All You Need to Know about the New EWBF Cuda Equihash Miner v0.3!

EWBF is back with a Cuda Equihash miner. It is based on EWBF’s Zcash miner and in fact it is here to replace it. My question is:

Why would you want to try this new miner out?

Since the release of ASICs of Ethereum and Zcash, people are looking for alternative coins to mine. Besides the popular Ravencoin, there are also Equihash-based forks that might be pretty interesting to mine with GPU rigs.

I am talking about algorithms like Equihash-BTG and zHash. Those algos are basically Equihash that require more memory to be mined thanks to altered K and N parameters.

The EWBF Cuda Miner is here to mine those Equihash branches. First released June 13, the miner has got tested by the community and five days after, June 18^th, version 0.2 and 03 has been released featuring many important fixes.

Download here precompiled version: https://mega.nz/#!wwxRhIjJ!P2TQrzbfG3A4t3zPiRtXxo43cMvfWSrExjXYlx3ZBkk or from original source: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4466962.0

v0.3
* Added new solver for Equihash 96,5 –algo 96_5.
* Added –color argument, allow you to disable colored console: –color 0.
* 192_7 and 144_5 solvers 0 – 10% faster, depends on the gpu.
* 192_7 require now 2.5GB vram, it should fit in 3Gb gpu under win 10.
* 144_5 require now 1.99Gb of vram.

Known issues (mostly will be fixed)
* Equihash 96_5 Can be slower in cuda 8 versions.
* Performance counters may display an incorrect speed during reconnection.

Unlike the version 0.1 of the miner, version 0.3 can be considered fully functional.

EWBF Cuda Equihash Miner v0.3 Specs

(*)Compute capability 5.0 and higher, though

About the CUDA compatibility, here you can find the full list of GPU models with their respective compute capabilities. In brief, from the GTX 7xx family, only the GeForce GTX 750 / 750Ti work. The GTX 8xxM family works too, as well as anything above it (GTX 9xx, GTX 9xxM and so forth).

Let’s briefly review an intresting coin you can mine with it:

Bitcoin Gold

A coin that is sometimes referred to as Bitcoin 2.0, Bitcoin Gold is getting more popular lately. Its ASIC resistant nature makes it interesting for miners and traders alike. It has got a stable price and a 500 million market cap. Download the following to mine this coin: https://mega.nz/#!wwxRhIjJ!P2TQrzbfG3A4t3zPiRtXxo43cMvfWSrExjXYlx3ZBkk

MSI GTX 1080 Ti Mining Hashrate Benchmarks

GTX 1080 Ti 11GB Bitcoin Gold Equihash-BTG Mining Hashrate

EWBF Cuda Equihash Miner v0.3 MSI Afterburner Clocks

MSI GTX 1080 Ti Ravencoin Mining Rig

MSI GTX 1080 Ti Ravencoin Mining Rig

Troubleshooting

Most game breaking bugs have been fixed in the version 0.2. You are welcome to report yours in the official Bitcointalk thread. There are two bugs that are not directly related to the miner, though.

Issue #1 – 3GB Cards not working with this miner under Windows 10.

Solution

This issue is believed to be caused by Windows 10 – by not allowing CUDA applications to use all available vram, 3GB cards can offer only 2.6 available memory, while the algorithm needs 2.9GB. The only solution known so far is to switch to Windows 7.

Issue #2 – Rigs with more than 6 GPUs do not work properly with this miner.

Solution

For GPU rigs that have more than 6 cards you will have to run two instances of the miner. In one instance use:

–cuda_devices 0 1 2 3 4 5 6                         

and in the other do:

–cuda_devices 7 8 9 10 11 12

Then, change the paging file and set a higher value, something like 50GB. Here is the guide on how to do that. Performing these steps proved to work with 11 GPU rigs and in theory it should work with bigger rigs too.

In Conclusion

I am testing this miner on my rigs and I am satisfied with the results so far. Again, if you’d like to know why I am so excited about mining Bitcoin Gold, check this article. Please let me know your experiences with this new miner in the comments section below: