Mining on Nvidia GTX 1080 video cards is one of the most profitable, but these cards are also more expensive than their competitors from previous series. Despite this, until the end of April, the maximum hashrate in the Ethereum network was only 25 Mh/s at 1080 and 35 Mh/s at 1080 ti. Everything changed after the development of special software that allows you to squeeze 40 and 55 Mh / s from these video cards, respectively. Thus, on 1080 graphics cards, mining became more universal, as the income from mining Zcash caught up with the income from mining ether.

Basic indicators

• GTX 1080 price: 45,000 rubles.
• Price GTX 1080 ti: 64,000 rubles.
• Power consumption 1080 without overclocking: 180 watts.
• Power consumption 1080 ti without overclocking: 250 watts.
• Hashrate 1080 Ethereum: 35 Mh/s.
• Hashrate 1080 ti Ethereum: 55 Mh/s.
• Hashrate 1080 Zcash: 290 Sol/s.

What to mine on GTX 1080

The GTX 1080/1080 ti hashrate increased by 40% thanks to the use of GDDR5X memory. It is interesting to imagine what the GTX 2080 hashrate will be if the new series is planned to use improved GDDR6 memory. Earlier versions (1070, 1060) use GDDR5 - OhGodAnETHlargementPill is not suitable for them. An interesting fact is that this software was released two years after the release of 1080.

At the moment, the GTX 1080 ti ether mining daily income is about $3 per day, while Zcash mining on the same card gives $2.3. Before the release of the tablet, ether mining could reward a miner with as little as two dollars a day. As for MSI 1080 mining, the choice is not obvious - Zcash and Ethereum give $2 each. Ravencoin (RVN) cryptocurrencies look good - $2.1 and ZenCash - $2.

Setting 1080 for mining

Let's figure out how not to damage the video card when using OhGodAnETHlargementPill. After downloading, you need to unzip the archive and run the file, the icon of which looks like a tablet. It should be noted that the utility activates a non-standard memory usage mode, which can lead to card overheating. Therefore, this tablet is not recommended if the card cooling is poorly organized. The fact is that the launch of this software increases the load on the memory controller to the maximum rate - 100% frequency. This leads to an increase in the temperature of the memory and power keys. EVGA video cards have temperature sensors on these elements, which makes it possible to adapt to changing the mode of memory operation in automatic mode. Other companies do not equip their equipment with temperature sensors for memory and power keys. For example, on the Nvidia Geforce GTX 1080, mining with a tablet can damage the hardware. To avoid overheating, you need to properly configure the coolers in the MSI Afterburner or Thunder Master utilities.

This graph refers to the Fan Speed ​​parameter and determines the dependence of the cooler speed on temperature. As you can see, the speed can reach up to 100% at 80 °C. Indeed, it is better to replace the fan than to burn the power keys. If the power circuit fails, the video card is almost beyond repair. If a repair is still possible with such a breakdown, there may be problems with the warranty department, since the video card worked in extreme mode 24/7.

The task of overclocking is to get the highest hash rates. The task of downvolting is to get the minimum cost of electricity at the maximum hash rate. If the equipment starts producing "artifacts" (black bars and squares on the monitor), then this is a clear sign of overclocking - the card has already failed or it will happen soon. Other signs of incorrect overclocking are miner errors or a video driver crash. The Ethash algorithm requires overclocking the memory, not the core. Therefore, the Core Clock indicator can be left at zero.

The remaining overclocking parameters for 1080 for the air are as follows:

1. Power Limit (%): 80. This setting limits the maximum power consumption.
2. Temp. Limit (°C): 73. Limits the critical temperature of the graphics card.
3. Memory overclock (MHz): +400. Adjusts the additional load on GDDR5X memory.
4. Fan Speed ​​(%): 75. Responsible for the frequency of the coolers. Set to automatic.
5. The Curve setting is made individually for each truss.

Overclocking 1080 under ZCash

The optimal 1080 overclock for ZCash looks like this:

• Memory overclocking (MHz): +600.
• Core overclock (MHz): +100.
• Power Limit (%): 80.

Such parameters allow you to pull the GTX 1080 hashrate when mining ZCash up to 590 Sol. With a power consumption of 155-160 W, the efficiency will be 3.7 Sol/W.

Payback of a 1080/1080 ti mining farm in May 2018

The price of 1080 ti is approximately 64,000 rubles. Let's calculate the payback of six video cards and consider some features of the 1080 ti farm assembly. Prices:

1. Six video cards 1080 ti - 384 thousand rubles.
2. The cost of electricity is 3 rubles.

Buying a farm will cost 409 thousand rubles. With successful overclocking, the card can give a net profit of $3 ≈ 187 rubles per day. Based on these figures, the payback of the farm will be 365 days. If we take into account the increase in the complexity of mining, the output of asics for and possible equipment failures, the payback can grow to 1.5 years or even more.

Let's calculate the payback of the GTX 1080 farm:

• Accessories - 25 thousand rubles.
• Six video cards - 270 thousand rubles (45,000 rubles - the price of one Geforce GTX 1080).
• The cost of electricity is 3 rubles.

With a daily income of 131 rubles, such a farm will pay for itself in 344 days. As you can see, the magic pill really did a good job of raising the profitability of GTX 1080 ti mining in May 2018.

As already noted, the cooling of these video cards must be provided properly. If air cooling is used, then the video cards must be placed in the correct horizontal position with a cold frame, additional external coolers and a properly organized exhaust system.

To construct a frame for six video cards, the following building materials are sufficient:

1. Corner (25-30 mm) 5 m long.
2. Corner (20 mm) 4 m long.
3. OSB sheet - 1 sq. m.
4. Beam 2m long.
5. Bolts and nuts.

The cost of such a design will not exceed 1500 rubles. Since memory using a tablet heats up very much, it makes sense to think about immersion cooling.

Details Published: 03/10/2017 13:23

Geforce GTX 1080 Ti is the latest top-segment GPU from Nvidia, released recently, and in combination with the most productive single-chip solution at the moment. As part of this material, we are interested in the performance of new items in cryptocurrency mining, which today, March 10, went on sale officially at a recommended price of 699$ .

For now, the GTX 1080 Ti GPUs are only available as Founders Edition reference graphics cards. Non-reference models from other manufacturers will appear in April. Geforce GTX 1080 Ti video cards have 11 GB of GDDR5X video memory, so some mining algorithms that are not optimized for the new type of video memory may have performance problems, but a huge number of stream processors in the GPU can compensate for this problem. The TDP of the new GTX 1080 Ti-based graphics cards is quite high at 250 watts, although by reducing the "Power Limit" it is likely that the heat dissipation of the cards can be reduced without serious performance drops.

Geforce GTX 1080 Ti Specifications

• Number of GP clusters: 6.
• Streaming multiprocessors: 28.
• CUDA cores: 3584.
• Texture blocks: 224.
• ROP: 88.
• GPU base frequency: 1480 MHz.
• GPU boost frequency: 1582 MHz.
• Video memory frequency: 5505 Mhz.
• L2 cache: 2816 KB.
• Total video memory: 11264 MB GDDR5X.
• Memory bus: 352-bit.
• Video Memory Bandwidth: 484 GB/sec.
• Texture fill rate: 331.5 GigaTexel/sec.
• Those. process: 16 Nm.
• Number of transistors: 12 billion.
• Ports: 3 DP, 1 HDMI.
• Recommended PSU for the system: 600 W.
• TDP: 250 W.
• Maximum operating temperature: 91 degrees Celsius.

GTX 1080 Ti performance in cryptocurrency mining.

• Lyra2REv2 (ccMiner) = 48.57 Mh/s.
• DaggerHashimoto (ethminer) = 27.72 Mh/s.
• Decred (ccminer) = 3.938 Gh/s.
• LBRY (ccminer) = 437 Mh/s.
• Equihash (eqm miner) = 614.5 H/s.
• Pascal (excavator) = 1524 Mh/s.
• X11Gost (ccminer) = 9.38 Gh/s.
• X11Gost (ccminer-alexis) = 18.3 Gh/s.

We were able to do some quick testing of the new GTX 1080 Ti and the test results look promising. The test was carried out using nicehash Miner in the most profitable mining algorithms at the moment, in terms of statistics nicehash. The miner used is marked in brackets. Unfortunately, not all of the most productive miners are included in the NiceHash Miner package, so we conducted additional tests using Claymore's ETH miner and we managed to get a stable hashrate of 31.8 Mh / s (DaggerHashimoto) on stock GPU settings. In addition, when using the miner EWBF's CUDA miner, we got a result of 625 H / s (Equihash).

In the field of mining, as, probably, in any business, there have always been pessimists and optimists. The first ones always confidently declare that mining is about to “die” and the purchase of video cards forunpromising, because even before your card pays off, mining on it will be unprofitable. However, is this true? Let's see what they said about the GTX 260 cards when they first came out and after about a year or two.

