGFX  (with IGFX "ebabled")
-  Primary Display = IGFX  (with IGFX "auto")
-  Primary Display = Auto  (with IGFX "enabled")
-  Primary Display = Auto  (with IGFX "auto")

In some combinations, it still shows video while connected to my 470 (when i made this change on the ASRock MB, it wouldnt display while plugged into my 470 immediately after applying the BIOS change and reboot, but when i plugged into the MB, it worked immediately).

When i switch the monitor cable over to the MB, once i got the screen to appear but it was super focussed (meaning the screen was magnified beyond use). When I rebooted i just got what appeared to be a windows hang, then a black screen where i could move my mouse cursor but do nothing else.

Bottom line is that I cannot get a proper display while plugged into the MB.

Does anyone know the exact correct BIOS settings for Biostar to achieve this?  Seems likely that I am missing something but cant figure it out.

Thanks in advance for your suggestions!

thanks for the tips on getting my 4GB rigs up and running again, i really appreciate them!

I tried installing 20.4.2 drivers on the rig with the one 8GB GPU and seemed to go fine (all 6 GPUs recognized in Dev Mgr) but when i started Claymore 15, I only got about 50% hashrate on GPU-0 and nothing on the others. Was getting a notification the the miner was being blocked from accessing graphics hardware. So, decided to give up on that one for a bit as it is too hot to turn on all 6 of my rigs anyway.

So, I went to another rig with 6x RX 470's all 4GB.  Went into BIOS and switched display to onboard graphics, then unplugged my monitor from the 470 and plugged it into the MB. Display showed up no problem.  I then downloaded Phoenix miner 5.0e, changed the config to my pool and wallet and launched miner.  Took a few minutes to get DAGs assigned but now it's been running perfectly for about 2 hours at the same speeds it was about a year ago.  And the best part? I didn't even have to update the drivers, which for AMD cards is still a freaking PITA!

So, based on these results I will likely move all for AMD rigs over to Phoenix miner.  I do like the look of the SMOS Phil mentioned, but if this method works on my other 3 rigs, I will likely stay with it to avoid the extra cost and time.  If I was starting from scratch though that definitely looks like a cool way to manage rigs!

Hey everyone! Great to see Phil still running these threads and going strong!

Given the recent spike in ETH price, I decided to starting turning back on my rigs.

Of course, my 2 Nvidia rigs (w/1070ti's) were up and running perfectly in no time. Just downloaded Claymore v15, copied over my config file from 1 year ago (last time my miners were on lol) and bam! running amazingly smooth!

Now, the issue comes with my 4 AMD rigs, mostly running MSI RX 470's (4GB). If anyone here is still running those, you are probably aware that you can no longer have a 4GB GPU in port 0... either has to be bigger than 4GB or use Intel Integrated Graphics.  Luckily on 1 rig i do have one 8GB Sapphire 470, so i swapped it over to port 0.  I just used DDU to wipe previous drivers, and now am at the stage of installing new drivers.

My question is, what are the last good AMD drivers available to run 470 rigs?  Looks like the last ones i was using were 18.3 or so.  Most current appears to be 20.4.2 but was wondering if anyone has used those successfully, or if slightly older versions might be better.

Any feedback would be greatly appreciated!

Well yesterday was sure eventful! Was glued to both coin360 & coinbase pro watching ETH go crazy most of the day. For about a 1-2 hours stretch it was busting through every barrier all the way up to about $275!  Leveled off a bit in low 270's so i took a break, only to watch in horror as it dropped about $15 in minutes right before i went to bed lol!  Saw it dip down to $257 but today seems to be pretty much locked into hovering between $264-$267.  Tried to push $270 a few times but keeps dropping back. Hopefully it will do so soon and move towards $300.  In a way it feels kinda good to be back in "watch like a hawk" mode, but I also realize how much time it wastes so...

Ah yeah makes sense... I remember those Vega GPUs being beasts on XMR. I actually got lucky to get 3 of them early after release but after hooking up 1 to a new rig and realizing how freaking loud it was (at least compared to MSI RX470's) I decided to sell all 3.  I somewhat regretted that action later on but I was able to double my money on them, which in turn helped my mostly finance my first 1070ti rig, so not THAT much regret.

Phil... are you mining XMR with that rig?

Yup... we are in similar boats.  My power is 11 cents so just recently got in the ballpark of an acceptable "profitability-to-effort" ratio.  I also turned back on all my rigs last June... and also for just over a month lol... until prices dropped again.  Really hoping for a sustained action this time.  Not sure we will see ATH any time soon but if it could even fluctuate between $500-$600 for a while it would be well worth it.

As you point out, anything over $300 range will start to bring more and more people back into mining, which in turn bumps up the difficulty. I'm curious as to how many people like us actually help onto all/most of our gear through this 2nd downswing. Can't imagine there were that many but who knows.  I almost started selling mine off multiple times but just never did it lol.

Well I am finally back after roughly 2 years away and was very happy to see Phil's threads are still going!

The recent market surge has gotten me re-invigorated on crypto to let's hope this trend continues!

