Overall, very pleased with the extra DCR spead in v9.  I've had 2 6x470 rigs running it quite nicely for about a week with very few issues. Went from about 3200 DCR to 4800 on 1 rig set at -dcri 30 and about 43-4400 on the other at dcri 26 due to less PSU headroom on that rig.

Anyway, I just got a 3rd 6x470 rig going on this but it's crashed a few times, but mostly only after I went from 4 to 6 GPUs today. Still have plenty of power headroom but it could be something with those last 2 gpus i just added I suppose... still not sure.

However, what I did notice is that when I look in the log files, it's getting a ton of "DCR weak share - skip" errors. I thought maybe this is what was causing the crashes but when i checked log files on the other 2 i see similar rates of this, so still baffled as to why that 3rd rig is crashing... maybe will switch out risers tomorrow.

But... this got me to thinking... it really seems as though the improved hash-rate with v9 hasn't upped my actual DCR earning by anywhere close to the 50% is speed improvement. I thought maybe this was partially due to increasing difficulty but when I plug the numbers into WhatToMine, im coming up quite a bit shorter than I was with v8, relatively.  With v8, I was with 5-8% of what WhatToMine said, but with v9, that gap is more in the 20-25% lower range. Can I assume this is because while the hash-rate is pumped up, it's also generating many more skipped shares, so the apparent 50% increase in hash-rate is in actuality, much less than that because of the bad shares?

Just curious if anyone else is seeing this issue and if so, what are you doing to try to fix it?

Yeah, this happened to me recently as well... in addition to what that reply above suggests, you can try the following, which worked for me:

- uninstall the AMD drivers through the Add/Remove programs
- re-install the drivers again

After doing this, the GPUs were recognized in device manager and the values showed up again in Watt Tool.

Another thing to watch out for is that there are apparently a 1 or more versions of AMD drivers that don't play will with that strap-1500 or 1750 bios mod.  On my last build, i simply couldn't get my first 2 modded GPUs to work, despite what I thought was checking everything.  Then i re-checked the driver version i had on my other rigs and found that it I was running 16.40 but it was 16.30 on the problem rig.  The version # thing can be confusing but I'm talking about the long digit version that shows up in the software section of the settings area in the AMD software. Once I got 16.40 it ran like a charm.

One other thing... you mention copying to 1750 timing to 2000. I assume this is a GPU with Samsung memory?  If it's Hynix, the correct procedure is to copy from 1500 upwards.

well, it took me over 2 hours but i FINALLY got a measly 2 strap-1500 Hynix GPU's up and running solidly.  I tried pretty much every combination of 1 or 2 GPUs between 2 Samsungs and 2 Hynix but nothing would work after strapping either 1500 or 1750. Finally, I re-checked the driver version and found that this new rig (#4) was running 16.30, not 16.40 like my other 2 Win10 rigs.  I thought I checked that already but probably just missed the 1 digit difference.  I do remember reading a thread a while back about a few rogue driver versions that didn't jive well with strap modding, so I assume 16.30 is one of those.

Anyway, while that helped, it didn't solve every problem. After I got the 1st modded Hynix up and running, I plugged in another Hynix (pre-mod) but when I booted up, it screwed up the first GPU again. The only way I was able to fix it was uninstalling & reinstalling the drivers again, then it recognized both. Then I modded the 2nd and rebooted and it's been running fine overclocked and undervolted on ETH+DRC for almost 3 hours now.

One thing i noticed that is different with this rig is that every time I plug in a new GPU, i get 2 false starts before it actually boots. Never had this with the other rigs so assuming it may be something to do with the mobo since that's really the only varying factor.  Now it's too late to mess with this anymore and I want it to run overnight even if with only 2 GPUs, but tomorrow I think I will try adding 2 GPUs at a time because I really do not want to have to uninstall and reinstall drivers 4 more times to get this thing going with 6!

Anyone here had any issues with strap-modding MSI 470 4gb?  I built my 4th rig yesterday... got 2 new 470s up and running smoothly on ETH+DCR but when I tried strap-modding each, it appeared to work fine but upon reboot, both showed up with an error in Device Manager and were not recognized.

This occurred trying them 1 at a time. First, I did device 0, which has Samsung memory, so I strap-modded using the 1750 timings. It appeared to take but after reboot, I got the login & desktop screens in extra-large text (like before the AMD drivers are installed). Then sure enough, the GPU was not recognized. This is the GPU i have my monitor plugged into.  Tried reboots to no avail, so flashed the ROM back to original and it worked fine after the reboot.