The nVidia GeForce GTX260 came out in 2008, before the advent of cryptocurrencies. In 2010, the cryptocurrency market was still in its infancy, with only bitcoin present so far. The first miners mined coins only on computer processors. But in the middle of 2010, mining moved to the GPU, giving rise to the era of industrial mining. At that time, there were still 3 years left before the creation and implementation of ASIC devices.

For the first time, the GTX260 video card was mentioned as mining equipment in 2011. The map at that time was quite advanced. At least in the gaming world, she was quoted very highly. However, at the time of the start of mining on the GPU, the card was already 2 years old, but at that time it was not yet as critical as it is now. The card not only coped with its tasks, but also allowed to receive a good income. If you search for references to the GTX260 on the Internet, you can see that even in 2013 the card was still in service and was able to extract about $ 2 per day for its owner. But even then, in 2011-2012, you can find posts on the forums that GPU mining did not last long and the purchase of a GTX260 would be wasted money. Nevertheless, for another 2 years, until the beginning of 2014, the cards were generating income. This means that they continued to work for the benefit of their owners for another three years, who used them as the main tool for mining coins.

In 2013, ASIC devices and GPU mining entered the field of mining.began to fade away very quickly. At first, GPU miners switched to the Scrypt algorithm, and then, when ASIC devices already appeared in 2014 to this algorithm, GPU mining completely fell into a coma until cryptocurrencies appeared on algorithms like Ethash and CryptoNote with protection from ASIC devices.

Currently, the peak of popularity of GPU mining has passed, but further prospects are not yet clear. We can say that in fact we are now in the 2012-2013 stage, but the role of the GTX260 card today is played by the GTX1080Ti. The card is certainly much younger than the GTX260 in 2012, but the progress is much faster. Hardware manufacturers are already offering more productive gaming cards equipped with new memory and using new technologies, in six months, nVidia and AMD promise to release video cards based on the new 7nm process, which will significantly increase performance and reduce power consumption. But while the leader among cards forat an affordable price and high performance remains 1080Ti. No matter how progress goes, 1080Ti will still generate income for at least another year or two. Just as the GTX260 slowly went into decline at one time, the 1080Ti will be very reluctant to give up ground. For example, GTX260 is made on 65nm technology, and the most popular and advanced cards of that time (2012-2013) were considered GTX470/480, which were made on 40nm process technology and gave 2-2.5 times more hashrate. By the middle of 2013, more advanced cards (GTX770/780) began to appear on those. 28 nm process, which already gave out 3-4 times more than the GTX260. No, there were certainly more advanced models that had several times more hashrate, for example, the GTX590, which gave almost four times more than the GTX260 or the Tesla 2070, which had a hashrate more than 10 times higher.

Conclusion

From the above, we can conclude that even if the video cards promised by nVidia and AMD are released on time, the 1080Ti card will still be able to pay off and will remain in price in the gaming market for a long time. For example, today even cards like the GTX1050, which entered the market more than a year ago, continue to generate income. At the time of writing, the 1080Ti brings in about $3 net profit per day. With a card price of $ 800, the payback will be 8-10 months. However, there is every reason to believe that the current lull in the field of mining is temporary and very soon algorithms or mining methods will appear that will allow the 1080Ti to bring a stable income to its owners for a very long time.

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The top GeForce GTX 1080 Ti video cards have dropped slightly in price today, which allows us to consider the option of such a purchase for mining.

However, according to the miners, the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti video cards are inferior to the performance of the GeForce GTX 1070 in the medium term, which consume half as much electricity with a relatively insignificant increase in performance. In the long term, these cards will be the most relevant and so on until the release of Nvidia's Volta architecture.

The basic setup of GeForce GTX1080 Ti video cards for mining is based on the need:

• installing the latest drivers for the motherboard and GeForce Experience from the Nvidia corporate website;
• installing the graphics card driver package through the GeForce Experience application;
• installing the MSI Afterburner application for overclocking and graphics card settings.

Overclocking GeForce GTX1080 Ti for mining

After these steps are completed, you need to start setting up each card (if you have more than one). Here are some features, however remember that even video cards of the same brand can have different capabilities to work on the edge, which often involves the mining process.