I only read the last 3-4 pages so far but a couple of things to comments on...

1- Filecoin:  i checked out their site and signed up. Hopefully this will turn out to be a reasonable option for the ~150TB of HDD space i have sitting idle.  I ran them on BURST for about 2 years and actually did reasonably well since i cashed out about 50% of it before the crash.  More than enough to pay off all those HDDs with a decent amount left over so no complaints, but would be nice to be able to put them to use again as they are now just collecting dust. Was going to start selling them off but will probably hold off on that for now.

2- RAM:  not sure i followed exactly why but it seemed at least some people are bumping up the RAM in some of their systems. If you are in this boat, it might be a good idea to buy what you can soon.  All indications are that the memory market is going to spike again very soon. As many of you know, this is a very cyclical market and prices plummeted in 2019. This is expected to turn around soon, with prices possibly going up 30-50% within the next ~6 months.

Finally, just a few thoughts on the recent market swell and its impact on mining.  Personally, I still have my 6 (2 1070ti/1080 & 4 rx470) rigs lying dormant but assuming ETH holds it gains and continues upwards, I will very likely fire them up again in the next day or so. I was just about to start listing the GPUs on ebay and even unplugged one of my 1070ti's 2 weeks ago to take photos for an auction. Well, my procrastinating in listing them might pay off lol.  Luckily, my only consideration is power cost since all my equipment has long ago been ROI'd but I feel for those trying to break freshly into the mining scene... seems very daunting unless we see a sustained impressive bull market (which we are all hoping for).  but at current levels, pretty much impossible to ROI new gear.

So, a couple of things here.  If you are considering cashing out BTC or alts to fiat, I would absolutely not do it now. At this moment, BTC just hit $9,650, and I think we all know what is likely to happen when it eclipses $10k, which could easily be within the next few days. Not only is it likely to push way up from there due to extreme FOMO conditions being prevalent, but the entire market is likely to get pulled along for the ride.

Now, the other tactic that I think is absolutely in play is the ETH/BTC relationship.  Right now it stands at almost 35:1 (you can trade 1 BTC for 35 ETH). In looking at the charts, this is at historical low levels (speaking from the ETH perspective).  At ETH's peak, this ratio was only 10:1.  Now sure, maybe it's not going back to that extreme but certainly 20:1 and even 15:1 seems very reasonable.

The big question is, of course, when to pull the trigger on that trade.  It's tempting even now and I may convert a small amount of BTC to ETH.  But as I said, with $10k looming (now only $325 away), most experts agree it will go parabolic from there.  I would say even $13k within a few weeks is not out of the question. I do think most alts will go along for that ride to some degree, but they will probably do it to a lesser degree than BTC. I am looking at something around 40:1 as a big trigger point. If it hits that, it's almost a no-brainer to me.  If the short history of this holds, we would then see a drop in BTC (maybe back down around $11k) but much more market share swinging over to the alts, especially to the major ones.  This could send ETH into the $550 range, which would indeed be back in that 20:1 range.

All of this is speculative of course but if you analyze the inter-crypto swings in the Q1'17 to Jan'18 bull market, there was a very clear pattern of BTC's market dominance coming back to the pack, so to speak.

Great thread and some very valuable points being discussed here as in all Phil's threads!

Personally, I am still 100% GPU... 24 470's mining ETH & 12 1070ti's mining ZEC.  Due to a heavy workload recently, I haven't been able to sufficiently research all of the goings on with new ASICs and FPGAs but clearly, these have already had big impact and that will only get more impactful over the next few months.

I have historically avoided ASICs, mainly because of not being able to get it early enough (to get a first batch at retail for instance) and the fear of ending up with a paperweight at the end with possibly not even ROIing.  With that said, I did have a good experience with an FPGA (Baikal mini).  Paid $300 and was able to mine about 5 DASH with it.  ROI'd x3 with sold DASH and still hold 3.5 coins. Plus, even after it couldn't mine DASH profitably any more, I was able to switch to some of its other algos and while not hugely profitable, it made me maybe a few hundred extra. So, overall, a very good experience, but $300 is a pittance compared to some of the units coming out now.

Still, i know Phil and others on this thread have done quite well with recent ASICs, and I have been trying to research to see if I can pull off something.  What I've been looking hard at are the Decred miners.  Personally, DCR seems to be a very solid coin, with its prices not plummeting as low as other coins during the crash in Jan/Feb and it is currently closer to it's all time high than pretty much any other top 100 coin. Unfortunately, those DCR miners look to be the most expensive on the market, but at least at current rates, the ROI period is quite small at maybe 9 weeks. Of course, the big risk is that once all those 2.1TH miners are shipped, rewards will go down, but the question is of course, by how much.  Also, there seems to be a few versions/brands of essentially the same miner, so not sure what that is all about, but the Innosillicon version looks to be available for about $6500 and shipping within 2 weeks.

Do any of you have experience with this company?

http://www.innosilicon.com/html/d9-miner/

Also, i think someone on the thread #7 posted a link to an ASIC/FPGA profitability list but now i can't find it. If someone could re-post here I would appreciate it.