Next, I tried the strap-mod on device 1 (Hynix) copying the timings from 1500.  Again, appeared to update fine but after reboot, device manager did not recognize it.  Flashed back to original ROM and it's fine again.

Has anyone experienced this or have suggestions on what to try to fix it?  This is an almost identical build to my last rig, which took all strap-mods fine on first attempt. The only real difference is that I am using a Biostar TB85 mobo (vs the ASRock BTC Pro 2 in my last 2 builds) but I can't imagine that being the issue.

A similar thing did happen to me on my 2nd rig, but I soon moved to W10 (from W7) and since was able to strap-mod all without issue.

The only thing I can think of (but doesn't seem likely) is that I got the 2 mixed up and flashed with the wrong mod (Samsung 1750 vs Hynix 1500) but I went based the order GPUs are listed in GPU-z.  Based on my last 2 rig's setup, GPUz seemed to be the only consistent way to determine device #, but maybe that was just luck.  Meaning, the first GPU in the drop-down is device 0 and the last is device 5.  I suppose it's possible that I added the GPUs in a different order on the other 2 rigs because on this one, I added the first in the x16 slot, then the 2nd to the first x1 slot, which could have mixed things up device wise, since I think I added them in line order last 2 rigs.  Anyway, probably the best thing to do it take out that Hynix from the x1 slot and add a Samsung there (assuming i have another Samsung) and then try to 1750-mod them both and see what happens.  That's probably quicker and easier than un-installing everything and re-installing in line order.

Anyway, any tips or similar experiences would be appreciated!

Another one to look for (although it too is currently out of stock everywhere that I have checked) is the Biostar TB85. Since this board is very similar to the 2 ASRock's mentioned above in that it was specifically made for 6-GPU mining rigs, I would assume it would at least be a good candidate for being able to support 7 GPUs.  I was very lucky to get 2 of these about a month ago when NewEgg had them briefly in stock.  Now, as you say, pretty much impossible to find any of these mobos... at least for anything close to retail.

Mobo shortage is one thing, but have you guys noticed the severe shortage of MSI rx 470 4GB lately?  Many places are out of stock and the ones that have any are selling it for well over $200 now.  Again, I was very lucky here in that I ordered 7 from 3 places about 10 days ago for an average price of about $160.

- 4 from Jet at $152/ea - price on Jet now... $399!!!
- 2 from MicroCenter (1 for $185, 1 for $160 after rebate) - MC still has at $185 but only for in-store pickup and they are not in my state
- 1 from B&H Photo for $180 - they are now out of stock

Amazon:  amazon proper out of stock, lowest price from Amazon 3rd party sellers is $250
NewEgg:  in stock but from 3rd party seller at $255

It's amazing what a spike in altcoin prices can do to supply of these things. It's one thing when the Baikal supply dried up with the spike of Dash to $100, but this is something on another level.  While I count myself lucky to have gotten a hold 7 for a bit over $1k, I am also kicking myself because right after I placed that 4 GPU order with Jet, I searched it again to see if I could have gotten the same deal and indeed, it was available for the same price.  But, for whatever reason, i didn't pull the trigger and when I went back in the next few days the GPUs were either not available or averaging well over $200. But, at least I got enough to build my 4th rig.  Will be interesting to see how long this lasts.

Sorry, but I dont agree with this.  If the OP has the money to buy now, then holding off on getting all 6 GPUs to start is essentially just throwing money (mining rewards) away.  Now granted, at present time, prices for most 470 & 480s are higher than they have been in a long time due to product shortages likely caused by the recent spike in alt prices.  So, that would be one consideration.  In addition, you might want to consider the MSI 470 4GB.  These are usually much cheaper than the 480 8gb, but the overall performance is not very much lower with those 470s, which means they should ROI quite a bit faster.  For your PSU, 1300W will work well for 6x470's running ETH + DCR but I think 480s will draw more power, so you might want to be careful there.

Yeah, I am in a very similar boat having good experiences with MSI 470 4GB GPUs. I actually own 15 of them and they've been churning on ETH + DCR for almost 2 months straight with little to no issues, so was very surprised to hear of others having issues with them.

About 10 of mine have Hynix memory and the rest (newer ones) have Samsung.  Note that to strap the Samsungs, you actually need to copy the 1750 timings upwards, unlike the Hynix which need the 1500 timings copied.  Almost all of my 15 are capable of 2000 or close to it, with the exception of 1 that I usually don't try to push over 1850. So... 1 kinda bad one out of 15 I don't consider bad at all.  Hopefully there is not an issue with brand new ones as I have 7 that just arrived this week from Jet & MicroCenter.  Luckily I got these for about $160 avg cost/card because now there is a rather bad shortage of these GPUs... hard to find under $230 now... if you can find them at all.  Jet is out and MC only available for in-store pickup, but only $185 there so probably worth it if you are close to a store since that seems to be the cheapest available by far anywhere that I've seen.

Totally agree!  In fact, I tried both DCR suprnova & decredpool.org and both were all over the place and far from producing consistent results!  After changing over the coinmine.pl it has been rock solid! Very few rejects and very consistent results day over day that match almost exactly to mining calculators. I was very impressed with coinmine on my Baikal FPGA and have been equally so with their DCR pool! Highly recommended!

In a way i feel lucky since I do hold some XRP, but unfortunately, it's only 2,000 of them lol.  but hey, I bought these about 6 months ago when I was just starting to get into crypto.  the 600% profit is great, but I just wish it was on more than a base of $16 lol. If only i would have had the guts to spend about $150 on it, I would now be looking at a $1000 profit lol, but i guess we can all say that about something.

On another note, I almost had a heart-attack a few minutes when i saw ETH drop to almost $43!  Luckily, it looks like that drop prompted a bit of a buying spree (seems a decent # of people had limit buy orders set at around $45), and now it's back up around $47 so hopefully it will keep some momentum and get back to around $50.

Also of note, DASH has had a really bad few days... finally dipping below $50 earlier today before getting back just over it at around $52-53.  I wonder if this is going to mysteriously open up a bit of supply of Baikal miners lol.  Im only slightly kidding... if you've seen a few of the conspiracy theories about Baikal mining with their own miners and not selling to customers lol. Don't get me wrong, they are still profitable... just not nearly as much as they were 1-2 weeks ago when all the supply went to zero around the globe.

So, there are basically 3 "cheap" mobos that are widely used to mine with 6 GPU's:

- ASRock Pro BTC R2 (there was an older version but was replaced by this, hence the "R2)
- ASRock Anniversary (not sure this is around any more)
- Biostar TB85

I personally have 2 of the first item up and running great for several months now.  I also have 2 TB85's that I will build out in the next couple of weeks.  These boards all go for about $65-$75 retail price, but the big problem is that they are almost always out of stock at both Amazon & NewEgg.  I have been very lucky to find my 2 + 2 at newegg and paid under $300 total for the 4, but I had to check both sites almost every day then just pull the trigger as soon as they come in stock because normally won't last for more than a couple of days.  I honestly don't know why they just don't produce more of these boards because there is clearly a huge demand but the supply can never keep up. Granted, LGA-1150 CPUs are EOL'd so supply will eventually dry up and maybe that's why neither company wants to over-commit on these boards. But, as another poster mentioned, Biostar has a new board coming out soon that looks good, but of course, it will be more expensive than those 1150 boards.

So, that truth of the matter is this... unless you are fortunate enough to find one of those boards in stock, your only options are going to be to either pay more for a better board, or pay a premium for the "cheaper" boards to people re-selling them on eBay for a mark-up.  To be honest, if you can afford the $100-$120 range I would consider paying that premium just to get your rig up and running. With 6 GPUs, you should make back that extra $30-$40 in reasonable time.  Also, I recommend NOT taking a chance on a board that is not fully proven to run 6 GPUs... even if you find a cheap one, it's not worth it because if it doesn't work with more than 4, you will be losing 50% of your potential mining profits.

Speaking of speculating... I read a few articles on this BitConnect Coin (BCC) and seemed pretty interesting and has appreciated quite quickly of late (like a lot of coins of course). 

https://bitconnectcoin.co/

The thing is though, this coin is not listed on either bittrex or poloniex but it is listed here:

https://www.coinexchange.io/market/BCC/BTC

but i have never heard of this exchange so not sure... also, this coin is approaching $4 and I typically like to speculate on micro-value coins since theoretically, there is much more potential upside that way.  Anyway, just thought i would point it out for anyone that is interested.

So, I finally switched over my DCR mining from decredpool.org to coinmine.pl.  I was just getting so frustrated with the inconsistency of decredpool, as well as the lack of response to any of the 4-5 e-mails I send to their support. Maybe the former is something more common with the Blake14 algo, but my results were literally all over the place... even day to day, week to week. sometimes the unconfirmed balance went all the way to zero and other days I got like .2 confirmed (when should have been getting around .8-.9).  Anyway, I have been mining Dash with coinmine.pl for almost a month and had no issues whatsoever, so just pointed all 12 of my DCR GPUs there and will see what happens.

