Vega 64 performance

[Joel]

FYI for anyone interested in actually gaming with a Vega. I tried installing the retail drivers and starting up XMR-stak. It was so slow the script timed out, so I had to kill the script. When it finally started hashing it got ~300h/s.

Sounds like dual boot is in order.

 

[keybored]

... I tried installing the retail drivers and starting up XMR-stak. It was so slow the script timed out, so I had to kill the script. When it finally started hashing it got ~300h/s.
...

Was that with the latest Adrenalin driver (17.12.1) or Crimson?

 

[gigatexal]

is mining still profitable?

 

[Joel]

is mining still profitable?

Nope. Not at all.

 

[Joel]

Was that with the latest Adrenalin driver (17.12.1) or Crimson?

17.12.1.

 

[Joel]

Another data point: the Z420 came with an older AMD FirePro card, that I thought: Great, I'll use it for my display. Turns out the blockchain drivers refused to install with the other card in place.

With the Vega only in the system that I also use as a desktop (driving a single 1920x1200 display), I'm having a hard time finding settings that won't result in snow or artifacts after 30-45min.

 

[Marsh]

is mining still profitable?

Yes, it depends when you started mining.
When I started mining XMR , I remember XMR was $6 . Today XMR is $340.
I did not make money during the time when XMR was $6, I was making $1 or $2 a day after power cost.
Today, I have high 5 figure dollar amount by mining and holding XMR.

 

[Marsh]

Thanks Joel, I would stayed with the Aug 23 beta blockchain driver.

 

[dwright1542]

is mining still profitable?

Currenty 6-8ish week ROI on almost all the hardware I buy. I'd say yes.

 

[Joel]

Thanks Joel, I would stayed with the Aug 23 beta blockchain driver.

Yup, that was a very short-lived experiment. DDD, install blockchain, and registry and I'm back in business.

 

[Ol92]

Yup, that was a very short-lived experiment. DDD, install blockchain, and registry and I'm back in business.

Instead of dual boot, you may play with restore point in windows: save one restore point with blockchain driver and another with regular ones.

Of course you need to update these restore point every time you update windows or install some program.

I am used to mine from November 2013, from amd to nvidia. And I find mining with rx vega particulary painfull when you want to use your pc for both mining and regular tasks (instead of a dedicated mining rig).
It reminds me the movie Gremlins : don't feed them with meal or after 0H00, don't spread water on them ... For vega it's: don't use some monitoring program, don't update driver, don't switch off the monitor without a dummy plug, don't play, don't ...

 

[gigatexal]

Yes, it depends when you started mining.
When I started mining XMR , I remember XMR was $6 . Today XMR is $340.
I did not make money during the time when XMR was $6, I was making $1 or $2 a day after power cost.
Today, I have high 5 figure dollar amount by mining and holding XMR.

Ok, so if I started mining now...and if prices continued rising it could be profitable. Hmm...

 

[Marsh]

@gigatexal
If you are lucky enough to live in a very low power cost area, like you. It is easier to make a profit. Then you could mine as business to generate real profit.
I am in Calif, very high power cost.

In my case, when xmr was low, it was easier and good time to mine. But profit was only couple of dollars a day,
not very interesting at the time.

We are mining Aeon now, hoping Aeon price to pop, When Patrick started the pool , Aeon was in low $1.x range.
today, Aeon is at $4.33

It is a risky, it is a hobby , it pays for the new toys.

 

[garetjax]

I just built my first rig last week. Before jumping in I tested/learned with my gaming rig and my deep learning rig for a few weeks. I am building a vega rig - I have 3 and a fourth is coming this week.

I researched video cards specifically looking at ROI. I used the monero benchmarch site to compare hashrates for different cards GPU & CPU BENCHMARKS FOR MONERO MINING! and then a mining calculator to figure out potential daily/monthly profits. So for me the Vegas were by far the best ROI - with a 2000 monero hashrate they were looking like 3 months to be paid for. That doesn't include the potential rise in monero or whatever coin you mine.

I too have switched to AEON for now because the difficulty is so high on Monero - although I don't understand yet how to calculate how high is too high - I'm trusting the experts on this forum and learning from them.

Oh and also - my electricity is only 6.5 cents, and if I pay my bill early they chop 10% off my bill - which helps a lot.

I went GPU route because its so easy, the only cpu I would do would be the epyc route - but I've been watching and they aren't really available yet that I can find.

 

[Marsh]

my electricity is only 6.5 cents

I am so jealous your $0.065 power rate. If I have your rate, I'll be mining with my power hungry dual E5-2670 v1 nodes.

Where did you find the 4 vega cards?

 

[garetjax]

Two from amazon $599 Sapphires - visit there 10 times a day. They seem to be selling them in small batches, and I have alerts on every vega card which never go off. 2 from new egg also the same Saphhire 64, 2nd one just showed up, sadly $679 each but thats just a few weeks mining to cover the extra cost.

My town runs their own electricity service, thats why its so cheap. Several of them here in Mass do it.

 

[garetjax]

Actually Marsh I have a question for you, when you added your 2nd card, did you have to uninstall with ddd and reinstall block driver etc, or just add the card and then soft tables for it?

 

[Marsh]

No, ddd and reinstall drivers.

I pluged in the second vega card, let W10 settle down for few min and wait for W10 to detect new hardware.
Reboot
Change my startminng.bat file to include the new addition.
Started xmr-stak for 30min to 1 hour for testing.
Then run the power play table reg file for the new card to lower power consumption.

 

[keybored]

Holy cow... $900-$950 for reference Vegas on eBay now. That's almost 2x MSRP. Was it ever this bad with the previous gen cards?

 

[Joel]

Holy cow... $900-$950 for reference Vegas on eBay now. That's almost 2x MSRP. Was it ever this bad with the previous gen cards?

Don't think so. Vegas didn't start getting bad until right around thanksgiving when I bought my first two (MSI 64s for $560ea). Got a third on preorder with Newegg that cost $730.

Some of it is the wild profitability, some of it is Bitcoin mania, and some of it is eBay price gouging. Perfect storm.

Me, I'm avoiding eBay and buying from Newegg or BH when they become available. I've halfway been considering selling some!