Review of the RX 470 video card in Ethereum and Decred mining

Not all video cards are equally suitable for mining.
In order for cryptocurrency mining to be profitable, it is necessary to strictly select the parameters of the video card to create the farm. One of the most successful series is the MSI Radeon RX 470. It has attracted a lot of attention, as evidenced by its huge demand in the market. Despite the fact that it was recently replaced by a new family - the RX 500, the RX470 series continues to be sold even at inflated prices, thanks to its mining-friendly architecture - Polaris.

Let's review the characteristics of the models in this series and draw a conclusion about how profitable it is to mine cryptocurrency now.

MSI Radeon RX 470 GAMING

The MSI brand released 2 variants of the RX470 - 4GB and 8GB of video memory. The memory frequency is 6600 MHz, and the core frequency is 1230 MHz. The company installed 2 coolers that operate silently. At the same time, two-chamber radiators allow air cooling to be carried out as efficiently as possible.

PCI-E connection system is used.

If you create a farm of 6 video cards, then the consumption will be no more than 1 kW per hour. The RX 470 is a good analogue of the GTX 1060. If you have a 1200 W power supply, it is quite possible to assemble a rig of 5-6 GPUs.

If you use algorithms that do not take the amount of video memory as a basis, then on an RX 470 with 4GB of memory, mining will not be much different from 8GB. Also, to increase efficiency, it is worth flashing the BIOS and setting higher frequencies for the device to operate.

RX470 4gb (8 gb) hashrate can be increased by overclocking

The Radeon RX 470 4gb hashrate can be much higher than stated (this is also true for 8 gb cards). It is better to overclock the GPU for mining using MSI Afterburner. The utility interface is very simple. To overclock the video card, we need two sliders:

• Core Clock – core overclocking, increases the core frequency;
• Memory Clock – memory overclocking, increases the memory frequency.

You need to change the frequency values ​​little by little. Then test stability. If all is well, then you can increase the frequency further. If the video card starts to fail or the drivers crash, then simply reduce the frequency and that’s it. There will be no harm.

Optimal overclocking parameters:

Gigabyte Gaming 1 RX 470

Based on the name, the conclusion suggests itself that the Gigabyte Gaming 1 RX 470 is a gaming device. But, nevertheless, it is great for mining. The main distinguishing feature here is the cooling system.

The WindForce 2X cooler system keeps the temperature during etherium mining within 55-60 degrees.

There are other series of video cards suitable for mining (for example, Power Color, Asus strix, etc.), but we will not analyze them, since they all produce approximately the same hashrate.

Mining on Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050 ti

Let's start with the GTX 1050 ti, since it is the only green video card - that is, from Nvidia - in this experiment. Our model has 4 GB of memory, which is enough for mining many coins. The 2CryptoCalc mining profitability calculator will help you choose the right one.

He knows how much mining of each cryptocurrency brings in at the moment. Taking this into account, the calculator tells you which coin to choose in order to get the most money. If anything, all of these are forecasts. It is still impossible to look into the future.

So, go to 2CryptoCalc and move on to choosing a cryptocurrency. To do this, you need to enter the hashrate - that is, the performance of the video card. For the GTX 1050 ti, the calculator advised us to dig ZelCash.

By the way, if you have never had to mine, and the phrase “cryptocurrency mining” makes your knees tremble, watch this video. Mining is much simpler than they say.

Projected profit of mining ZelCash on Nvidia

The cryptocurrency has been chosen - all that remains is to find out how much you can earn approximately on it. For this we also use 2CryptoCalc, but this time specifically for ZelCash. For the week, the calculator predicts $2.39 in income in ZEL equivalent.

We also fixed the course. At the start of the experiment on July 22, it was 12.50 cents, and a week later it was equal to 14.05 cents.

Real mining profits on Nvidia GTX 1050 ti

After fixing all current and forecast indicators, we switched to the 2Miners pool and started mining. ZelCash mining lasted exactly a week - this is also confirmed by the open statistics of our video card.

Over seven days of operation, the computer brought in 16.57259 ZEL or $2.328. This is quite a bit lower than the predicted result, so we agree with the result and move on to calculating expenses.

How much did the electricity consume?

The main cost item in mining is electricity. Our computer with Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050 ti spent 130 W per hour, which is 21.84 kWh per week. And since the average tariff in Moscow and St. Petersburg is 4 rubles per kilowatt hour, for seven days of computer operation we will pay 87.36 rubles or 1.38 dollars. All that remains is to subtract expenses from income and get net profit.

Result: Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050 ti brought us $0.948 per week.

If you are disappointed by this amount, it is worth remembering important little things.

