Monero Mining Performance

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Patrick

Administrator
Staff member
Dec 21, 2010
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@alex_stief it does average out over time.

The other reason I did the STH Aeon pool was because I wanted to control E2E the chain and ensure there is no leakage. I still end up +/- 3% over a week due to variation.

@rookyminer --- My sense is that with Monero you would be at about 480-500H/s per machine. I think 1000H/s with Monero these days is around $3.50/ day.

Aeon, which we have been doing on CPUs would probably get you 4000H/s or around $4.1/day but is less liquid. STH Aeon Mining Pool Beta Access
 

Joel

Active Member
Jan 30, 2015
855
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@alex_stief it does average out over time.

The other reason I did the STH Aeon pool was because I wanted to control E2E the chain and ensure there is no leakage. I still end up +/- 3% over a week due to variation.

@rookyminer --- My sense is that with Monero you would be at about 480-500H/s per machine. I think 1000H/s with Monero these days is around $3.50/ day.

Aeon, which we have been doing on CPUs would probably get you 4000H/s or around $4.1/day but is less liquid. STH Aeon Mining Pool Beta Access
Plus Aeon isn't a rocket ship yet, though if it got that way, we'd be in before the herd.
 

rookyminer

New Member
Dec 14, 2017
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hello gentlemen of STH,
allow me to bring my questions to you!

first to be honnest i am out of servers stuff since a while so please forgive my "newbism", and my english...

well, i might soon get two (free) retired HP DL160 GEN6 ( 2 intel xeon westmere 6 cores 2.93Ghz E5670 6 cores), therefore,
i am asking myself what could it give as a monero CPU mining baby farm in a MH/s ratio.
I am reading lot of things about mining these days and i am afraid i am getting more and more confused about what i read or understand.

i've read upper in the treadthat the hash rate would be in H/s ? nothing more?

but in the blog i've read that similar CPUs were able to mine 1.300USD over few weeks (back in february this year)

so as i said, i am confused!
if you could help me better understand what could be generating this old beast...
or what could be the better thing to mine (regarless of the electricity as it would remain within my server room, so no personnal electricity fees to expect)

thank you for reading me and sorry if i missed the obvioous answer!

no one kind enough to learn me how to better understand?
 

Joel

Active Member
Jan 30, 2015
855
194
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well, i might soon get two (free) retired HP DL160 GEN6 ( 2 intel xeon westmere 6 cores 2.93Ghz E5670 6 cores), therefore,
i am asking myself what could it give as a monero CPU mining baby farm in a MH/s ratio.
I am reading lot of things about mining these days and i am afraid i am getting more and more confused about what i read or understand.

i've read upper in the treadthat the hash rate would be in H/s ? nothing more?
I don't have any personal experience with westmere gen stuff, but from what I've heard they're power hungry beasts. With that in mind there is a good possibility they will not pay for their power usage, so it's something to watch for. If it's the *X*5670 (I couldn't find E5670 on Intel's ARK) then it has AES which is important for Monero.

Pure guess: ~700h/s XMR for a 2p system @ 300w.


but in the blog i've read that similar CPUs were able to mine 1.300USD over few weeks (back in february this year)
Difficulty has changed (read: gone way up) since February. More profits mean more systems get lighted so the game gets harder.

so as i said, i am confused!
if you could help me better understand what could be generating this old beast...
or what could be the better thing to mine (regarless of the electricity as it would remain within my server room, so no personnal electricity fees to expect)

thank you for reading me and sorry if i missed the obvioous answer!
Well, if the systems are free, and the power is free, where's the downside again??

Definitely try AEON on these if you get them.
 

alex_stief

Well-Known Member
May 31, 2016
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No significant improvement. Earnings over the last 24h are 0.0178XMR. This won't level out over the course of a week.
 

Joel

Active Member
Jan 30, 2015
855
194
43
42
No significant improvement. Earnings over the last 24h are 0.0178XMR. This won't level out over the course of a week.
Maybe switch to aeon with the private pool? Seems like most of the well known pools skim some off the top in various sneaky ways...
 

nfsden

Member
Apr 6, 2016
113
15
18
35
No significant improvement. Earnings over the last 24h are 0.0178XMR. This won't level out over the course of a week.
Things will be worse and worst.
The block reward will continue to decrease. Sad times is ahead. 85% of total XMR emission will be mined at spring 2018
 

alex_stief

Well-Known Member
May 31, 2016
884
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Maybe switch to aeon with the private pool? Seems like most of the well known pools skim some off the top in various sneaky ways...
I wouldn't exactly call it sneaky when their own monitoring software shows 50% of the reward gone missing...
 

funkywizard

mmm.... bandwidth.
Jan 15, 2017
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I wouldn't exactly call it sneaky when their own monitoring software shows 50% of the reward gone missing...
Yeah, minergate was horrible for that. And if that wasn't enough, the pools were frequently down, so my hashrate would drop off a cliff as a third of my servers saw connection failures.
 

cafcwest

Member
Feb 15, 2013
136
14
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Richmond, VA
BLUF: looking for ability to run 3MB cache /thread in a XMR miner to maximize cache usage.

Somewhat unique hardware situation here (aren't I always that 'special duck'), and I'm hoping to solicit some advice before moving over to a miner developer support forum.

CPUs: 2x Intel, 10core (has HT, but disabled), 32MB L2/L3 cache,
OS: Windows Server 2012R2/16
Miner: Stak-XMR (latest version)

So more decomm gear I am tinkering with. Based on testing so far, I have found that disabling HT and running 20 cores, low power = false, affinity to CPU core is generating slightly better performance, and more consistant than using an additional 5 HT thread per CPU (30 total) to maximize cache usage.

I am aware of the ability to run the miner in "lower power" which will double cache usage, with the idea that you'd also run less cores. I have a theory that I could run lower power mode, then affinity to thread but based on the performance at 30 threads, but based on tests to date I do not believe this would deliver a CPU increase.

My ask is to see if anyone is aware of a miner (or method of using multiple miners or multiple instances) under which I could utilize 3MB cache per CPU thread. Reiterating, my problem is that I am core limited, not cache limited so I'm looking for a method to utilize all of my cache per thread to increase CryptoNight performance.

Thanks!
 

funkywizard

mmm.... bandwidth.
Jan 15, 2017
848
402
63
USA
ioflood.com
BLUF: looking for ability to run 3MB cache /thread in a XMR miner to maximize cache usage.

Somewhat unique hardware situation here (aren't I always that 'special duck'), and I'm hoping to solicit some advice before moving over to a miner developer support forum.

CPUs: 2x Intel, 10core (has HT, but disabled), 32MB L2/L3 cache,
OS: Windows Server 2012R2/16
Miner: Stak-XMR (latest version)

So more decomm gear I am tinkering with. Based on testing so far, I have found that disabling HT and running 20 cores, low power = false, affinity to CPU core is generating slightly better performance, and more consistant than using an additional 5 HT thread per CPU (30 total) to maximize cache usage.

I am aware of the ability to run the miner in "lower power" which will double cache usage, with the idea that you'd also run less cores. I have a theory that I could run lower power mode, then affinity to thread but based on the performance at 30 threads, but based on tests to date I do not believe this would deliver a CPU increase.

My ask is to see if anyone is aware of a miner (or method of using multiple miners or multiple instances) under which I could utilize 3MB cache per CPU thread. Reiterating, my problem is that I am core limited, not cache limited so I'm looking for a method to utilize all of my cache per thread to increase CryptoNight performance.

Thanks!
What is the L3 cache per CPU? Not sure if the 32mb is L2+L3, or for one CPU or both.

Low power = false means 2mb cache used per thread, right? So if you tried 15 threads and found it was slower than 10, I assume this is 32MB cache per cpu? Sounds like an odd cpu. Mind sharing which one?

Firstly, you might try 14 or 16 threads and see if that's better. I find that sometimes I need to run a little less than the math says I should, for best performance. Ordinarily, best performance is obtained with 1 fewer thread on cpu1 than cpu2. Possibly background processes are more likely to need some cache on the first cpu.

Also, low power mode is not all-or-nothing. If you want to target a specific cache use (say, somewhere between 28mb and 32mb), and find that hyperthreading isn't much help, look at it this way:

10x high power -- no low power -- 20mb
9x hp, 1x lp -- 22mb
8x hp, 2x lp -- 24mb
7x hp, 3x lp -- 26mb
6x hp, 4x lp -- 28mb
5x hp, 5x lp -- 30mb
4x hp, 6x lp -- 32mb

so somewhere between 6x 2mb threads + 4x 4mb threads, 5 and 5, or 4 and 6, may work for you without hyperthreading.
 
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mantis

Member
Nov 17, 2017
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I have a dual E5-2680V2 setup, i see people talking about turning some cores off in the bios. Mining uses 25 threads, can i just turn all unused cores off? And maybe leave few cores on for other processes? How should i go about this?

I was thinking about this as currently i'm using a makeshift cooler solution, and turning some cores off would probably help lowering the heat output also.
 

Marsh

Moderator
May 12, 2013
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Example:
With Intel server bios, processor section, "ACTIVE Cores" , select number of active cores.
With Intel bios, you could select any number of active cores.

With Supermicro BIOS, you could only select even number of active cores. I.e. 2 cores, 4 cores , 6 cores.

For dedicated miner machine, it reduce power usage and heat , still maintaining the same hashrate
 

mantis

Member
Nov 17, 2017
38
6
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At least the voltages dropped, so that probably equals less heat. 7 cored per CPU, miner running on 25 threads so there is even room extra threads for windows & gpu miner.

Should have tested this earlier, i was just so happy about my 20 cores.. been wating for a coolers for ages, finally ended up rigging this cooler thats made out of 5 separate heatsinks and two fans, hah. just barely does the job.

It was still heat throttling a bit, so was losing pressure hashes.. now it seems stable.

These things seem to really like running cool, even over 60c seems to be too much. Around 50c and the voltages stay stable.
 
Last edited:

funkywizard

mmm.... bandwidth.
Jan 15, 2017
848
402
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I have a dual E5-2680V2 setup, i see people talking about turning some cores off in the bios. Mining uses 25 threads, can i just turn all unused cores off? And maybe leave few cores on for other processes? How should i go about this?

I was thinking about this as currently i'm using a makeshift cooler solution, and turning some cores off would probably help lowering the heat output also.
Aeon can use 1mb per thread (av1) or 2mb per thread (av2).

Each E5-2680v2 has 10 cores, 20 threads, and 25MB cache.

Dual E5-2680v2, double all of these (20 cores, 40 threads, 50mb cache) -- all my information is normally given "per cpu".

Running 20x av1 on this, uses all threads, but only 20MB cache. This leaves some available performance unused.

Running 10x av2 also uses 20mb cache, and may be a little slower than 20x av1.

The "sweet spot" varies for each cpu.

Dual E5-2680v2, the maximum performance I can obtain is 4200 - 4300h/s, with all 10 cores enabled in the bios, 10x av2 threads on each "real core", and a small number of av1 threads (between 2 - 4) on "the hyperthreaded cores". (again, this is per cpu).

This uses between 22mb and 24mb of the 25mb cache. For best performance, a little bit of cache needs to be left empty, presumably for server background processes and that type of thing. Finding the exact amount of cache you need to leave free requires trial and error. I can usually get away with using more cache on cpu2 than on cpu1.

However, power is not free. By going to 8 enabled CPU cores in the bios, while mining the server uses 20w less power. I lose a little performance -- 4000 - 4100 H/s is typical.

Best settings with 8 cores enabled are 8x av2 threads on each "real core" -- uses 16mb of cache on each cpu -- and then anywhere from 6 - 8 av1 threads on "the hyperthreaded cores" -- this totals you to 22 - 24mb cache usage.
 

mantis

Member
Nov 17, 2017
38
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Yeah, you get more hashes with Aeon but less money. Shame there is no other cryptonigh-lite coins out there. It's the only algorithm that seems to favor CPU:s over GPU:s.

It seems to be about 3.5x the hashes you get with cryptonight. Even my i7-2600 got around 1000h/s with the lite.
 

funkywizard

mmm.... bandwidth.
Jan 15, 2017
848
402
63
USA
ioflood.com
Example:
With Intel server bios, processor section, "ACTIVE Cores" , select number of active cores.
With Intel bios, you could select any number of active cores.

With Supermicro BIOS, you could only select even number of active cores. I.e. 2 cores, 4 cores , 6 cores.

For dedicated miner machine, it reduce power usage and heat , still maintaining the same hashrate
I find that supermicro allows any number of cores on my v2 systems, but even numbers only for v1 systems. Not sure if a v1 cpu in a v2-capable-system allows any number or even-only.
 

funkywizard

mmm.... bandwidth.
Jan 15, 2017
848
402
63
USA
ioflood.com
I do not pay light in Brazil, if I want to build low cost renters with gpu, what would be a good configuration?
For Monero mining with GPUs, the best return on investment (ROI -- revenue divided by investment -- measured in months) is the Vega 56 or Vega 64 cards. It also produces the best revenue per watt for GPU mining for Monero. One card, even after today's big drop, can produce $170 / mo mining Monero. The cards cost anywhere from $500 - $750 depending on stock levels. Due to it's profitability in mining, cost has gone up and availability has gone down.

As for mining "in general", Nvidia GPUs are good for mining ZCash and BitcoinGold (ZEC and BTG). As of today, a $700-800 graphics card (Nvidia 1080ti) can earn $165 / mo with Zcash mining. This card has not been driven up in price much by mining, so if mining on it becomes less popular, it should hold more of its resale value than a Vega bought for $700+. On the other hand, the 1080ti is almost a year old. I assume nvidia will release a new card in the next 6 months, and this will cause the 1080ti to lose value as well.

The Nvidia 1060 card is probably the most flexible. It is profitable for mining zcash (and BTG which uses the same algorithm), Ethereum, and Monero. The 3gb card can cost as little as $200 each, and for zcash performs 90% as well as the $300 6gb model. I believe that Ethereum may need the 6gb model for the best performance moving forwards, due to an ever-growing blockchain.

For zcash, the 3gb model GTX 1060 offers the best profit margins. Other cards (1070, 1080, 1080ti) offer more revenue-per-watt when mining zcash, but the 1060 3gb offers the best revenue per dollar. For mining anything other than zcash (and BTG), only the 1060 and 1070 are appropriate. The 1080 and 1080ti perform poorly on other cryptos, being barely faster than the 1070, despite much higher prices.

Zcash performance on Nvidia cards (off the top of my head, alongside optimized power limits, and adjusting the clock speeds to stable higher values):

1060 3gb: 270 sol / s -- 85w TDP limit
1060 6gb: 300 sol / s -- 90w TDP limit
1070: 430 sol / s -- 120w TDP limit
1080: 500 sol / s - 130w TDP limit
1080ti: 700 sol / s - 200w TDP limit

This roughly follows the price of the cards:

1060 3gb: $200 and up -- $63 / mo revenue
1060 6gb: $280 and up -- $70 / mo revenue
1070: $400 and up -- $100 / mo revenue
1080: $500 and up -- $117 / mo revenue
1080 ti: $700 and up -- $164 / mo revenue

The only card in the above list that really beats $1 per sol/s is the 1060 3gb. Do keep in mind, with the lower revenue per GPU, you need to rely on motherboards with many pcie slots, and use riser cables, to generate meaningful revenue for each system you build.

Also keep in mind, these profit levels on these cards are unusually high. Between May 2017 and now (December 2017), only during May, June, and December has the revenue per card been this high. During July - October, it usually was in a range of $80 - $120 / mo for a 1080ti, and proportionally lower for the others. Don't assume profits will stay at this level.

I personally ignore any options that are not power efficient as I pay a lot for energy. Other people may be more familiar with low-cost high-revenue mining options that are less power efficient.

========

Now, as a side tangent:

Even though you don't pay for power, the less power you use, the more you can mine on a given capacity power supply. Also, even with free power, your home only has so much power available to it. As your power is free, performance-per-watt clearly is less of a concern. But do still keep it in mind, especially if your options are similar in terms of ROI.

Some cards that are easier to get that may produce similar profits are the RX570 / RX580. They earn less, but they also cost less. However, they do use a similar amount of power to the Vega's, so you will need larger power supplies to earn the same amount of money, and they will generate a larger amount of heat per dollar revenue as well.

Also, I don't know about Brazil, but Venezuela was in a similar situation -- power is very cheap, which made mining very attractive. In Venezuela, the problem got so bad that the government started putting people in jail who were mining at home -- they considered it theft of electricity. Nothing in life is free. If you do mine with free or subsidized electricity, you still want to make sure you are using a low enough amount of it that it doesn't draw attention. If you want to stay under the radar, still better to use power-efficient hardware. More revenue for the same amount of power, and using less power draws less attention to you.