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Topic: Whats with the low intensity mining requirement in alot of altcoins? (Read 1136 times)

hero member
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I found that happening when i have been mining for days straight. I need to restart cgminer and then its good again... may have to do with vardiff.
legendary
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Could this be why my miner stops mining after some time suddenly? If i restart everything is okay again.
hero member
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Intensity is a way to define how big of a work load you're want the GPU to undertake per work cycle.
If you set the intensity high on a low difficulty coin, it potentially spends longer time than it has to.

This can lead to rejects, often because someone with lower intensity than you beat you to finishing it.
It can also lead to hardware errors, because the hashing was so fast that the program thinks it's an error.

I'm thinking that variable intensity functionality would make sense for some pools, I'm just not sure what that variable should be. Smiley

Ah ha! Now that makes sense to me, that would explain why i can have a much higher intensity mining BTC/LTC vs newer coins with a low diff.
newbie
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Intensity is a way to define how big of a work load you want the GPU to undertake per work cycle.
If you set the intensity high on a low difficulty coin, it potentially spends longer time than it has to.

This can lead to rejects, often because someone with lower intensity than you beat you to finishing it.
It can also lead to hardware errors, because the hashing was so fast that the program thinks it's an error.

I'm thinking that variable intensity functionality would make sense for some pools, I'm just not sure what that variable should be. :)
hero member
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I still dont get what he is trying to tell me, anyways i think we are getting off topic. Still i would like to know who so many coins have to be mined at low intensity.
alc
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That does not make sense to me, how would running your CPU at 100% load allow for more stable GPU mining...
That's not what I said. Read Wipeout's post more closely:
Quote from: Wipeout2097
My point is not the # cpu cycles used, is if a Sempron 145 is good enough to keep all your GPUs mining at max efficiency and profit.
The rest of your system might not be doing anything intensive, but still be having a negative impact on your GPU mining performance.
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I agree that the OS uses the CPU and GPU for its own processing, not sure what point you are trying to make.
Read his post again, it's quite clear. He's saying that mining efficiency on your GPU is affected by your CPU/system, and that GPU mining efficiency can be negatively impacted without CPU load being 100%.

That does not make sense to me, how would running your CPU at 100% load allow for more stable GPU mining...

I have mined LTC/BTC at very high intensity (18/19/20) with my CPU idle and did not have any troubles with HW Errors or Rejects.


HW errors usually mean a thread issue etc...   when I am mining at too high an intensity for a coin I usually only notice high reject rates. This is just my experience and understanding of this. I could be wrong. HW errors are bad though...  you don't want that.

I never mine LTC, only lots and lots of alts. Usually I never ever put my intensity over 18, and keep my gpus a bit overclocked. I am happy with hashrates around 580-620 with 7950s. In a lot of setups I see though, folks use even lower intensities like 13 and compensate by clocking the memory and engine speeds higher.



Ah yeah i could adjust my TC, oh so you can gain more hashes by OCing your Core/Memory on the GPU even when leaving the mining intensity the same? That would make sense, but it would seem if pushed too far it would just crash. Even if at I13 my GPU is only hashing at a 1/4 of what it would at I19.
alc
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I agree that the OS uses the CPU and GPU for its own processing, not sure what point you are trying to make.
Read his post again, it's quite clear. He's saying that mining efficiency on your GPU is affected by your CPU/system, and that GPU mining efficiency can be negatively impacted without CPU load being 100%.
newbie
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HW errors usually mean a thread issue etc...   when I am mining at too high an intensity for a coin I usually only notice high reject rates. This is just my experience and understanding of this. I could be wrong. HW errors are bad though...  you don't want that.

I never mine LTC, only lots and lots of alts. Usually I never ever put my intensity over 18, and keep my gpus a bit overclocked. I am happy with hashrates around 580-620 with 7950s. In a lot of setups I see though, folks use even lower intensities like 13 and compensate by clocking the memory and engine speeds higher.

hero member
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I agree that the OS uses the CPU and GPU for its own processing, not sure what point you are trying to make.

I do not think there is an intensity setting for CPUs.
sr. member
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Ah i am talking about GPU mining not CPU.

Besides allowing more cores to be used i did not know you could control how many CPU cycles are used for Mining.. Ill DL process explorer and check it out.
I know you are talking about GPU mining. cgminer runs on the CPU, and validates in x86 the results of the GPUs work, on top of networking, fetching work, generating local work and so on, right? So does the OS, interrupts, network drivers, video drivers, cgwatcher, vnc, etc...

My point is not the # cpu cycles used, is if a Sempron 145 is good enough to keep all your GPUs mining at max efficiency and profit. It is not necessary for a setup to use 100% of CPU for some efficiency being lost, depends a bit more on time slice granularity
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Ah i am talking about GPU mining not CPU.

Besides allowing more cores to be used i did not know you could control how many CPU cycles are used for Mining.. Ill DL process explorer and check it out.
sr. member
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People with Sempron 145 single-core (and Windows ?) tend to have problems.

Take a look at CPU usage of the miner with high intensities, with Process Explorer.

I can pick higher intensities than most on the dual-core Sempron 190 and even higher on a FX-6100. If you're mining fast coins or non-scrypt, it can be "interesting".

hero member
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So far, Cosmoscoin, Lottocoin, Mincoin and Vertcoin all require low intensity.

I have not found any alts besides litecoin that can be mined at full intensity.
hero member
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The best i understand it is the miner tool or the video card drivers cannot process high intensity.

Makes me think altcoin devs need to work on their miners better, i can go I 20 on BTC/LTC no problem with no hardware errors.
sr. member
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I'd be interested to know as well, I see similar behavior.
hero member
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hero member
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bump, the more alts i look at the more seem to need low intensity... why?
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Whats with the low intensity mining requirement in alot of altcoins?

Lottocoin gets HW errors over 11
Mincoin and Grandcoin are the same way.

Bitcoin and Litecoin do not have this issue, as long as your video card does not overheat I19 works good.
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