1. The GeForce GTX 1050 ti video card is inexpensive. It doesn't have to make millions;
2. For the year, the profit will be $49.29 - and that’s already some money.
3. The cryptocurrency rate may rise, which will have a positive impact on revenue.
4. Farm hashrate and electricity costs are growing disproportionately. A computer with a GTX 1050 ti consumes 130 W per hour, of which 80 W is consumed by the video card, and the remaining 50 W goes to the motherboard, memory, and so on. If we install two GTX 1050 ti cards, performance will increase by 2 times, and electricity costs will increase by approximately 60 percent. If four: the hashrate will increase by 4 times, and the costs will increase by three. And so on.

Mining Ethereum on RX 470

Ethereum is the most profitable algorithm for the RX 470 series. The average hashrate will be around 24 megahashes. With proper overclocking, this figure can be increased to 30. For the Radeon RX 470, this mining rate will be “Above Average”.

If you compare the RX 470 with other video cards, you can immediately see that this series is capable of competing even with older GPU families.

Without firmware and driver settings, payback at 24 MH/s will be about 424 days. These results come out with a standard video card cost of $390.

For the 4GB version, the NiceHash pool power calculator shows the following results.

The CryptoNight algorithm shows a good forecast. But Monero mining will be inferior to Dual mining Decret and ETH.

The ZEC algorithm may show a high level of Sol, but they have long since fallen in price. CUDA is more suitable for Zcash mining

At the current BTC rate ($6741), the calculator predicts a profit of $16 per month.

The Sapphire Nitro+ AMD Radeon RX 470 video card, which is considered the best option for mining ether, unfortunately, did not show a good result when overclocked.

Instead of the expected 8.8 or 9 GHz, overclocking is only possible to 8.2. This indicator is the maximum in the WattMan application. The ASUS GPU Tweak II utility made it possible to overclock to 8.4 Ghz. But this result is not enough.

With such indicators, the hashrate was only raised by 1.3 Mhs. Unfortunately, in this regard, the older RX 480 series outperforms the Sapphire Nitro.

With proper configuration, you can reduce electricity costs without sacrificing performance. By setting the core voltage to 88mv and settings 1070/2100, we get a video card consumption of only 57 W. At the same time, the hashrate remains at 27.6 mh/s.

This setting option is ideal for creating farms, as it allows you to install many devices into one outlet. For one or a pair of GPUs, there is no point in making such settings, since the difference in consumption will be insignificant.

How to reduce energy consumption

The graphics accelerator is a power-hungry device. The consumption of rx 470 in mining is higher than in gaming mode. To save energy, lower the core voltage using Afterburner . In the utility settings, you need to open access to voltage regulation , which allows you to change parameters within 100 mV . To save on electricity bills and not lose hashrate, you need to increase the Power Limit of video cards when overclocking the rx 470 mining rig.

When flashing the card, you can lower the memory and core voltage. To do this, open the BIOS in the SRBPolarisV 3 program, go to the Voltages section and enter the parameters manually. Then you need to save the BIOS and flash the card with it. Typically, gpus of this line work stably at 875 Mv. If the rig reboots or the hashrate decreases, you need to increase the voltage to 900 Mv or even 925 Mv. In Claymore's 15 and Phoenix 4.9 miners, you can perform undervolting directly in the executive file. Just add –cvddc 900, -mvddc 900 to the batch file and you will reduce the consumption of the card in mining.

Attention! At low voltage, the –powlim value should be increased (to about +40). You will not lose energy efficiency at all, you will ensure stability of operation and a normal number of shares sent to the pool.

As a result, the card is flashed, overclocked and ready for cryptocurrency mining. Of course, one rx470 is not enough for mining; it is advisable to assemble a rig of at least 4 – 6 video cards. During a period of recession in prices for virtual money, not everyone will decide to make such expenses. But when the next rise begins, equipment may again become scarce and one can only regret the wasted opportunities.

Dual mining Decred and Ethereum

Dual mining is a process where two cryptocurrencies are mined at the same time. This puts maximum load on the GPU while still increasing profitability. The most profitable combination for dual mining is Decred and Ethereum (ETH).

Although the video card is busy mining another cryptocurrency, the ether hashrate continues to remain at the level of 23 Mh/s. Decred shows results of 937 Mh/s. These are excellent indicators, considering that the video card has not yet been flashed. By overclocking it, we can increase the speed to 28 and more than 1000 Mh/s.

Typically, users do not have to run dual mining themselves. Mining programs automatically start mining two cryptocurrencies when it is profitable. To do this, you just need to do a benchmark and set the resolution in the settings.

If other currencies (Zcash, Cryptonight) become profitable at some point, they will also be launched.

Using special settings, you can further increase the performance of dual mining and also reduce consumption.

To obtain maximum processing power, you can set the voltage settings to 967mv (frequency 1200/2100). GPU power consumption will be 95 W.

As a result, we get a hashrate performance of 30/450. The dcri setting is 30. If you raise it to 40, then the computing power drops. We get this result on the GIGABYTE RX470 4GB video card.

If we lower the frequency settings to 1070/2100, we get 880mV. In this situation, consumption drops from 95 W to 70. The hashrate remains at 28.8/430. Thus, the profitability of production remains virtually unchanged, but electricity costs fall. And this will be especially noticeable when creating a farm.

New mining experiment

The rules of the new test are the same as the previous ones. So if you haven’t had time to familiarize yourself with the previous experiment, we recommend that you do so.

And if you’ve already done it, but forgot, we remind you. We take five computers with different video cards. These are Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050 ti, AMD Radeon RX470, AMD Radeon RX570, AMD Radeon RX480 and AMD Radeon RX580. The models are inexpensive; on Avito, for example, they will ask from 6 thousand rubles for a previously used card.

For each video card, we select the most profitable coin for mining using the 2CryptoCalc calculator. Well, then everything is even simpler: we connect computers to the 2Miners pool and forget about them for a week. At the end, we count and share the final profit along with the conclusions.

Overclocking the RX 470

Overclocking increases GPU performance and profitability by varying the voltage applied. Without knowledge, you should not experiment with this, as you can easily damage the device.

To overclock you will need the afterburner program. The utility is needed to make changes to the device frequencies.

The FurMark utility will also be useful, which will allow you to detect settings above which the device will no longer work correctly. As soon as this happens, the frequency will be reset to the base one.

More details about overclocking methods are described in the video.

Reducing power consumption of the RX 470

Overclocking memory in mining RX 470

Firmware RX 470

To update the BIOS you need 2 programs: for editing and for flashing.

First, save the original BIOS. And Atiflash will help us with this. We make 2 copies at once.

After this, launch the Polaris Bios Editor program and open the saved copy for editing.

We edit only one thing - timings (micron), located in the lower right part of the screen.

Click on the “One Click Timing Path” button so that the program independently sets the timing for the installed video card. You can set them manually, but they differ for each GPU.

Now, among the results obtained, we find timings with a frequency of at least 1375 and copy them.

To do this, select the required timing and select a line at the bottom of the screen. Copy the text and paste it into the next timing line, replacing the value that is set there.

When the action is completed, click on “APPLY CHG” to save the settings. When all actions are completed, save the new flashed BIOS into a separate file.

Now open the folder with the Atiflash program and transfer the file with the new Bios there. All you have to do is open startnew.bat and the installation process will begin. If there are problems, then start.bat returns the original firmware.

The time to mine has come

2019 was a kind of thaw for the cryptocurrency market. Bitcoin even briefly rose above $13,000, prompting other coins to jump. In other words, experts are now betting on a new growth cycle rather than a decline.

This is supported by the arrival of institutional—that is, very large—investors in the niche. In addition, new tools for investing in cryptocurrencies are emerging. For example, in the second half of July, testing of Bitcoin futures from the world-famous Bakkt platform began.

Development is in full swing, so our task is not to miss the right moment. Although any miner will probably tell you that this moment was yesterday.

Check out the Telegram chat about cryptocurrencies. We will discuss all questions there.

Drivers for mining RX 470

AMD has released special drivers for mining that can increase performance. They can be downloaded from the official website.

Based on the test, clear positive results are visible. But this is a beta version of the driver, without technical support and guarantees of performance. Therefore, if it does not work correctly, users should experiment with other drivers.

Specification RX 470

From all this it is easy to conclude that mining on the RX 470 is truly profitable. And according to the criteria “Price - quality - performance”, this device can safely be called a winner in 2022.

If we look at the characteristics, we will see that the video card is not inferior to its competitors and older series.

Well, proper overclocking will make the payback as fast as possible. The main thing is to understand what you are doing, since an incorrectly selected frequency will harm the device.

What to mine? Algorithm selection

The most profitable mining on the RX 470 video card Ethash (Etherum), KawPow, BeamHashIII. Ethereum Classic is more or less profitable, the rest of the Ethash4GB coins are mined on ASICs.

What is better to mine on the RX 470 besides Ethereum (ether)? After the departure of Monero, there were almost no profitable tokens left on cryptonet. It is more or less profitable to mine BitTube , but you will earn more Ethash An alternative could be the ProgPowZ and KawPow (RVN) , but they heat up the cards very much and switching to them in the hot season is not advisable. Moreover, the profit on ETH/ETC is still higher.

Experts constantly analyze the most profitable coins that the services they use ( Whattomine, Coincalculator ). Current and latest news is published on the global Bitcointalk . There you can find out the newest projects that no one knows about yet.