The settings for the GeForce GTX1080 Ti video cards are indicated in relation to the mining of the Zcash (ZEC) cryptocurrency, which is currently the most profitable for mining. So:

Asus GeForce GTX 1080 Ti 11GB GDDR5X ROG STRIX GAMING

Set Power Limit to 80

Memory Clock (memory) set the slider to +750
The expected number of solutions per second will be about 700 sol/s

Palit GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Super JetStream

Set Power Limit to 90
Core Clock (core) set the slider to +115
Memory Clock (memory) set the slider to +500
Estimated video card consumption at these settings will drop from 300W to 230W.
The expected number of solutions per second will be about 750 sol/s

MSI GeForce GTX 1080 Ti ARMOR

Set Power Limit to 79
Core Clock (core) set the slider to +110
Memory Clock (memory) set the slider to +425
Estimated video card consumption at these settings will drop from 300W to 200W.
The expected number of solutions per second will be about 725 sol/s

MSI GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Gaming X

Set Power Limit to 97
Core Clock (core) set the slider to +120
Memory Clock (memory) set the slider to +600
Estimated video card consumption at these settings will drop from 300W to 252W.
The expected number of solutions per second will be about 800 sol/s

No one mines on the basic settings of video cards, even beginners. Any miner very quickly comes to the question - how to overclock graphics cards?

Unfortunately, there are very few sensible overclocking guides on the Internet, especially overclocking the latest green cards (Nvidia) with the ability to edit the frequency-voltage curve.

Proper mining is, first of all, rationality, rationality in everything - in the choice of equipment, premises, tariffs. Mining on an industrial scale does not happen on a free outlet, even where the payment is for the premises, and not for electricity - there are still power restrictions.

It is rational to get maximum return at minimum cost.

In this review, we will try to show what Nvidia GTX 1080 TI series video cards can give us with proper overclocking using the MSI ARMOR 1080 TI 11G video card as an example.

For overclocking in the Windows operating system, we need MSI AfterBurner version 4.3.0 and higher. To control the power consumption modes of the cards, we use the standard NVSMI utility from their developer.

The main algorithm for NVIDIA GTX 1080 TI cards is , but this technique works for all algorithms!

We will overclock the Equihash mining card using the EWBF miner version 0.3.4b

1. Determine the maximum overclocking capabilities of the card.
2. Find the maximum and optimal energy efficiency ratio for this card.
3. Learn how to set automatic mode change over time (for a multi-tariff meter).

Overclocking technique for Nvidia graphics cards

In the AfterBurner program, we enable core voltage monitoring.

At 100% loading of cards (and equihash mining gives exactly constant 100%), the power consumption of the card depends on the voltage on the core.

It would be ideal to set the minimum voltage, but along with the voltage, the maximum overclocking frequency also drops sharply.

The dependence of the limiting frequency on the core voltage for this series is a typical exponential dependence.

Up to a certain voltage limit, frequencies can be increased seriously with each step, but after a certain maximum frequency, a further increase is almost useless.

We need to find a middle ground - when an increase in the output speed will be cost-effective in relation to the consumption of the card.

Of course, in conditions of super profitability (May-June 2017 and December-January 2017-2018), it is generally unprofitable to limit the voltage greatly, but we are considering and developing systems that are planned to be used for months without switching. At the same time, a small lack of speed during the period of super profitability is more than compensated by serious savings during the period of medium and low profitability, lower energy bills, lower ventilation and cooling costs, noticeably higher density of installation of farms and long life of video cards.

Frequency and voltage curve

When choosing any video card, Afterburner allows you to set the overall overclocking for the core and memory. This is a rough path, but efficient enough for overclocking without taking energy efficiency into account. Also, this option is great for overclocking under the Dagger Hashimoto algorithm.

This rough method has a very big disadvantage when using cards in downclock - the card can keep overclock +200 at PL=70%. But do not keep it at 100%: in case of a pool freeze, the card stops counting hashes and slows down. After the resumption of receiving tasks, it counts the first seconds at higher core voltages of 100% - the driver may crash (especially true for mining via 3G / 4G or Wi-Fi).

For more precise tuning of green cards of the 10xx series and higher, the manufacturer gave access to a separate frequency editing for each core voltage point (and there are dozens of them).

Press Crtl + F, a curve opens, each point of which corresponds to a certain core voltage (in X) and the operating frequency specified for this voltage (in Y).

With a given PL (Power Limit - consumption limit), the card starts at 100% and immediately tries to meet the specified consumption, running up or down this curve.

An important feature of Pascal architecture cards is that having two neighboring points with the same frequency, the card will always choose a lower voltage and will not use other voltages (for all cards, the upper horizontal frequency plateau determines the card's reluctance to go higher in voltage and frequencies).

