RVN is one of the most popular coins for mining, preceded only by Ethereum (ETH) and Ethereum Classic (ETC) by the number of miners. The cryptocurrency belongs to the Proof-of-Work consensus algorithm and uses a hybrid algorithm (Kawpow) that engages both GPU core and GPU memory.
We recommend mining RVN in the 2Miners pool. As of now, more than 22 thousand users mine this coin in the pool.
Ravencoin uses KAWPOW mining algorithm which is considered hot. It heavily depends on GPU overclocking and power limit (PL).
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Is GPU Overclocking for Ravencoin and Firo Mining Different?
On October 26, 2021, Firo performed a hard fork that resulted in switching from MTP to the new algorithm called FiroPoW.
We wrote about it in the dedicated article titled “Firo (ZCoin) Hard Fork. New Algorithm – FiroPoW. How to Prepare?”
FiroPoW is a modified version of ProgPoW. The same goes for KawPoW used for RVN mining.
As a result, these two algorithms, FiroPoW and KawPoW, are both ProgPoW’s modifications. They are so similar that the overclocking principles are the same for both. Even though this article is about RVN mining, you can easily use it to overclock GPUs for FiroPoW to mine Firo.
How to Overclock GPUs for Ravencoin Mining
If you want to overclock your video cards, you should be ready to experiment. One of the factors to consider is the cost of electricity. Apart from the average optimal overclocking parameters, we can apply hard undervolting that results in only 80% of an average hash rate but decreases GPU power consumption by 33–39%. And we can almost always do the contrary: gain 10–15% of hash rate but increase power consumption by 22–30%.
It’s important to note that profitability calculators always indicate certain average optimal overclocking parameters for each model applicable to most GPUs. However, experienced miners should know the minimum and maximum capacity for each of their GPUs.
For example, the RTX 2070S can give out 17.05 MH/s consuming 89 W (5.22 W per MH/s), but it can also give out 20.88 MH/s consuming 121 W (5.8 W per MH/s). And if your electricity is super cheap, you can even overclock this graphics card to 26.05 MH/s consuming 209 W (8 W per MH/s). In this case, a good GPU cooling setup is a must.
In the table below you can see some of the most interesting overclocking scenarios and RVN mining hash rates on different NVIDIA graphics cards.
We used T-rex 0.24.2 to get the data. We are going to update the table when we test new GPUs or when better performing mining software comes out.
GPU Overclocking for Kawpow Algorithm
When mining this algorithm, basically all GPU overclocking parameters affect GPU hash rate. So you should overclock everything. But if you are going to overclock all at once, you won’t know where the problem is in case your GPU becomes unstable.
So you should overclock gradually.
Step 0. Before overclocking, calculate the algorithm profitability using 2CryptoCalc. Then write down how much you pay for 1 kWh of electricity.
As a result, you will be able to estimate overclocking efficiency allowing for electricity cost. Now you can use these values to decide what GPU power consumption level is reasonable for you.
Step 1. Find the max stable memory clock.
Move the memory clock up at +50 MHz intervals until you reach the max stability. Move one step down.
Important: When GPUs get hot, GPU memory chips get hot as well which brings overclocking stability levels down.
Another important thing to remember is that you don’t need to activate the pill for the 1080 and 1080ti. At a fixed PL rate it won’t give you additional hash rate, but it will destabilize overclocking.
Step 2. Core overclocking.
If you mine using Windows, set the core voltage in MSI Afterburner. It will make overclocking more stable and increase the max energy efficiency.
Move the core clock up at +25 MHz intervals, find the max stable value, move one step down.
If you have a multi-rate electricity meter and you want to automatically switch to the cold mode at a higher electricity rate and overclock GPUs at a lower electricity rate, you should overclock the core in all set points.
You should start with the highest voltage point. Remember that the higher the core voltage the less you can overclock. The max overclocking of the same graphics card at 950 mV is +125 MHz, at 800 mV – +175 MHz, at 700 mV – even +225 MHz, especially for the RTX 30xx series.
In this case you should leave a margin for the higher voltage points moving 50 MHz down. This is a range where GPUs become most unstable, and if the driver crashes, all set points get erased.
RVN & Ethereum Dual Mining
Modern GPU memory can easily store the data needed to mine two cryptocurrencies at the same time. However, they would compete against each other for memory and core, so the resulting hash rate would mostly depend on the intensity of each algorithm.
Note that Windows 10 consumes excessive GPU memory amounts on all GPUs. Dual mining is impossible on GPUs with only 8GB of RAM, but it is possible if you use Windows 7 or Linux-based OS for mining.
In reality, considering that Ethereum is the most profitable cryptocurrency for mining in the world, dual mining in 2020–2021 has turned out to be inefficient on GPUs without LHR lock.
For example, the RTX 2070 Super can mine just one algorithm and give out 40+ MH/s consuming 93 W in the case of Ethereum. If GPUs can hold a memory clock at 7800, they can give out even 42–43 MH/s. When mining Ravencoin, you can get 21 MH/s at a lower consumption rate of 121 W and 26 MH/s at a higher consumption rate of 200 W.
If you dual-mine algorithms with different intensity, you can get 16.5 MH/s for ETH and 16.5 MH/s for Ravencoin consuming 200 W of power. It’s almost 40% for Ethereum and almost 70% for RVN.
It’s easy to notice that in the last two years you almost always get more profit if you mine just one coin – Ethereum. It also consumes much less power.
Note that we used different mining programs for testing so that we could adjust the intensity of each coin. The resulting values might not be the highest possible.
If you have LHR graphics cards, in theory you can try dual mining, even though you won’t see a significant increase in profit. This option only makes sense if your electricity rates are low.
More on the topic: “T-Rex Miner Fully Unlocks NVIDIA LHR Graphics Cards: True or False? Test Results.”
RVN Mining on Nvidia RTX 30хх
As you can see, RVN mining hash rate is usually half of that of ETH in megahashes.
The RTX 30хх series, as well as the 20хх, feature extremely fast memory that can transmit large amounts of data and uses extremely high clocks. In this case data bus becomes a bottleneck.
That’s why GPUs with identical data buses have similar mining hash rates. Some examples are: the 3060ti and 3070, or the 2060S, 2070, and 2070S.
After the 30xx release GPU cores became more powerful and the memory became even faster, but the data bus size remained the same. So it’s doesn’t make much sense to overclock the core: RVN mining hash rate on the 3070 can’t go above 30–33 MH/s. On the other hand, power consumption will go up. So to achieve the maximum energy efficiency on the RTX 3070 or RTX 3060ti when mining RVN and ETH, you need to fully overclock memory and lower core clock as much as possible.
It depends on memory overclocking: you can get 31 MH/s at a memory clock of 8200 MHz.
For the same reason dual mining on GPUs without LHR is useless. Mining RVN+FIRO, RVN+ETH, RVN+ERGO, etc., on the same graphics card can’t bring you more profit than mining one coin at a time.
Conclusion. Is Ravencoin Mining Profitable?
Today RVN mining is already one of the best mining options besides Ethereum. Considering upcoming changes due to Ethereum’s plans to abandon GPU mining, Ravencoin mining can be considered a promising alternative. Plus, Ravencoin offers a wide range of options to identify the desired mining energy efficiency even within one GPU model.
It is unknown how much time is left until Ethereum fully shifts to PoS. But you should already start checking how well your graphics cards can mine alternative coins and learning more about potentially stable hash rate/performance ranges for different overclocking settings.
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