In this article, we will talk about the principles of testing LHR unlocking using the example of the work of the popular GMiner miner. The 2miners mining pool team tested the miner’s operation with GeForce RTX 3080 Ti video cards, but the principles are applicable to any LHR video card. We share the results of the tests.
What are LHR video cards and how they appeared
For five months in a row, many GPU miners have been discussing the relatively recent term «LHR». Active discussion in the professional environment began in May 2021 after the publication on the NVIDIA blog of an article titled «A Further Step to Getting GeForce Cards into the Hands of Gamers» available to gamers. »
The article talks about reducing the hash rate on the Ethash algorithm for recently produced GeForce RTX 3080, 3070 and 3060 Ti video cards, so that they are less desirable for miners. These cards go on sale at the end of May 2021. NVIDIA and its partners label cards with the Lite Hash Rate or LHR identifier.
At the end of May 2021, NVIDIA announced the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti and GeForce RTX 3070 Ti video cards.
And although it was not officially announced the presence of «LHR» in these video cards, according to unofficial information that appeared on the Internet even before the announcement, they also had a reduced hash rate on the Ethash algorithm. After the arrival of the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti and GeForce RTX 3070 Ti on sale and conducting tests, information on the availability of «LHR» was confirmed.
What was the mining experiment conducted on: a description of the test bench.
Next, we conducted preliminary testing to assess the potential hash rate and the impact of LHR.
The composition of the test bench is as follows:
- Motherboard: B85S2BIOSTAR Hi-Fi B85S2
- CPU: Intel Pentium G3220
- Memory: DDR3 SDRAM Kingston 4Gb
- HDD: Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 160Gb
- PSU: EVGA 1000 GQ 80+ GOLD 1000W
- GPU: EVGA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti FTW3 ULTRA GAMING (1800 MHz Boost Clock, Memory Clock 19000 MHz (effective), TPD: 350 Watts)
- Two video cards are connected to the motherboard, each via a PCI-E X16-X1 riser.
- OS: Windows 10
- Nvidia drivers: 471.68
- Overclocking: MSI Afterburner 4.6.4 Beta 3
- Monitoring: GPU-Z
Testing was carried out in a room with an ambient temperature of + 15 ° C.
The potential hashrate for the RTX 3080 Ti on Ethash and Etchash algorithms is estimated using PhoenixMiner. Let’s start the miner on our RIG with the following video card settings: PL (%): 70, CC (MHz): +0, MC (MHz): +1000
PhoenixMiner interface
Immediately after the start, the miner shows the speed on the Ethash algorithm ≈116Mh / s, but after two minutes of operation it stabilizes at ≈64Mh / s.
PhoenixMiner after stabilization
Thus, we estimated the potential (without LHR blocking) speed on the Ethash and Etchash algorithms, and also made sure that blocking reduces the hash rate by ≈45%.
Testing GMiner in mining
GMiner was created by a Russian group of specialists in the field of high performance computing and cryptography. The first version of GMiner was released on September 21, 2018, since then it has been actively developing and supporting the most popular algorithms like Ethash, ProgPoW, KAWPOW, Equihash , CuckooCycle. The miner is focused on NVIDIA and AMD platforms.
Miner developers keep in touch with users on many popular resources and social networks.
Official website: http://gminer.pro
Github: https://github.com/develsoftware/GMinerRelease
BitcoinTalk: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5034735.0
The maximum possible hash rate, taking into account the LHR blocking for the RTX 3080 Ti on the Ethash algorithm, is estimated using GMiner 2.62. Let’s start the miner on our RIG with the following video card settings: PL (%): 55, CC (MHz): +0, MC (MHz): +1300.
GMiner 2.62 interface
The miner shows the speed on the Ethash algorithm ≈66Mh / s. Please note that the Memory Controller Load, GPU Load and Board Power Draw graphics are stable, without significant «jumps».
Let’s start the miner with the following video card settings: PL (%): 55, CC (MHz): +0, MC (MHz): +1000
Testing GMiner 2.62 on new parameters
Thus, we estimated the speed on one of the versions of the miner, which did not include the ability to unlock LHR, and also made sure that the hash rate of ≈64Mh / s – ≈66Mh / s with blocking.
How unlock LHR works with GMiner 2.67beta
On September 11, 2021, the development team announced GMiner 2.67beta. The peculiarities of this version are partial unlocking of LHR and new miner parameters -lhr 1, -lhr_tune1, -lhr_tune2.
Let’s start the miner on our RIG with the following video card settings: PL (%): 70, CC (MHz): +0, MC (MHz): +1000.
Bat-file: miner.exe -a ethash -server eth.2miners.com:2020 -u WALLET_ADDRESS.RIG_3080ti -t 70 -log_newjob 0
pause
Testing GMiner 2.67 beta
Immediately after the start, the miner shows the speed on the Ethash algorithm ≈68Mh / s – ≈85Mh / s, and after three minutes of operation it stabilizes at ≈78Mh / s. Please note that Memory Controller Load, GPU Load and Board Power Draw graphics (like other Power graphics) are unstable, with significant jumps.
To check the stability, we left the miner working for several hours, and after three hours a lock was triggered on GPU 1 – the hash rate dropped to ≈42Mh / s.
Testing with additional arguments in the miner did not show the stability of the hash rate over a long period of operation and was discontinued because the developers presented the next version of the miner.
Conclusion: with the help of GMiner 2.67beta, you can partially unblock LHR: the hashrate in the miner is ≈78Mh / s, which is ≈67% of the potentially maximum possible hashrate. To combat a drop in the hash rate, you can use a watchdog, which restarts the miner if the hash rate falls below a certain value.
How unlock LHR works with GMiner 2.67
On September 12, 2021, the development team announced GMiner 2.67. LHR unlock options are the same as for GMiner 2.67beta: -lhr 1, -lhr_tune1, -lhr_tune2.
Let’s start the miner on our RIG with the following video card settings: PL (%): 70, CC (MHz): +0, MC (MHz): +1000.
Bat-file: miner.exe -a ethash -server eth.2miners.com:2020 -u WALLET_ADDRESS.RIG_3080ti -t 70 -log_newjob 0
pause
GMiner 2.67 testing
Immediately after the start, the miner shows the speed on the Ethash algorithm ≈70Mh / s – ≈83Mh / s, and after three minutes of operation it stabilizes at ≈78Mh / s. Memory Controller Load, GPU Load and Board Power Draw charts (like other Power charts) with significant «jumps» in parameters. To check the stability, we left the miner working for several hours, and after three hours a lock was triggered on GPU 1 – the hash rate dropped to ≈43Mh / s.
Testing with additional arguments in the miner -lhr_tune1 -10 and -lhr_tune2 -10 did not show the stability of the hash rate over an interval of more than 48 hours: three minutes after the start of work, the hash rate stabilizes at ≈74Mh / s, after 24 – 36 hours of operation on one of the video cards (in different tests in different ways) lock is triggered: the hash rate drops to ≈43Mh / s.
Conclusion: with the help of GMiner 2.67, you can partially unblock LHR: the hashrate in the miner is ≈78Mh / s, which is ≈67% of the potentially maximum possible hashrate. To combat a drop in the hash rate, you can use a watchdog, which restarts the miner if the hash rate falls below a certain value.
How unlock LHR works with GMiner 2.68
On September 15, 2021, the development team announced GMiner 2.68. LHR unlock options are the same as for GMiner 2.67: -lhr 1, -lhr_tune1, -lhr_tune2. In addition, in this version of the miner, the developers announced the detection of LHR blocking, automatic unlocking and continuation of mining, as well as displaying the miner’s restart counter with a watchdog timer.
Let’s start the miner on our RIG with the following video card settings: PL (%): 70, CC (MHz): +0, MC (MHz): +1000.
Bat-file: miner.exe -a ethash -server eth.2miners.com:2020 -u WALLET_ADDRESS.RIG_3080ti -t 70 -log_newjob 0
pause
GMiner 2.68 testing
The miner worked for more than 17 hours, the speed on the Ethash algorithm ≈77Mh / s. Memory Controller Load, GPU Load and Board Power Draw charts (like other Power charts) with significant «jumps» in parameters.
The result of the miner’s work on the statistics page on the 2Miners mining pool website looks like this.
The results of the work of the rig on the site of the pool 2Miners
The average hash rate is 158.77Mh / s – or ≈79Mh / s per card.
Now let’s test the miner with the -lhr_tune1 parameter. The maximum positive value of this parameter (from -10 to 10) increases performance: positive values increase performance, negative values decrease probability of lock.
Let’s start the miner with the following video card settings: PL (%): 70, CC (MHz): +0, MC (MHz): +1000.
Bat-file: miner.exe -a ethash -server eth.2miners.com:2020 -u WALLET_ADDRESS.RIG_3080ti -t 70 -tm 110 -log_newjob 0 -log_date 1 -logfile log_RIG_3080Ti.txt -lhr_tune1 10
pause
Testing Gminer with the lhr_tune1 parameter
From the very beginning of the miner’s operation, locks / unlocks occur: GPU Lock detected, unlocking / Unlocked. It can be seen that one Lock / Unlocked cycle of each video card lasts 30 seconds. At this time, the hash rate of the card is zero. Full information about the miner’s operation is saved in a log file, the number of Lock / Unlocked cycles can be accurately calculated.
Miner log files Gminer 2.68
Now let’s test the miner with the -lhr_tune1 parameter 4. Start the miner with the following graphics card settings: PL (%): 70, CC (MHz): +0, MC (MHz): +1000.
Bat-file: miner.exe -a ethash -server eth.2miners.com:2020 -u WALLET_ADDRESS.RIG_3080ti -t 70 -tm 110 -log_newjob 0 -log_date 1 -logfile log_RIG_3080Ti.txt -lhr_tune1 4
pause
Testing Gminer with the lhr_tune1 parameter 4
During the first 15 minutes of the miner’s operation, there was only one lock / unlock cycle: GPU Lock detected, unlocking / Unlocked. Therefore, it was decided to continue testing on an interval of 24 hours.
The miner worked for more than 26 hours, the speed in the miner on the Ethash algorithm ≈78Mh / s. Memory Controller Load, GPU Load and Board Power Draw charts (like other Power charts) with significant «jumps» in parameters. When analyzing the log file, it was found that there were only 8 Lock / Unlocked cycles in 26 hours.
The result of the miner’s work on the statistics page on the pool website looks like this.
The results of the rig with the new settings on the site of the 2Miners pool
Let’s estimate the hash rate for 26 hours of miner’s work, based on the number of shares sent to the pool. Initial data: 1644 balls in 26 hours, ball difficulty 8726M. Multiplying the number of balls per second by the complexity of the ball, we get 153.26Mh / s. This is the hash rate of two video cards, therefore, the hash rate of each is ≈76.6Mh / s.
For a statistically correct result, we recommend a longer testing interval: each card must send more than 5000 shares to the pool.
Conclusion: with the help of GMiner 2.68, you can partially unblock LHR: the hashrate in the miner is ≈78Mh / s, which is ≈67% of the potentially maximum possible hashrate. LHR lock detection, auto unlock and continue mining works efficiently. For stable mining with an increased hash rate, you can use -lhr_tune1 and -lhr_tune2 with parameter values of 5 or less.
How unlock LHR works with GMiner 2.69
On September 24, 2021, the development team announced GMiner 2.69. LHR unlock options are the same as for GMiner 2.68: -lhr 1, -lhr_tune1, -lhr_tune2. LHR lock detection, automatic unlocking and continuation of mining are saved, as well as display of the miner restart counter by a watchdog timer. New: Added auto-tuning for LHR GPUs, improved miner stability.
Let’s start the miner on our RIG with the following video card settings: PL (%): 70, CC (MHz): +0, MC (MHz): +1000.
Bat-file: miner.exe -a ethash -server eth.2miners.com:2020 -u WALLET_ADDRESS.RIG_3080ti -t 70 -tm 110 -log_newjob 0 -log_date 1
pause
GMiner 2.69 testing
During the first 15 minutes of the miner’s operation, there was not a single blockage. Therefore, it was decided to continue testing at a longer interval.
The miner worked for more than 15 hours, the speed in the miner on the Ethash algorithm ≈77Mh / s. Memory Controller Load, GPU Load and Board Power Draw charts (like other Power charts) with significant «jumps» in parameters. When analyzing the log file, it was found that there were only 4 Lock / Unlocked cycles in 15 hours.
The result of the miner’s work on the statistics page on the pool website looks like this.
The results of the rig on Gminer 2.69 on the site of the pool 2Miners
Final conclusions: how best to mine on LHR video cards
GMiner’s development team has come up with a one-stop solution for unlocking LHR graphics cards. With the help of GMiner, you can partially unblock LHR: the hashrate in the miner is ≈78Mh / s, which is ≈67% of the potentially maximum possible hashrate. When using GMiner 2.67beta and GMiner 2.67, it is better to use watchdog, which restarts the miner if the hash rate falls below a certain value.
For more fine tuning, you can use the -lhr_tune1 and -lhr_tune2 parameters, taking into account the rule: positive values increase performance, negative values reduce the likelihood of blocking.
Please note that we did not test on the most extreme graphics card settings. Your samples, for example, can work steadily at higher video memory frequencies. Overclock and test each video card individually.
We know from the community experience that GeForce RTX 3080 Ti can reach speeds of ≈85Mh / s with the following settings: CC (MHz): 1260, MC (MHz): +1350 (for Linux +2700), Power 280W, -lhr_tune1 3 …
