Mining Cards

A forum for discussing FAH-related hardware choices and info on actual products (not speculation).

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Nathan_P
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Asus Z87 WS, Xeon E3-1230L v3, 8gb ram, KFA GTX 1080, EVGA 750ti , AX760 PSU, Mint 18.2 OS

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Asus Z9PE- D8 WS, 2 E5-2665@2.3 Ghz, 16Gb 1.35v Ram, Ubuntu (Fold only)
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Location: Jersey, Channel islands

Mining Cards

Post by Nathan_P »

Will the new mining cards based of the pascal gpu's work for folding, they seemed to be designed more for 24/7 use so should last a bit longer?
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JimboPalmer
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Re: Mining Cards

Post by JimboPalmer »

Step 1) The card vendor (AMD, Nvidia) has to write a working driver that supports OpenCL. There is no reason to suspect they won't, but it must happen to fold.

Step 2) owners must report the ID so the card goes in GPUs.txt. Again, no reason to suspect they won't but it must happen. " run FAHClient --lspci | grep NVIDIA in a Cmd Window" to get that yourself.
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Nathan_P
Posts: 1180
Joined: Wed Apr 01, 2009 9:22 pm
Hardware configuration: Asus Z8NA D6C, 2 x5670@3.2 Ghz, , 12gb Ram, GTX 980ti, AX650 PSU, win 10 (daily use)

Asus Z87 WS, Xeon E3-1230L v3, 8gb ram, KFA GTX 1080, EVGA 750ti , AX760 PSU, Mint 18.2 OS

Not currently folding
Asus Z9PE- D8 WS, 2 E5-2665@2.3 Ghz, 16Gb 1.35v Ram, Ubuntu (Fold only)
Asus Z9PA, 2 Ivy 12 core, 16gb Ram, H folding appliance (fold only)
Location: Jersey, Channel islands

Re: Mining Cards

Post by Nathan_P »

Well having looked on one manufacturer's site it looks to download the standard windows drivers so they should work.
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bruce
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Joined: Thu Nov 29, 2007 10:13 pm
Location: So. Cal.

Re: Mining Cards

Post by bruce »

Nathan_P wrote:Well having looked on one manufacturer's site it looks to download the standard windows drivers so they should work.
JimboPalmer is right. You're making a false assumption if you're talking about FAH.

Standard windows drivers will certainly work if you want to produce good video, but using a GPU for FAH (or other Distributed Computing projects) requires either OpenCL or CUDA. Microsoft considers OpenCL an unnecessary option ... and NV's driver team may or may not agree. Note: That OpenCL with a "C" for compute, not OpenGL with a "G" for graphics.

In the past, FAH has supported CUDA on NVidia hardware but that has been discontinued. At the present time OpenCL is required for FAH on GPUs.
ComputerGenie
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Joined: Mon Dec 12, 2016 4:06 am

Re: Mining Cards

Post by ComputerGenie »

From what I've read so far, they're essentially a "repackaged" 10xx. Basically, from what I'm seeing, it's the equivalent of a "normal" card with an onboard dongle and outputs removed. My main lingering question is price-point values.
bruce
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Location: So. Cal.

Re: Mining Cards

Post by bruce »

That makes it sound promising, ComputerGenie, provided the drivers support OpenCL.

If you look at the GPU-Z sensor tab, it has a line that says "Video Engine Load" which is consistently zero when folding. Removing whatever hardware supports that function can be removed, along with the external connectors. That SHOULD make it a cheaper product ... except for the fact that pricing is often dependent on sales volume, not hardware costs.

That would give me another incentive to figure out how to get my video from the iGPU (since I'm not a gamer) without the loss of the GPU compute functionality.
toTOW
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Re: Mining Cards

Post by toTOW »

I don't think these cards are a good plan : they'll be harder to sell when you'll want to replace them ... and they will only get 90 days warranty with the same design as the usual gaming GPUs ...

Giving the fact that almost all my Maxwell GPUs died within the 2 years warranty, I'd definitely never go for those kind of cards.

Don't forget that in the world of mining, the tools providers are those who are assured to make profit, whatever happens to the value of the mined items. :mrgreen:
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Leonardo
Posts: 261
Joined: Tue Dec 04, 2007 5:09 am
Hardware configuration: GPU slots on home-built, purpose-built PCs.
Location: Eagle River, Alaska

Re: Mining Cards

Post by Leonardo »

toTOW, I completely agree with you.

The mining cards are one-trick ponies. The only market for the used cards would other miners.
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