Litecoin Mining Using Enthusiast PC Hardware

[Guest]

I launched the .bat file and it cycles through some prompts before instantly closing due to some error. literally cannot read it, it flies by too fast. Any ideas?

It says that "cgminer.exe" is not a recognized as an internal or external commander, operable program or batch file. (Very fast screenshotting skills, only took me 5 tries)

Or, you know, you could have just open the command window first, then run the program from there. Then scroll up to see the error message.

Your message indicates windows does not see cgminer.exe in the directory you are attempting to run it from. Post your batch file. Are you running the batch file from within the same directory as cgminer is located?

 

[Gars]

First of all, ill recommend to beginners to read this and use guiminer
guiminer is easy and friendly to use
when you become more experienced (after a lot of googling/reading forums and so on) you will be ready to make your own .bat file

 

[fdart17]

The releases on the site no longer contain the required cgminer executable.

 

[Guest]

Since I'm newbie here, and just curious, so I would like to a several question:
Let's say I'm using 2 gpu for mining, is there any difference if I'm using mobo that support x16 x16 vs x16 x8 ??

 

[cliffordcooley]

Since I'm newbie here, and just curious, so I would like to a several question:
Let's say I'm using 2 gpu for mining, is there any difference if I'm using mobo that support x16 x16 vs x16 x8 ??

Since there are miners with multiple (as in more than 4) GPU's, I'm inclined to say no it will not matter. Chances are these machines are limiting PCIe slots at x4 or even less bandwidth.

ASRock unveils a pair of motherboards designed specifically for Bitcoin mining

Both boards have six PCIe slots for up to six video cards although the less expensive model is limited to one PCIe 3.0 x16 port and five PCIe 2.0 x1 ports while the H81 features one PCIe 2.0 x16 and five PCIe 2.0 x1 (go figure).

 

[Guest]

Many thanks for your quick reply, Clifford..

 

[Guest]

Hi there!
After reading this article I couldn't sleep last night so I made an analysis instead. I really wanted to know which hardware is the most efficient for mining (litecoin more exactly; not talking about bulldozers, piledrivers, excavators etc... LOL pun intended).

OK, what really matters is the GPU but which one makes sense? As usual most people only care about performance and price but in this case the cost of electricity can easily be several times bigger.
So I gathered data on the litecoin website and wikipedia about the performance of the graphics cards and my conclusion is that GCN based GPUs are the best choice. Finally I put together a list with these and compared their performance vs power consumption as follows.

Radeon Watt GFlops GFlops/W kHash/s kHash/Ws kWh/day kWh/mo
HD 7990 375 8200 21.87 1300 3.47 9.00 270.00
R9 290X 290 5630 19.41 900 3.10 6.96 208.80
R9 290 275 4850 17.64 800 2.91 6.60 198.00
R9 280X 250 4095 16.38 700 2.80 6.00 180.00
HD 7970 GE 250 4095 16.38 700 2.80 6.00 180.00
R9 280 225 3045 13.53 600 2.67 5.40 162.00
HD 7950 B 225 3045 13.53 600 2.67 5.40 162.00
R9 270X 180 2560 14.22 450 2.50 4.32 129.60
HD 7870 GE 175 2560 14.63 450 2.57 4.20 126.00
R9 270 150 2305 15.37 400 2.67 3.60 108.00
HD 7850 130 1760 13.54 350 2.69 3.12 93.60
R7 260X 115 1970 17.13 275 2.39 2.76 82.80
HD 7790 85 1790 21.06 250 2.94 2.04 61.20
R7 250X 80 1280 16.00 180 2.25 1.92 57.60
HD 7770 GE 80 1280 16.00 180 2.25 1.92 57.60
HD 7750 75 920 12.27 150 2.00 1.80 54.00

GFlops perfomance (single precision) and the TDP in Watt are the official from wikipedia. The mining performance kHash/s are an APPROXIMATION of the AVERAGE results with the hardware at default clocks and NOT a standard benchmark. This was the most difficult thing to do, to understand those different results with different OC and finding the average results for each hardware and possibly for CGMiner. Some issues I had to correct like TDP of R9 280 is equal to 7950 B, for R7 260X kHash/s scaling +10% because not sufficient data and for R7 250X no data at all but its the same as 7770 and included for completeness. I included the GFlops for the reference and you can see that both scale similarly.

Now, the conclusion. After dividing these values with the TDP we find the performance/Watt and in this case we are particularly interested in the kHash/Ws. These results show us how efficient is every GPU and surprisingly no1 is the mighty HD 7990, almost in its own league. The second is R9 290X and the 290 and the 7790 are close too at around 3 kHash/Ws. The rest of the mid- to high-range are not bad either at above 2.5 kHash/Ws while the three entry level are the last. The R7 260X is a bad evolution from the 7790 with much higher TDP than performance and falling 0.55 points; too bad because I personally wanted the cheap 7790 in 3x-5x crossfire but its not available anymore.

Finally there are the kilowatt hours consumed 24/7 per day and per month for each GPU so you can calculate the cost of electricity, just remember that these are only for a single graphics card and without the rest of the system. In the end all it matters how efficient is the entire system starting with the GPUs, CPUs, PSU and all the other suckers because that means more performance/Watt.

 

[andrej1234]

Hi!

Can someone help me? I have 3x R9 280x - gigabyte. one card gives me HW errors, other two none, with same settings on all three cards; also temperature is for 7 degrees higher on this one. here's my cgminer config:
--thread-concurrency 8921 --lookup-gap 2 --gpu-engine 1030,1030,1030 --gpu-memclock 1500 --gpu-powertune -20,-20,-20 --gpu-fan 40-80 -w 256 -I 13 -g 2

 

[Eddo22]

Just a tip to help other newbies to get going. I downloaded 3.7.3 and couldn't get it to work right. (Lots of hardware errors). 3.7.2 is the correct one.

"If you are mining Scrypt crypto currencies such as Litecoin or maybe DOGE, then you are most likely using cgminer as a mining software or something that relies on cgminer as a backend. The author of cgminer (Con Kolivas) however seems to have decided to continue support of cgminer only for ASIC mining for SHA-256 cryptos such as Bitcoin and version 3.7.2 is the last one for cgminer to support GPU mining for scrypt cryptos. Furthermore the windows version of the last cgminer to support GPU mining has been removed from the official download location, you can however download cgminer 3.7.2 with GPU support for windows here http://cryptomining-blog.com/wp-content/files/cgminer-3.7.2-windows.zip "

Avast detects it as a PUP (Potentially unwanted programs), but just disable it for 10 minutes.

 

[Guest]

People who don't even know how to use .bat, .exe trying to do this, put your credit card back in your wallet and stop now. If you like coins, just purchase some BTC (coinbase works) and use an exchange to get the alt-coins of your choice.

 

[Guest]

This article sucks. It gives the wrong impression on
a) how hard it is to setup a miner (for goodness sakes, use BAMT!!!)
b) inappropriate startup costs and hardware (basically showing that you need to dump $3k or close to for a startup rig)
c) shows the author using a normal atx case!! Sure, he says not to, so why doesn't he update the article? People do that from time to time, make updates or revisions to articles, its not unheard of.....
d) you're building a litecoin miner like you would a gaming computer. they are no where near the same in design since they have (2) different purposes, so get a clue.


Dont listen to what is written in this article, do the research yourself and make your own conclusions. You can get into an entry level mining rig for ALOT cheaper if you are simply creative. I think my first rig cost me all of a couple hundred bucks (less than 6 months ago) and it puts out 600 kh/s @ 300w.

 

[jcartwright93]

I launched the .bat file and it cycles through some prompts before instantly closing due to some error. literally cannot read it, it flies by too fast. Any ideas?

You also have to download the stratum server proxy and have it running before you can start the bat file.

 

[Guest]

I launched the .bat file and it cycles through some prompts before instantly closing due to some error. literally cannot read it, it flies by too fast. Any ideas?

It says that "cgminer.exe" is not a recognized as an internal or external commander, operable program or batch file. (Very fast screenshotting skills, only took me 5 tries)

Or, you know, you could have just open the command window first, then run the program from there. Then scroll up to see the error message.

Your message indicates windows does not see cgminer.exe in the directory you are attempting to run it from. Post your batch file. Are you running the batch file from within the same directory as cgminer is located?

Just doubleclick the cgminer.exe to start and but your configure to cgminer.conf.