litecoin GPU mining, what is important? mhz or ram?

[gen. specific]

Hello, what is most important in a gpu to be used for litecoin mining?

is it the amount of ram? the speed of the ram? the speed of the cores?


it seems that reaper and cgminer are the only two softwares relevant


any insight appreciated

[crazyates]

See This Post for how to tweak your cards for LTC.

[ryantc]

also take into consideration of your system ram, it's called RAM intensive for a reason 

[gen. specific]

also take into consideration of your system ram, it's called RAM intensive for a reason 

didn't know it was called that

I thought scrypt or whatever was built to use the sram on the cpu cache, this is usually limited to very tiny amounts of ram and otherwise doesn't touch the other ram on the motherboard. and I figured people found a way to parallelize the algorithm and offloaded processing to the gpu, where again it didn't take advantage of the system's other resources

most of that is assumption and more accurate information would be helpful

[ryantc]

also take into consideration of your system ram, it's called RAM intensive for a reason 

didn't know it was called that

I thought scrypt or whatever was built to use the sram on the cpu cache, this is usually limited to very tiny amounts of ram and otherwise doesn't touch the other ram on the motherboard. and I figured people found a way to parallelize the algorithm and offloaded processing to the gpu, where again it didn't take advantage of the system's other resources

most of that is assumption and more accurate information would be helpful

my personal experience for mining LTC, I can only run one 7850 + one 7950 with 2G of system ram, two 7950 with 3G of system ram
so my guess is 5G of ram to run three 7950 and one 7850 together

this compare to BTC mining, I saw lots of people use only 1G or 2G ram to run 5 or 6 cards......

[tacotime]

See sig thread

Memory is important, but on motherboard and on card.  So is memory speed.

CPU speed is also important, but you only need one core at about 2000 MHz (make sure you turn speed step etc off for fastest mining)

[gollum]

Im considering buying some GPUs and start to mine LiteCoin

Is it ok to do the mining on my regular computer or should I build a new one with a cheap mobo/cpu?

How do I know how many GPU cards a specific mobo will support?

Should crossfire be used or should every GPU work separate?

[Marrs]

Im considering buying some GPUs and start to mine LiteCoin

Is it ok to do the mining on my regular computer or should I build a new one with a cheap mobo/cpu?

How do I know how many GPU cards a specific mobo will support?

Should crossfire be used or should every GPU work separate?

Litecoin mining seems a lot more sensitive to the aggressiveness input than bitcoin mining, so if you want to maximize your hashrate, you won't be able to use the PC as a desktop.

You don't need crossfire. Unlike graphics, each piece of hashing work is discreet and doesn't need to share data with other pieces, so there's no benefit from the crossfire linkage.

Graphics cards fit directly into PCI-E x16 slots, but you can get riser/adapter cables that allow you to connect a card to any size PCI-Express slot. I can't say whether this has any negative effect on mining, but lots of the big GPU miners do it, so it seems worth it.

[kokojie]

Im considering buying some GPUs and start to mine LiteCoin

Is it ok to do the mining on my regular computer or should I build a new one with a cheap mobo/cpu?

How do I know how many GPU cards a specific mobo will support?

Should crossfire be used or should every GPU work separate?

Litecoin mining seems a lot more sensitive to the aggressiveness input than bitcoin mining, so if you want to maximize your hashrate, you won't be able to use the PC as a desktop.

You don't need crossfire. Unlike graphics, each piece of hashing work is discreet and doesn't need to share data with other pieces, so there's no benefit from the crossfire linkage.

Graphics cards fit directly into PCI-E x16 slots, but you can get riser/adapter cables that allow you to connect a card to any size PCI-Express slot. I can't say whether this has any negative effect on mining, but lots of the big GPU miners do it, so it seems worth it.

There's absolutely zero negative effect with using a riser. The PCIE speed only affects data bandwidth. There's only tiny amount of data exchange, PCIE x1 is more than enough.

[vdragon]

Beware that due to its nature, mining ltc will pool more power. 360W BTC against 420W LTC - same rig

[gollum]

Beware that due to its nature, mining ltc will pool more power. 360W BTC against 420W LTC - same rig

That is no problem. My electricity costs 0$/kWatt.

[cdog]

See sig thread

Memory is important, but on motherboard and on card.  So is memory speed.

CPU speed is also important, but you only need one core at about 2000 MHz (make sure you turn speed step etc off for fastest mining)

Interesting, I have an old X4 system running 4 cores at around 1ghz each, so you are saying I cant use this CPU for LTC?

Because it worked fine for BTC with a 5970, but with LTC it basically just crashes... 

[m3whiteknight]

you should be able to mine LTC, slow CPU will just give you slower hash speed,

[cdog]

Hmm, I will continue to investigate the source of my system crashing. Its an AMD X4 1ghz with 2gb DDR3 RAM, a 5970 and 6950 installed. Running Xubuntu off a flash drive, right now I get 0kh/s as it crashes cgminer and or the whole system, but mines BTC just fine.

[robamichael]

I am curious as to how LTC mining capabilities are limited by CPU.

If I build a rig with 4x 7950s, would this require a faster CPU than 2 cards?

[m3whiteknight]

Hmm, I will continue to investigate the source of my system crashing. Its an AMD X4 1ghz with 2gb DDR3 RAM, a 5970 and 6950 installed. Running Xubuntu off a flash drive, right now I get 0kh/s as it crashes cgminer and or the whole system, but mines BTC just fine.

LTC may not like 2 diff kind of video card on the same rig. Try to mine with just one card and see if it work.

[Miner99er]

Same cards in a rig... CGminer

Different cards in a rig... Reaper.

[-ck]

Same cards in a rig... CGminer

Different cards in a rig... Reaper.

I don't understand this reasoning.

[Miner99er]

I can't get CGminer to run on boxes with mixed cards. I've tried dude. I use CGminer everywhere else... just have three boxes where 5830 and 5850's don't like each other and CGminer on LTC, but run fine when mining BTC. Threw my hands up a long tine ago with them. Not an issue tho, I'm replacing ALL my cards with 7970s/7990s.

[m3whiteknight]

Same cards in a rig... CGminer

Different cards in a rig... Reaper.

I don't understand this reasoning.

must be the way with Scrypt mining,