Tuesday 4 November 2014

X11 Crypto Currency Mining with sgminer on an AMD GPU

I've recently been looking at crypto currency mining and thought I'd give it a go.

I'm using an AMD GPU (R9 270x) and running the x11 mod version of sgminer 4.1.0

You can download the version I am using here:
http://ul.to/be0z5bnt

I am using the pool at http://www.simplemulti.com/

stratum+tcp://ca.simplemulti.com:3453

This is an X11 profit switching pool. This means that your client will mine a selection of coins  (at the moment URO, CANN, START, DRK) as it will always get you to mine the one with the lowest difficulty rating (ie. the easiest and quickest).

You can get it to pay out for each coin mined separately or get them to convert them all into the coin of your choice simply by adding your coin payment addresses on the config screen:

http://www.simplemulti.com/configuration_guide

With the Powercolor R9 270x I am getting on average 2.2-2.4 MH/s which from reading on forums is pretty good for this card (the card is at a steady 62% c and the fan is reasably quiet). Previously I started using an R7 250 which was getting a pitiful 500 KH/s :)

Currently when converted into my coin of choice it ends up being worth about £0.15 per day (at current prices). Not a great deal of money, but the computer is always on anyway and the increased power consumption won't be that much. That also doesn't take into account the fact that the value of the coins could rise significantly in future (or drop but what the hell :) )

Shown below is the contents of my sgminer.conf file:


{
"pools" : [
{
"url" : "stratum+tcp://ca.simplemulti.com:3453",
"user" : "username",
"pass" : "password"
}
]
,
"api-mcast-port" : "4028",
"api-port" : "4028",
"api-listen" : true,
"worksize" : "256",
"no-submit-stale" : true,
"kernel" : "x11mod",
"lookup-gap" : "2",
"thread-concurrency" : "26496",
"shaders" : "1280",
"gpu-threads" : "2",
"gpu-engine" : "1120-1120",
"gpu-fan" : "0-0",
"gpu-memclock" : "1400",
"gpu-memdiff" : "0",
"gpu-powertune" : "20",
"gpu-vddc" : "1.2",
"gpu-dyninterval" : "7",
"gpu-platform" : "1",
"temp-cutoff" : "95",
"temp-overheat" : "85",
"temp-target" : "75",
"expiry" : "10",
"failover-switch-delay" : "60",
"log" : "5",
"no-pool-disable" : true,
"queue" : "0",
"scan-time" : "5",
"tcp-keepalive" : "30",
"temp-hysteresis" : "3",
"shares" : "0",
"kernel-path" : "/usr/local/bin"

}


The batch file I use the launch the miner is set up as follows:

del x11mod*.bin
setx GPU_MAX_ALLOC_PERCENT 100
setx GPU_USE_SYNC_OBJECTS 1
sgminer.exe -I 15 -o stratum+tcp://ca.simplemulti.com:3453 -u username -p password
PAUSE