Vega 64 mining speed. Mining on an AMD Radeon Vega video card - performance, technical specifications

Many people expected excellent results in games from the Radeon RX Vega 64 card. And the model really lived up to expectations in this aspect. But what about vega in the context of cryptocurrency mining? There were rumors that mining on the Radeon RX Vega 64 would allow achieving results of 100 Mh/s in the case of Ethereum. But everything turned out to be not so simple.

Real indicators

If you use a miner called Claymore 9.8, you can achieve a figure of 34-35 Mh/s. This is almost 3 times less than many expected. So we can confidently say: this card is not the best option for mining. Moreover, on forums you can often find information about overheating of the model and frequent software glitches.

In order to understand the insufficiency of these figures, it is enough to simply look at the results of possible competitors who have long managed to establish themselves from the best side in the mining niche.

As you can see, the results are not much less than those announced earlier in the case of AMD Vega. With AMD RX Vega 56 the situation is even worse. Yes, the products can offer excellent multimedia capabilities. There is 8 GB of memory, resolution up to 7680x4320 pixels is supported, frequency is 7680x4320 pixels, 3 DisplayPorts at once. But don’t let these characteristics mislead you, because real tests prove its ineffectiveness.

What else should you consider when mining cryptocurrencies?

You don’t need to think that for mining you only need to purchase video cards and calculate the payback. Here you also need to take into account not only the cost of electricity, but also the full price of the farm. In order to minimize costs, farms are often assembled using 6 video cards. All of them must be powered using a power supply. Their cost directly depends on the power. If you assemble a farm from a 6 GB GTX 1060, then a unit up to 800 W will be enough for you, but it’s better to play it safe and take a 1000 W model. In the case of the GTX 1070, 1200 W is definitely enough.

But mining with Vega 64 is much more complicated. Each card requires 275 watts of power. That is why you will have to look for a 2000 W unit at once or purchase a pair of 1000 W each. Naturally, the cost of such components will be much higher. As a result, the payback period will be completely different.

But it is enough to simply compare the total amount. Let's say you manage to purchase a Vega 64 for $500. You will have to spend about $3,500 for a farm of 6 cards (500 will be spent on additional equipment). Yes, the mining speed will be higher than in the case of the GTX 1060. But you also need to take into account energy costs and initial investments. Having carried out simple calculations, we can conclude that for $3,500 it is much more profitable to buy 2 farms equipped with a GTX 1060.

And the final word...

Now you know which cards are best to use for mining today. When choosing, you need to start from basic calculations. Preliminarily evaluate the test results of all competitors. Yes, you can get the Vega 64 right now for gaming, it's a great card that delivers on its multimedia duties. But purchasing for cryptocurrency mining is unprofitable.

Probably the most important insight is the hashrate for mining Ethereum (ETH) and other crypto coins based on the Ethash algorithm. Unfortunately, the performance of the Radeon RX VEGA 64 using the latest version of Claymore Dual Eth Miner, which comes with official Vega support, is around 31-32 MHS. We have seen that claims of much higher performance are theoretically possible, but we have yet to confirm whether this is true and whether these claims are actually real or just speculation. It's not great that this hashrate comes at a fairly high power consumption, and the higher the GPU temperature, the lower the performance.

Here is the Zcash (ZEC) mining situation using AMD's new Radeon RX VEGA 64 GPU, totaling around 475-480 H/s. However, the not so high performance in these two memory intensive algorithms, even with HBM2 memory, is not the most important thing. What we're more interested in about the new AMD Radeon RX VEGA 64 GPUs is the fact that they are cold GPUs and get hot quickly, so keeping them cool 24/7 can be a challenge, at least for air cooling. The amount of power used does not justify the level of performance we are getting for mining at the moment...

When it comes to gaming, the Radeon RX VEGA 64 appears to be closer to the GTX 1080 in terms of performance, but again it still consumes more power than the Nvidia card.

What remains to be seen is what will happen to availability and what the actual price of the new VEGA GPUs will be taking into account the fact that demand from miners may not be that high, although you never know... with market prices of Polaris GPUs at At the level they are currently available, the official RRP of the VEGA 64 looks unreasonably low, so of course expect higher starting prices. On the other hand, the Radeon RX VEGA 64 can also improve its algorithms with more GPUs than memory intensive ones.

At the main Asian computer exhibition Computex 2018, Sapphire presented not only a new flagship video card, but also announced the distribution of gifts to customers. And in order for the cards to reach buyers, miners were “distracted” by two new farms.

Nitro+ RX Vega 64

Sapphire has updated its most powerful video card on an AMD chip, the Nitro+ RX Vega 64. Its main difference from the previous version is that this flagship adapter is powered through only two 8-pin connectors, and not through three, like the original model.

And to demonstrate the capabilities of the powerful video card, Sapphire built a gaming corner right at its stand: Nitro+ RX Vega 64 displayed a panorama from the virtual driver’s cockpit in the game Forza Motorsport 7 on three monitors.


Free games

Thanks to Sapphire's new partnership with Square Enix, buyers of the Pulse RX 550 and RX 560 graphics cards will now receive free games: two with the older model and one with the 550. The video cards themselves have not undergone any changes.


Mining farms

Sapphire now deals not only with consumer graphics cards, but also with products for those who want to participate in the formation of the new cryptocurrency world. At Computex 2018, the company showed two mining rigs. The first model is called MGI-9 and includes 9 RX 470 video cards. The cards, of course, are made in a special mining modification; they cannot be used for games.

CS-14 is a farm for professional miners. It has 7 RX 470 video cards with 8 GB of video memory, but each has two GPUs on board, that is, a total of 14 chips are working on hash search in the farm. In addition, the system has 8 GB of DDR4 RAM, a 128 GB SSD in the M.2 slot, and the device runs Ubuntu OS.


The declared hashrate of the farm when working with the Ethash algorithm (it is, for example, used in Ethereum) is 400 Mh/s. Given the hashrate of the Ethereum network at the time of publication, this performance allows you to mine about 0.03 ETH per day, or, at the current exchange rate, $16. However, you will have to deduct electricity costs - the farm consumes 2000 watts.

You can better view these and some other new items in our video report:


The AMD Radeon RX VEGA 64 video card has gone on official sale, and we already have something to tell you about it. There was a lot of information and rumors about the mining performance of this card, but we decided to test it ourselves. The new HBM2 memory, which is used in AMD VEGA video cards, is of the greatest interest, but, unfortunately, it cannot be said that with factory settings it is capable of skillfully working with memory-dependent algorithms. Of course, after the Polaris line from AMD, we are all familiar with the necessary modifications, which after some time will most likely become available to miners.


We assume that miners are most interested in the performance of the card when mining Ethereum (ETH), as well as other cryptocurrencies based on the Ethash algorithm. Unfortunately, the factory kit and settings in the Radeon RX VEGA 64 use the latest Claymore Dual Eth miner with official Vega support. And this gives approximately 31-32 MHS. There have been statements about better performance, and theoretically this is not excluded, but we personally cannot confirm these data. There is a high probability that the best performance was achieved with significantly higher power consumption, and this is not good, since in such conditions the card quickly heats up, and this is not very good for the factory VEGA 64 cooler.


When mining Zcash (ZEC) using Radeon RX VEGA 64, we managed to achieve 475-480 H/s. Not impressive performance, even with HBM2 memory. But what alarmed us most was the gluttony of the Radeon RX VEGA 64 and its fairly fast heating. Therefore, cooling the card 24/7 can cause certain problems, at least in the case of cards without water cooling. The power consumption numbers don't justify the performance we were able to get with the factory settings.

In general, we can say that the factory version of the Radeon RX VEGA 64 video card in terms of performance in mining ETH and ZEC is identical to the overclocked Nvidia GTX 1070. However, the card from AMD consumes significantly more electricity (about twice). As for games, the Radeon RX VEGA 64 is close to the GTX 1080 in performance, but, again, consumes more power.

All that remains is to assess the situation with the availability of the card and its cost. These factors will be decisive for miners, and most likely, demand will be small. On the other hand, Radeon RX VEGA 64 may well give good performance in mining GPU-dependent algorithms.

Mining farms, consisting of several powerful video cards, allow you to efficiently mine cryptocurrencies running on the Ethash algorithm (Dagger Hashimoto). AMD regularly releases specialized models of graphics adapters with high GPU frequencies and memory modules for professional miners. Among these video cards is AMD Radeon Vega. Mining requires round-the-clock operation of video cards, so models must be resistant to power surges, have high operating temperatures and be compatible with popular algorithms.

AMD Radeon RX Vega 64 graphics adapter allows processing block chains at speeds of up to 35 megahash per second. This performance is comparable to RX 570 models from the same company and NVIDIA GTX 1060 and older video cards. The graphics adapter is equipped with an 8 GB memory module, the processor frequency is 1247 megahertz out of the box, after overclocking the speed reaches 1546 megahertz. The exact indicators depend on the model manufacturer; the price of the module ranges from 48 to 64 thousand rubles.

The AMD Radeon RX Vega 64 model is distinguished by a powerful graphics processor; the developers stated that the mining speed will be up to 100 megahash per second, but the actual figures are significantly lower. For example, mining coins on the Claymore client version 9.8 produces a hashrate of up to 35 megahash. The video card has a number of characteristics:

  1. The power of the board is 275 Watts. The figure is significantly higher than that of the RX 570 (150 Watt), which has a similar hashrate. From the miners' point of view, this means additional investment in powerful power supplies. For example, assembling a farm of 6 Vega video cards will require installing a power supply that produces 2 kilowatts. Such indicators are provided by expensive server power supply modules.
  2. The volume of built-in memory is 8 gigabytes. The parameter is important for algorithms that actively use RAM. The most popular is Ethash, with the help of RX Vega 64 you can, coins of the Cryptonight, Pascal and .
  3. The processor frequency reaches 1546 megahertz after overclocking. The indicator is standard for top-end video cards adapted to the needs of miners.
  4. The Vega 64 hashrate ranges from 13 megahash (on the X11Ghost algorithm) to 4.1 gigahash per second (mining on Decred). This spread emphasizes the overclocking capabilities of the equipment.