As for DCR pools, I originally tried Suprnova but had a weird payout/account lock issue. The owner of that site eventually unlocked my account but by that time, I had switched over to decredpool.org and have been there since (about 3-4 weeks). For the most part, it's been pretty good. I really like their dashboard and other available stats, which seem to be a bit better than other pools. However, I have had a few issues where my results seem to slow to a crawl and have had to send a message to their support about it. I have not once seen an actual response from them but my account seems to get back to normal a while after sending the inquiry.

It's true that there is a long confirmation cycle for DCR. For instance, your Unconfirmed shares will start showing up within a few hours but when I started (with 12 GPUs pointed at DCR), I didn't get my first confirmed share until almost 24 hours after starting. This isn't a huge deal because it's only really noticeable at the beginning when you are accumulating unconfirmed shares. Still though, it's a notable difference from most other coins I have mined.

I have been considering trying another pool or going back to Suprnova because of that issue that seems to pop up every week or so. This has caused my results to be around 15% worse than the mining calculators say. Now that DCR is over $15, that adds up pretty quick.  I'm glad that another poster here mentioned coinmine.pl for DCR because I've been using that for Dash mining for almost a month and it has been flawless... getting almost exactly what the mining calcs say... although, I realize that could be at least partially because of the extreme efficiency of the Baikal Mini I am using.  Still, I think I will change over as soon as I reach my next payout of 5 DCR on decredoool.org.

Interesting discussions as always here    Personally, I'm not sure i would invest in an Nvidia monster rig, mainly because it seems like you would be paying a premium AND limiting yourself since ZEC seems to be the only coin that is mined better on Nvidia (if I'm not mistaken).  Plus, it always seems like when new coins come out, the first miners (at least ones made by Claymore) are usually for Radeon cards.

Anyway, certainly there are a few very interesting things going on now in the crypto world. This BTC hard-fork thing was just killing the price last few days but nice to see it make at least a little comeback today... at $974 at present.  Plus, really good to see ETH get back over $50 yesterday and hold it today so far. But... the biggest surprise to me the last few days and especially today is DCR!!! I was thinking the $5-$6 range was a very nice bonus on a coin that was just an afterthought secondary coin to mine alongside ETH... but now it shoots up to $12.85? (and was over $14 at one point earlier today). The ETH explosion, while still amazing and definitely not expected to this degree, at least has some obvious basis behind the spike (BTC issues, STORJ moving from BTC network to ETH network, etc).  Granted, a lot of other alts have come along for the ride, albeit to a lesser extent than ETH... but to think that when i started mining back around Oct'16, I did an ROI on dual mining DCR and it wasn't even worth the extra electricity (around $1 back then i think), it's frankly amazing that it is now even higher than the $10-$12 that ETH was hovering at for 4-5 months. I only wish I would have mined DCR at break-even for those 3-4 months but I wont complain since I've now got $400 worth of it after dual mining it only about a month.

Back to the building new rigs issue... this boom is making it very hard for me not to look seriously at building another 6-MSI 470 rig. I know there is no way of knowing how long it will last but it almost feels like wasting money NOT to build another one lol. I went ahead and ordered a couple of Mobos on Friday just in case. Couldn't find any more ASRock BTC Pro R2's though so ended up getting 2 Biostar TB85's as they seem to be a close equivalent and and well proven to work good with 6 GPUs.  Need to start looking at the other components again but looks like I can at least get 4 of the 6 MSI 470's needed from Jet for a total of about $630, so that's a decent start at least. Will probably re-asses in the next few days after seeing what prices do over that time period.

FWIW, I would recommend going with a PROVEN 6-GPU mobo.  Ideally, one that was made for it like the ASRock BTC PRO or Anniversary edition or the Biostar TB85.  There are tons of miners and farms built on these boards and they are proven to work time after time.  Be aware that just because a mobo has 6 PCIe slots, that does not necessarily mean you can get 6 GPUs running on it. Personally, I went through this when getting into mining about 6 months ago and learned a lesson. I got an ASRock x99 mobo that has 6 PCIe slots but I've only even been able to get 4 GPUs running on that board, despite hours and hours and posting in forums with questions, etc.  To me, it's better to even pay a slight premium on those proven boards vs taking a chance on 1 that could limit you to 4.

This is a good summary but the last statement about performance after all BIOS and clock tweaks is slightly inaccurate.  While it's true that those MSI 470's with Samsung memory have better H/R out of the box, after strap-mod-1500/1750 applied with overclock and undervolting, both Samsung & Hynix memory achieve right at 28 mh/s on ETH.  I have 10 Hynix and 5 Samsung and all are churning right around 28 after strap-mod.  It seems that Samsung is in most newer MSI 470s as all 5 news ones I've got from Amazon or Newegg all had Samsung memory.  Also, note that the strap-mod BIOS is slightly different... Hynix you copy the 1500 timings to all higher timings, while with Samsung, you copy from 1750. Other than that, the steps are identical as Lee from ImineBLocks youtube video shows below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OP_zSP2H6ho

I will share my relatively new experience with Baikal.  I apparently got one of the last Mini's they released... ordered about 3.5 weeks ago and it's been up and running perfectly the past 2.5 weeks.  My ordering experience was very smooth... placed through their website, contacted via e-mail to get exact BTC amount due, paid that day (Monday) and got the Mini that Friday. After I realized how easy these things were to set up and run, I contacted them about 3 days asking to buy 2 more.  Got a response in a day saying that they were now out of Minis but could sell me a Giant for about $2,300.  I couldnt pull the trigger then but now kinda wishing i had cuz if nothing else, probably could have doubled or tripled my money by just selling it.

Anyway, since then, I have sent them about 4 email messages. They replied to the first 2 just saying they were still out stock.  I specifically asked about when they expected a new batch and what the process would be for pre-order/reserving, etc, but never got any reply to these questions.  To me, I totally get that they were caught off guard and simply cannot keep up with demand... i mean really, who could have predicted Dash up almost 10x in the less than 3 months?  But, I do think it's a bit weak that they either 1) don't have a strategy for the next batch's release or 2) have one but just don't want to share it.  I think they could score a lot of points if they just were able to provide SOME information.

I still don't quite grasp how selling hash to nicehash seems to me much more profitable for many of you here. I get the concept but in doing the math for x11 Dash for instance, i see almost identical $ returns for selling vs mining.

Here's my math:  for today, it seems NH paying about .032 BTC per GH per day for x11 hash. at BTC avg of $1,080... that should be just about $34.50 in BTC per day.  My mini provides 150 MH, so that equates to about $5.15 per day in BTC using nicehash.

But... I am consistently getting .05 Dash per day with that mini... with Dash at $100, that also equates to $5/day.  So, what am I missing?  I've already mentioned that since I am still in the accumulation phase of mining alts, I'm not really interested in mining directly to BTC anyway, but certainly do it if that was a large margin better, then just convert that BTC to what ever alt i wanted... but I'm just not seeing it.  Maybe something I am reading wrong off the nicehash site cuz i know the problem can't be my math lol ;-)

ETH strength continues to amaze!  Luckily, I have just been banking all my mined ETH in preparation for the eventual move to POS.  I know it's not a ton but I had 50 shares before the blow-up the last week or so and very glad I had help them now for sure.  A few days ago when it almost hit $30 then dropped back down around $26, I almost sold some around $28 when I saw it starting to drop, but i didn't pull the trigger. Now with it at $45 I am looking at its ratio to BTC and its crazy... only about 1:25, which would have been unthinkable just over a week ago.

However, as good as ETH is, DCR has been on fire as well... hit $6 a while ago now back around $5 but that's still quite impressive. I have never tried pushing my rigs past default intensity on ETH but Im runing default 8 on ETH and 40 on DCR and getting right around 1 share of each per day (only 12 of 16 cards are doing DCR though because 1 rig can't seem to do dual for some reason).  It's a bit different for me since i am holding most of both coins and not auto-converting to BTC via NH, but either way, it's a great time to be a miner!

Hey Phil, sorry I can't help on this... both my 6-card rigs doing ETH + DRC are running fine. I usually run about 1% rejects but have never seen it eclipse 2%.  However, note that I am mining directly to decredpool and not to NH, so that could be the issue on your side.  It might be worth trying decredpool or suprnova for decred though if NH is indeed the issue... because right now, with DCR between $5-$6 and Pasc still stuck under 20 cents, I believe DCR is probably 3-5x more profitable to mine than Pasc.  It was a close toss-up back when DCR was at or under $2 but it's now up 2-3x while Pasc is about the same. might be worth a try anyway