New dstm’s ZCash CUDA Miner 0.6 Tested and Reviewed
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Eventually, equihash-based coins are receiving more attention lately from both developers and miners alike. One of the latest additions was a new CUDA miner for NVidia cards.
If you’ve got an NVdia GTX 7xx, 9xx or 10xx GPU, then you will definitely find this news interesting.
I’ve been testing the miner with my own GPUs and I am sharing my findings with you in the sections below.
GPU Compatibility
The new dstm’s ZCash CUDA Miner 0.6 is meant to be used with the following NVidia GeForce GTX GPUs for desktop:
| 750 | 950 | 1050 / Ti |
| 750 Ti | 960 | 1060 / Ti |
| 970 | 1070 / Ti | |
| 980 / Ti | 1080 / Ti |
It also works with the following non-GTX versions:
TITAN X
TITAN XP
And it even supports some mobile cards too:
| 830M | GTX 950M | 910M |
| 840M | GTX 960M | 930M |
| GTX 850M | GTX 965M | 940M |
| GTX 860M* | GTX 970M | |
| GTX 980M |
(*) only the version that comes with Maxwell cores
What’s New in Version 0.6?
Compared to the previous version, the v0.5.2, this new one includes a lot of features we’ve requested to be able to mine properly. Here are some of the most important ones:
- Failover pool support, making this CUDA miner a decent alternative to the EWBF miner. You might want to use the FarmWatch bot to get the most out of it.
- GPU mining intensity control
- Configuration file support
- Better hashrates using the same gear and clocks when compared both to EWBF and to dstm’s miner version 0.5.2
- Interface and overall user experience overhaul
In brief, dstm’s Zcash CUDA Miner is now the best miner for Zcash and will remain like that until EWBF receives its long-waited update.
To Keep in Mind
Here are some more details about the dstm’s miner to keep in mind:
- Even though it features higher hashrate, your profits might still stay the same because of the fixed 2% developer fee.
- dstm’s CUDA miner is closed source software
- People are having some issues with flypool – sometimes you can prevent crashes by changing mining pool
- It supports stratum and NiceHash’s extranonce, which means you will be able to use it to sell equihash hashrate
- dstm has announced that he will be releasing version 0.6.1 soon where he claims to have some of the bugs from the Bitcointalk thread fixed
System Requirements:
- 64-bit Windows or Linux
- C++ Redistributable for Visual Studio 2015 installed
Download dstm’s ZCash / Equihash Nvidia Miner v0.6 (Linux / Windows) precompiled version: Windows or Linux
Here are the results of my tests using different NVidia GPUs:
Equihash hashrate benchmark
ZCash, ZClassic, HUSH, ZenCash, BitcoinGold, Bitcoin Private, Komodo
MSI GTX 1050 Ti 4GB
- Hashrate: 180 Sol/s
- Clocks +150/+750
- Power Limit 100
- full review: MSI GTX 1050 Ti 4GB Mining Performance Review
MSI GTX 1060 3GB Armor
- Hashrate: 325 Sol/s
- Clocks +150/+750
- Power Limit 75
- full review: MSI GTX 1060 ARMOR 3GB OC Mining Performance Review
Gigabyte GTX 1060 6GB
- Hashrate: 345 Sol/s
- Clocks +150/+750
- Power Limit 65
- full review: Gigabyte GTX 1060 G1 Gaming 6G Mining Performance Review
Gigabyte 1070 8GB
- Hashrate: 460 Sol/s
- Clocks +100/+500
- Power Limit 65
- full review: Gigabyte GTX 1070 8GB G1 Gaming Mining Performance Review
Gigabyte GTX 1070 Ti 8GB
- Hashrate: 480 Sol/s
- Clocks +100/+500
- Power Limit 65
- full review: Gigabyte GTX 1070 Ti 8GB G1 Gaming Mining Performance Review
MSI GTX 1080 Ti 11GB Gaming X
- Hashrate: 650 Sol/s
- Clocks +100/+500
- Power Limit 65
- full review: https://1stminingrig.com/?s=msi+gtx+1080+ti
ASUS Strix GTX 1080 Ti 11GB OC
- Hashrate: 685 Sol/s
- Clocks +100/+500
- Power Limit 65
- full review: ASUS Strix GTX 1080 Ti 11GB OC Mining Performance Review
In Conclusion
I am glad to see that Zcash is finally getting some love from miner software developers. Zcash is one of the less volatile coins that exist today. While it had a price spike from $300 USD/ZEC to $700 in January, it then returned to the $300 mark as it was 8 months ago.