A special feature of the card is its increased power, which allows you to mine Ethereum and other coins without participating in a pool. For these operations, the user needs a powerful power supply.

Performance

The final mining results on the RX Vega 64 depend on the proper settings of the graphics adapter. The procedure consists of three steps:

  1. Downvolting. By reducing the power of the graphics adapter to 130 Watts and the clock frequency to 1000 megahertz, a hashrate of 43.5 megahash per second is achieved. The Power Limit is set to 24%, so the adapter can operate safely around the clock.
  2. Memory speed. High mining performance is achieved due to the RAM frequency of 1900 megahertz. Installing six RX Vega 64 graphics cards on a rig will allow you to earn about $10 per month mining Ethereum.
  3. Easy to overclock. You can increase the performance of a video card through BIOS profiles; developers offer Balanced and Turbo modules. The second option allows you to reach a frequency of 1536 megahertz; performance jumps from 1401 to 1540 megahertz are observed.

Payback

The retail price of the AMD RX Vega 64 ranges from $450 (basic) to $830; it's also worth spending extra on a powerful cooling system. Standard fans provide minimal cooling - models from GIGABYTE have received complaints about overheating and equipment failure. The payback period for equipment depends on a number of indicators:

  1. Hashrate. RX Vega 64 is capable of processing information at speeds of up to 43.5 megahash per second, which exceeds all single-processor graphics adapters. The indicator is achievable with manual overclocking of the card.
  2. Energy consumption. Downvolting the RX Vega 64 reduces the block processing speed, so it is useful for high power consumption. Electricity costs will be higher than those of similar performance RX 1070 and 1080.

Overclocking

The AMD Radeon RX Vega 64 graphics adapter is configured using the standard Radeon Crimson ReLive Edition driver. The special mining driver is in beta version, one of the users (specifically from his experience) wrote about instability, so it is not recommended to install this program.

The video card heats up to 73 degrees, but peak temperatures can be 10 degrees higher. Maximum performance is achieved with Extreme installations running through the graphics adapter's main BIOS.

The maximum fan speed is 2400 rpm. With standard power consumption settings, there is no need to spend money on additional cooling. The card is protected by a Hot Spot thermal sensor, which automatically stops supplying power when it reaches 85 degrees.

Technically, all operations to overclock a video card for mining are carried out in the AMD Radeon Settings - Global WattMan item. The application is equipped with RX Vega 64 performance graphs, testing is carried out at 10-minute intervals.

The program has built-in monitoring of the system heating level, so novice miners will be able to monitor the operation of each module, protecting the boards from power surges.

Comparison with competitors

The graphics adapter was created as a powerful video card for gamers; the package includes gift discs and an additional cooling system. Thanks to the presence of a convenient overclocking application (setup does not require tambourines and dances), RX Vega 64 has become the main competitor to RX Vega 56 and NVIDIA GTX generations 1070, 1080 and older. The graphics adapter differs from competitors in a number of indicators:

  1. Hashrate. Downvolting allows you to get 32.4 megahash with a power of 251 watts, while demonstrating a similar speed, consuming 183 watts of electricity.
  2. Price. GTX 1070 series models and above cost $450, while the base Vega 64 will cost $500.
  3. Payback. Similar to competing top-end graphics cards, the investment made in the RX Vega 64 returns to the user within a year. The price issue depends on the dynamics of exchange rates: if the exchange rate is negative, the farm begins to make a profit in three years.

In terms of mining, the RX Vega 64 out of the box with factory settings performs the same as an overclocked NVIDIA GTX 1070. However, the latest model is available for retail sale, is adapted to a variety of mining algorithms, and works stably on a cooling system “found in the closet”.

Energy consumption

Each adapter of the RX Vega 64 model consumes 275 Watts, so the miner should invest in a 2000 Watt power supply or attach a couple of models with 1000 Watts each. Powerful power supplies will cost from 2 to 7 thousand rubles; an additional cooling system will be required.

Downvolting allows you to reduce power to 130 Watts; manufacturers offer three Power Profile options:

  1. Power Saver maintains the card's power consumption at 165 Watt, but this operating mode is not suitable for mining due to low productivity.
  2. Balanced mode maintains power at 220 watts. Suitable for joint mining of several cryptocurrencies.
  3. Turbo - maximum performance mode, the Vega 64 card consumes up to 303 Watts. These settings are the most efficient for block processing, but increase energy costs.

The Global WattMan application allows you to manually configure adapter settings, increase performance and control the cooling system. In practice, the RX Vega 64 gets very hot, high productivity is accompanied by disproportionately increasing power consumption.

Real mining performance

The RX Vega 64 graphics adapter produces performance similar to the NVIDIA GTX 1070 while consuming twice as much power, so demand from miners was low. On the other hand, the ability to combine several mining algorithms, a convenient interface for overclocking, and models with liquid cooling attract the attention of novice miners.

The RX 64 model is suitable for users who have a significant budget for assembling a farm from several powerful boards. The graphics adapter is commercially available and is convenient for overclocking. Installation of this model requires the installation of powerful power supplies.

In contact with

 

It might be useful to read: