Vertcoin Settings/Configs (How To Mine VertCoin)

[whatthephil]

http://vertcoin.org (official website)
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=404364.0 (main thread)

So I feel the need to post this to help any newcomers, after having the worst experience trying to make vertcoin work correctly and getting an optimal amount of Kh/s.

Vertcoin uses a new algorithm: Scrypt-Adaptive-Nfactor (Not scrypt-jane) which results in about half your normal hashrate, and requires different miner settings and a modded miner(vertminer).

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Here is a list of things you will need!

1) First things first you need to get the Vertcoin wallet of course! http://vertcoin.org/#wallets

2) Second download VERTMINER-0.5.3 (it is currently not updated with the main website). If you want the latest versions of the miner you have to keep up with the main Vertcoin thread which is quoted below since they don't update the website with the latest version right away! This miner wont give you hardware errors (HW) like the other older versions.

finally here it is

vertminer-0.5.3 released

windows build: https://www.dropbox.com/s/5n70hj3izjj64y1/vertminer-0.5.3.zip
github source: https://github.com/Bufius/vertminer-gpu.git

release notes:

Code:

Version 0.5.3 - 2 February 2014
- changed automatic TC calculation (again but still not finished / perfect...)
- increased max intensity to 21
- shaders are now used for intensity calculation
  --> option shaders is set: intensity calculation tries to align to shaders count (can increase performance but also decrease with low intensity)
  --> shaders NOT set: old cgminer intensity calculation is used
- opencl changed to keep speed with adaptive nfactor
- introduced first time dependent nfactor changes in code (not finally done yet)
- fix for ADL with R9 cards

Important: the automatic TC calculation is only performed if you do not set TC manually and this is only an estimation what could be the best.
Manual tuning TC is in most cases the best you can do.

3) Thirdly you will need a GPU (of course), as well as A MINIMUM OF 4GB OF RAM(this is not optional!!!). This is where I had all my problems before. I was running this miner with only 2gb of ram in my system. If you do that you will get tons of Hardware Errors(HW)/Rejected shares, and you wont be able to go above Intensity level of "-I 12". As well as you cant have a Thread Concurrency(TC) that exceeds 6,000. I was only getting a total of 200 Kh/s on my XFX r9 280x. NOW IM GETTINGS 340 KH/s ONCE I PLUGGED IN 8GB INTO MY RIG. SO RAM IS DEFINITELY IMPORTANT. NO ONES SETTINGS WILL WORK FOR YOU IF YOU DO NOT HAVE THIS.

4) Lastly you will need to signup for a pool of your choosing which can be found here: http://vertcoin.com/

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So once you extract the vertminer you then have to go and tweak your settings to best fit your setup. Vertminer gives you both a .bat file and a.conf file EITHER are fine to run the program. I personally use the .bat file to run the miner. To edit either of the files just right click "edit".

Here are my settings for the .bat file. Averaging 340Kh/s on my XFX R9 280x! NO HW(HARDWARE ERRORS)

setx GPU_MAX_ALLOC_PERCENT 200
setx GPU_USE_SYNC_OBJECTS 1
COLOR 0A

vertminer.exe --scrypt-vert -o stratum+tcp://vertcoinheavyindustries.com:4444 -u xxxx -p xxxxxx -v 1 -w 256 -I 13 -g 2 --lookup-gap 2 --gpu-powertune -20,-20 --temp-overheat 85 --temp-cutoff 90 --gpu-memclock 1500,1500 --gpu-engine 1000,1000 --thread-concurrency 8193


Please post your settings below and any tips to help new comers! Thanks

Vertcoin all the way!

[whatthephil]

help the thread! post your settings below

[noobinscrypt]

Tried similar settings, and from the other How to Mine Vertcoin thread... with my 7970/280x i still get HW errors. On an i7 3770k desktop with 8gigs of ram, I cant get above i=12... very strange.