In this way, you can create a horizontal plateau of the same frequencies (in the screenshot above, all points from 925 millivolts are set to a frequency of 1911 MHz).

Remember this important fact, you will need it later for selecting modes. Let's move on to overclocking from scratch.

Overclocking video cards

Unlike the frequencies and voltages of the core, the memory frequency is unchanged and is set immediately. Therefore, before overclocking the core, we go through different memory frequencies, raising them by 25 MHz and finding the point of maximum stability of memory operation (before the driver crashes).

In our case, we (to save time) set the approximate maximum for most 1080Ti. This frequency is 5800 MHz, almost all cards take it, some copies work at 6000, which by itself will slightly increase the hashing speed).

If we just limit the PL (power level), we get something like this:

IMPORTANT! When testing in each miner, we launch one card at a time, in this case, when the driver crashes, the rest of the cards will remain working (the load monitoring in watts will just crash).

We will be interested in what maximum frequency the card will give out at each voltage.

This occupation is dreary, it requires several hours of reinforced sitting and selection.

Often the card can behave illogically, taking one frequency at 900mV, and a slightly higher one at only 943mV, be patient.

IMPORTANT! When the driver crashes, all points and PL return to their original state, we will lose progress, therefore, if it fails, we change 1 point and save without switching the map to AB (we will save the setting if we switch the map - all over again).

After an overclocking failure, the miner gives an error with different codes Thread existed with code: 46, 17, 53, etc.

We quickly went through the different voltages (limiting PL) and got the following pictures:

Maximum -290W:

Downclock

230 watts:

190 watts:

180 watts:

165 watts:

Unfortunately, AfterBurner does not allow editing points below 800 mV (although you can go there by reducing the PL even lower). This does not interfere much, because, as we see, the optimal ratio is higher.

In our opinion, it is optimal to have a speed of 690-700 sols at 190 watts.

Yes, an increase of 60 watts will add 70 sols (60W for 70 sols - 2 times worse than mining on old AMD 7th generation cards), is this a logical ratio?

IMPORTANT! All other points from the found ones are set equal in frequencies to the found ones.

We get STAGES:

We can already walk these steps manually, decreasing or increasing the power limit (PL) parameter.

It is interesting to do this in automatic mode, more on that below.

IMPORTANT! Often, Tishka (as the very expensive and powerful 1080ti is affectionately called) does not immediately save the points (especially under load) or changes them according to its internal algorithm. Because of this, you have to expose them several times.

To check the correctness of saving the points, we switch to another map, and then we return and check the points of the curve.

Automatic switching PL

To manage and monitor the power limit at your own discretion, use the NVSMI utility from the map developer.

We put this folder, for example, in "c:\Programs\" and when using executable batch files we get information about the cards and manage them.

Changing power is very easy. For example, to set a limit of 250W for card #0, we need a file with the content:

C:\Programs\NVSMI\nvidia-smi.exe -i 0 -pl 250

Result:

But first we need a list.bat file

Its content:

nvidia-smi.exe -L
pause

It lists the cards in the system. Now we can match the names of the cards to their numbers.

But we have the same cards! What to do?

We use the consumption display executable file (example s_power_0.bat) with the following content:

nvidia-smi -i 0 --loop-ms=1000 --format=csv,noheader --query-gpu=power.draw

It displays the current consumption of the card with the specified number, and so on for any card. By starting mining on only one card, we can easily understand what it is by number.

Having decided on the numbering of the card, we create common files for switching power on all cards at once.

In our case, we have created 3 files (hard, normal, soft) that can be activated for the night rate, for the semi-peak rate and for the peak rate, respectively.

IMPORTANT! Changing the PL is possible only when the file is executed as an administrator, so each file contains full paths to the NVSMI utility.

Go to Start->Accessories->System Tools->Task Scheduler

In the scheduler, we set the launch of the HARD mode after 23h, the SOFT mode at 7h and 17h, the NOrmal mode at 10h and 21h. This corresponds to the three-tariff switching time in Moscow, which will allow you not to waste electricity during rush hour and get the maximum in a cheap nightly tariff.

Conclusion

Mode switching is rarely used, but increasing the frequencies at the most stable point (usually 900 mV or 950 MV) along with lowering the Power Limit will allow you to get the maximum energy efficiency and minimum temperature of your cards.

Do not burn your cards in vain and they will thank you for many years of stable service.