With the recent boom in crypto currency awareness and the subsequent rush by folks to get involved in the ecosystem we've seen some wild prices lately when it comes to graphics cards capable of efficiently hashing the various algorithms used to secure POW (proof of work) blockchains. While mining was once an activity dominated by tech type neckbeards it seems now that the average joe and his dog are now interested in turning their electricity and hardware into delicious cyber currency. Being a bit late to the mining game myself a few months ago I took the plunge and decided to build my first miner which has been affectionately named KLYEMINER-1 which consists of six Sapphire RX580 cards.
However this article deals with my newest addition to the GPU family which is the 8 GB Sapphire Vega 56 Limited Edition card that I recently purchased to run graphics and mining on my day to day workstation, named KLYERIPPER (due to its RYZEN 1950x Threadripper CPU). Out of the box the Vega 56 was pretty impressive with its hashrate but the power consumption was basically DOUBLE what the RX 580 cards in my mining unit were pulling while only having an additional 30-40% hashrate. Up until this morning I'd not bothered mining with the Vega 56 due to the innefieceny and noise it made with it's 3 fans spun up to over 3000 rpm to cool the beast as it mined.. However after figuring out an INCREDIBLY efficient way to mine Etherium with it this morning I'll be mining with it whenever its not being used for graphics processing.
How to Mine Etherium Efficiently on a Vega 56
We'll first need to make sure that you have the required programs installed on your PC in order to allow your Vega 56 GPU to hash at a nearly unbelievable ~38.9 MH/s while drawing only around 77 watts of energy. The required programs listed and linked below:
( picture taken from msi.com )
GPU Overclocking Utility: MSI Afterburner (Download link)
MSI Afterburner is a wonderful overclocking tool designed to get the most out of your GPU. While most people use it for overclocking their graphics in this situation we'll actually be using it to underclock and undervolt the card in order to get the greatest efficiency!
GPU Driver: Adrenalin Edition 18.3.3
These drivers are the newest out from AMD for the Vega GPU. While I'd not been using this version of drivers to get it working well before as of writing this article I've upgraded to this version in order to make sure they worked fine. Other versions may work as well.
Etherium Miner: Claymore Dual Miner
Personally I use nicehash.com legacy miner to get my GPU mining needs dealt with but any etherium miner might work, I've yet to do testing..! However the link supplied above will get you a good Etherium miner capable of dual mining Etherium and other crypto currencies at the same time. However for this setup I suggest only mining ETH and not engaging dual miner mode to get the best hashrate.
The Settings to Hash Etherium Like a Pro
Pictured above are the settings used in MSI afterburner to achieve the hashrate to watt ratio that I've been using. Suprosignly at 77 watts the card can pull something like 38.8 MH/s which was not even heard of before on any card. While this is only the start to my tinkering with getting the Vega 56 to its full potential the fact of the matter is these new HMB2 Vega GPUs are waaaaaaay more efficient than anything else on the market at the moment.
Play around with your settings! While this setup works very well for me it must be mentioned I had a number of system hang ups and freezes in order to find the sweet spot to let this card do as its doing now. Good luck on your mining adventure! Comment if you got it to work!
