Increase the GPU usage when mining with ethminer

[cryptocoinfreak]

I have just started mining ETH for testing purposes and I'm using ethminer (btw, what is the best eth miner in terms of performance?) and while mining I have ~ 25 Mh but I see on my graphics card in Task Manager that it doesn't use it more than 3%. Is there a way to increase this in order to use like 75%?

I have an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Ti and an I7-9700K CPU

[Wotan Wipeout]

Mining with windows or linux?

My advise is to activate the iGPU and connect your screen there.
Set the GPU RAM to +1000 for a try. Should boost your Mhs.
For Windows get Afterburner and check your GPU there.

[rdluffy]

With a 1660Ti you can achieve 30Mhs
The best miner that I tested is Phoenix Miner: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2647654.0

Download miner, use MSI Afterburner to increase vram clock in something like + 900 or +1000mhz and reduce Power Limit to 60%
You'll increase hashrate, reduce power usage and reduce heat too

If you want to see real usage of you GPU, I suggest to use GPU-z: https://www.techpowerup.com/gpuz/

if you need some help we are here

[adaseb]

You must of read some ancient tutorial if it instructed you to mine with the standalone ETHminer which was developed by the ETH foundation maybe 5 years back.

These days people use 3rd party miners such as Claymore and just pay a small 1% fee in exchange for getting the fastest speed and most stability. ETHminer I remember 5 years back always crashed on a new DAG and the rig had to be restarted. Very annoying problem every 5 days.

[cryptocoinfreak]

Thanks for the tips, I now see using GPU-Z and MSI Afterburner that indeed my Graphics Card is heavily being used. I will also try Phoenix Miner and Claymore miner to see the results. To be honest I first tried to use Claymore but I got scared once my antivirus detected Claymore as a virus. Still not convinced on why would an antivirus rate a mining application as a virus if it isn't.

I know that most people mine using different pools and I'm not scared of the 1% fee but of how they do the math while redistributing the funds to each miner, after all, they own the place and can always say I've mined less than I have actually mined.

On the other hand, I'm not doing this for profit but I would still like to know if is it possible to do the mining using any of the existing tools without using a pool as I still didn't fully understand if I have low chances is solving the hash or no chances at all using a configuration such as mine against the "big players".

And, as a side effect of pool mining, this isn't as decentralized as it should if top 3-4 mining pools have 50% of the network because again, they own the place and could team up for a 51% attack anytime.

[rdluffy]

Thanks for the tips, I now see using GPU-Z and MSI Afterburner that indeed my Graphics Card is heavily being used. I will also try Phoenix Miner and Claymore miner to see the results. To be honest I first tried to use Claymore but I got scared once my antivirus detected Claymore as a virus. Still not convinced on why would an antivirus rate a mining application as a virus if it isn't.

Totally normal, almost all anti virus will detect miners as a virus, because there are people who sent miners to another people to have a lot of machines mining for them, without permission, like a malware.
But Claymore and Phoenix are realiable, they are here for a long time and every miner uses, another realible miners are NBminer, Gminer etc, it's simple to check here on BitcoinTalk and see what another people are saying about miners

I know that most people mine using different pools and I'm not scared of the 1% fee but of how they do the math while redistributing the funds to each miner, after all, they own the place and can always say I've mined less than I have actually mined.

You don't have to be so worried about this kind of stuff
You can check on https://whattomine.com/coins and see what's an estimate amount of coins you'll earn with the hashrate you have, but remember that almost all times you'll gain less coins because of the difficulty, internet connection, bad shares etc, Whattomine will calculate for you in a perfect situation
About the pools you can use reliable pools, I'll say again, use this forum to check if a pool is reliable or not, here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=199.0

On the other hand, I'm not doing this for profit but I would still like to know if is it possible to do the mining using any of the existing tools without using a pool as I still didn't fully understand if I have low chances is solving the hash or no chances at all using a configuration such as mine against the "big players".

And, as a side effect of pool mining, this isn't as decentralized as it should if top 3-4 mining pools have 50% of the network because again, they own the place and could team up for a 51% attack anytime.

Do you know how mining works? I suggest you to start with Nicehash to let the app mine for you, without worry about miner, pool etc, Nicehash will pay you in BTC every 4 hours, simple like that

And do your own research to learn more, with a single card, or a single rig for example, it doesn't worth to solo mining, you won't find any block of a good coin, and pool mining exists to let small miners get rewards too, not only big miners.
So if you think, pools are good to keep the mining process decentralized