[CrystalCoin]

For some reason I'm getting better results with
COLOR 0B
Weird, but I can still only get like 180 max out of my 270's... I've got 8gb in the system.

[Brainofmasses]

Im getting a error that I can´t find the source of. Maybe someone here have a idea.
Ill try to mine VTC with a MSI 7950.

When I start the modified cgminer,
It means:

Error -4: Enqueueing kernel onto command queue. <clEnqueueeNDRangekernel>
GPU 0 failure, disabling!

When I connect directly over the cgminer.exe it shows some unreal hashrates of 500 mhash and still no accepted shares.

[madjihad]

IMPORTANT!!!!!

When you are setting you vertminer values via terminal/cmd or config file they aren't always used!!! To be sure what threads-concurrency, worksize and lookup-gap you are using check generated .bin files. And remove them before testing new settings.
For example:
file: scrypt140121Pitcairnglg2tc14144w256l8.bin
GPU: Pitcairn
threads-concurrency: 14144
worksize: 256
lookup-gap: 2

[whatthephil]

Im getting a error that I can´t find the source of. Maybe someone here have a idea.
Ill try to mine VTC with a MSI 7950.

When I start the modified cgminer,
It means:

Error -4: Enqueueing kernel onto command queue. <clEnqueueeNDRangekernel>
GPU 0 failure, disabling!

When I connect directly over the cgminer.exe it shows some unreal hashrates of 500 mhash and still no accepted shares.

I hope you are using the VERTMINER I POSTED ABOVE. It's the latest version. dont use anything else. Also do you have 4gb of ram or more?

I was getting that same message UNTIL I got this version of VERTMINER and added 8gb to my rig. Problem solved

[whatthephil]

Tried similar settings, and from the other How to Mine Vertcoin thread... with my 7970/280x i still get HW errors. On an i7 3770k desktop with 8gigs of ram, I cant get above i=12... very strange.

Are you using the VERTMINER version I posted above? Did you just skip to my settings/configs..? Read everything maybe you missed something

Had the same problem with intensities with the older miners. This one seems to work perfectly

[LucD88]

Got my Vertminer (v0.5.3) running stable, but it's far from optimized. Hope to get things running better with some help via this thread.

Currently running 4x Gigabyte 7950 WindForce 3 REV2.0 (Windows 7 x64, 8GB RAM, Catalyst 12.8 ) @ ~270KH/s each, totalling ~1.100KH/s.



My .bat file:

Code:

@echo off
setx GPU_MAX_ALLOC_PERCENT 200
setx GPU_USE_SYNC_OBJECTS 1
COLOR 0A
vertminer.exe

My .conf file:

Code:

{
"pools" : [
        {
                "url" : "stratum+tcp://xxx:xxx",
                "user" : "xxx.xxx",
                "pass" : "xxx"
        }
]
,
"intensity" : "20, 20, 20, 20",
"vectors" : "1",
"worksize" : "256",
"lookup-gap" : "2",
"thread-concurrency" : "22400, 22400, 22400, 22400",
"shaders" : "0,0",
"gpu-fan" : "30-100, 30-100, 30-100, 30-100",
"gpu-memdiff" : "0",
"temp-target" : "72",
"temp-cutoff" : "85",
"auto-fan" : true,
"api-listen" : true,
"api-port" : "4028",
"expiry" : "15",
"gpu-dyninterval" : "7",
"gpu-threads" : "1",
"hotplug" : "5",
"log" : "5",
"no-pool-disable" : true,
"failover-only" : true,
"queue" : "2",
"scan-time" : "5",
"temp-hysteresis" : "3"
}

My Sapphire Trixx settings:
GPU: 1150
MEM: 1250
VDDC: 1090 (1.09v locked)
Power Limit: 20 (= Powertune)

[whatthephil]

For some reason I'm getting better results with
COLOR 0B
Weird, but I can still only get like 180 max out of my 270's... I've got 8gb in the system.

seems about right. 270x go from 350-400 Kh/s and vertcoin cuts that in half.

[roundrobin]

Tried similar settings, and from the other How to Mine Vertcoin thread... with my 7970/280x i still get HW errors. On an i7 3770k desktop with 8gigs of ram, I cant get above i=12... very strange.

For 7970/7990, this is the best I managed to come up with to avoid hw errs: --intensity 13 --lookup-gap 2 -g 2 -w 184 --shaders 2048 --thread-concurrency 6112

[roundrobin]

I was getting that same message UNTIL I got this version of VERTMINER and added 8gb to my rig. Problem solved

I suspect that the problem wasn't the lack of RAM in your machine, but the older cgminer you were running. Vertminer occupies very little RAM if you check it out when it's active.

[whatthephil]

I was getting that same message UNTIL I got this version of VERTMINER and added 8gb to my rig. Problem solved

I suspect that the problem wasn't the lack of RAM in your machine, but the older cgminer you were running. Vertminer occupies very little RAM if you check it out when it's active.

See the thing is I was skeptical like you. People were saying you need 4gb ram... 4gb ram.. and when I look at how much ram I was using the miner showed no difference. So it seemed like non-sense. So eventually after I tried everything possible I gave in and tried adding more ram (not expecting it to work). I upgraded from 2gb to 8gb. Then everything suddenly worked.... Intesity could go above -I 12, TC at 8193. Even if I look at how much ram Im using right now it says 15% usage (not much right?), so idk why more ram was necessary but it worked.

I dont quiet understand why it worked but I'm just going by what worked and what people said would work. THEY WERE RIGHT

My guess is that the vertcoin algorithm allocates memory differently which is what makes is asic resistant.

[mattbigblue]

I have received 2x R9 290 Sapphire Tri-x (hynix). They are both totally different, I disconnected all of the cards and were running just them to fine tune. In gpu-z they have 84% and 76% asic quality, funny is that the lower one behavies better. I’m minning vertcoin which is using different scrypt but on reference cards usually clocks didn’t change for me much. What I find is that probably both cards can’t run on 1500 memory clock.
First card
1025-1040/1475 seems to be ok.
Second cards
Anything higher than 985-990/1450 and I get artifacts/HW errors. With 980/1500 I got HW right away, with 980/1475 left over night, I wake up and found 7HW..I left it now with 980/1450 and will see afternoon if any HW comes..
Both cards doesn’t tolerate undervolting (even -6mv gives artifacts and soon after freeze).
They are hashing nice, around 470 and 455 on Vertcoin which is 50% of scrypt performance.
I don’t understand why they can’t handle 1500Mhz, and one even 1000Mhz on engine if they are reference. My 3 other reference cards go no problem 1020/1500 (elpidia) with -19mv..And those 2 are hynix which supposed to be better.
p.s. Even if I’m able to run stable with 1025/1475 on 1st and 980/1450 on another one, as soon as I stop minning I got computer freeze few seconds/minutes later , which is not the case on reference cards and it indicates that even these clocks are to much for them..What I like in these cards is extreme LACK of noise they run super quiet, around 70 degrees with 60% fan. WOW!!

[NoSnipeLimit]

16gb ram in machine
Running 2 x R9290(sapphire and xfx)(no oc)
One hynix, one Elpida

Settings, 400kh/s each:  
"intensity" : "18,18",
"vectors" : "1,1",
"worksize" : "512,512",
"kernel" : "scrypt,scrypt",
"lookup-gap" : "2,2",
"thread-concurrency" : "27000,27000",

8gb ram in machine
Running 1x6950(gigabyte) and 1x5850(asus)(engine 920)
Settings, 124kh/s and 194kh/s
"intensity" : "12,18",
"vectors" : "1,1",
"worksize" : "256,256",
"kernel" : "scrypt,scrypt",
"lookup-gap" : "2,2",
"thread-concurrency" : "4096,6000",

Cannot get the 6950 to work with any other settings without giving HW errors.

[fasola195]

Hi,

I followed your steps. My rig with two graphics cards works perfectly. But I have a problem when I'm trying to launch vertcoin mining on 3 and 4 cards graphics rigs (I receive kernel error). Do you know whats going on ? I have 4gb ram on each rig

[Bitock]

5xGV-R927XOC-2GD.
.bat file (vertminer-0.5.3):

Code:

vertminer --scrypt-vert -I 13,13,13,13,13 -w 256,256,256,256,256 -g 1 --thread-concurrency 8193,8193,8193,8193,8193 --lookup-gap 2,2,2,2,2 --gpu-engine 1100,1100,1100,1100,1100 --gpu-memclock 1500,1500,1500,1500,1500 --auto-fan --temp-target 67,67,67,67,67

Results: 177Kh/s first four and 171Kh/s last card.
How can increase hashrate?

[thrilled]

I am clueless......

I have 2 x Sapphire Tri-X 290x cards...

I am running the perfectly fine at 988 Khz each on any "normal" scrypt alt coin. Using I 20, 24600 thread conc, 1000 gpu engine. 1500 memory. This gives me NO HW at all.

Now I wanted to transition over to Vect coins... this has ended up in a total fail...

The miner I have currently has 4 gb ram.

Using anything higher then 8192 tc makes the cards go disabled. Using any intensity higher then 13 makes the HW run mad. Going i13 and tc 8192 gives me a hash rate of about 280khz per card which is way less it should be. Using intensity 19-20 gives me around 470khz but then the hardware errors are INSANE. I have tried to adjust the config file so many times and it all ends up with the same results.

I am using vectminer 0.5.3

I am in dire need of your help here!

Thanks in advance!

/T

[LucD88]

I am clueless......

I have 2 x Sapphire Tri-X 290x cards...

I am running the perfectly fine at 988 Khz each on any "normal" scrypt alt coin. Using I 20, 24600 thread conc, 1000 gpu engine. 1500 memory. This gives me NO HW at all.

Now I wanted to transition over to Vect coins... this has ended up in a total fail...

The miner I have currently has 4 gb ram.

Using anything higher then 8192 tc makes the cards go disabled. Using any intensity higher then 13 makes the HW run mad. Going i13 and tc 8192 gives me a hash rate of about 280khz per card which is way less it should be. Using intensity 19-20 gives me around 470khz but then the hardware errors are INSANE. I have tried to adjust the config file so many times and it all ends up with the same results.

I am using vectminer 0.5.3

I am in dire need of your help here!

Thanks in advance!

/T

Try adding some extra memory to your system, I believe going from 4GB to 8GB of RAM will solve a lot of - still weird - issues.

[reha]

You're my hero. The settings got my 2x 280x running at 340x each! I have 4gb ram and vertminer 0.5.2

( I compiled 0.5.3 and overwrite the allready built binary (http://vertcoin.org/downloads/vertminer.tgz) Otherwise I didn't get the temps showing. Same probleme that Ewing mentioned here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=416572.380 )
http://s15.postimg.org/7zfhl1rrf/vertminer.gif

Also, I had pretty good results before but I got few HW's with this:

Code:

-v 1 -w 256 -I 13 -g 2 --lookup-gap 2 --gpu-powertune -20 --temp-target 65 --temp-overheat 75 --temp-cutoff 80 --gpu-memclock 1500 --gpu-engine 1000 --thread-concurrency 8191

Now you're config is this which is giving no errors:

Code:

-v 1 -w 256 -I 13 -g 2 --lookup-gap 2 --gpu-powertune -20,-20 --temp-overheat 85 --temp-cutoff 90 --gpu-memclock 1500,1500 --gpu-engine 1000,1000 --thread-concurrency 8193

I think the only real difference is thread-concurrency. And it was off only off by 2 :S

And for the final note, I have "Asus Radeon R9 280x DirectCU II / 3GB GDDR5 / (R9280X-DC2-3GD5)"