CGMiner. Setup and review of the mining program

Cgminer is a special console software client for customizing the cryptocurrency mining process using specialized hardware, GPU-based crypto farms, and personal computers. This console client is mainly aimed at experienced miners, as it allows for fine-tuning of the crypto mining process, taking into account the overclocking of graphics cards from Nvidia and AMD. All this makes it possible to increase the performance indicators of mining on the Cgminer cryptonight software algorithm.

According to the majority of ordinary users, as well as experts, the program CGMiner rightfully belongs to the title of the best miner for crypto farms based on GPU chips, running under the Windows operating system. The use of the program crypto algorithm NeoScrypt helps to increase the total profitability of cryptomining.

The main and really significant disadvantage of CGMiner is the lack of a visual shell. For this reason, for beginners sgminer configuration can be quite difficult. In order to customize the process of crypto mining with this software tool, the user will have to manually prescribe settings in the configuration file. Otherwise, it will not be possible to connect to a cryptocurrency pool with the help of this program.

CGMiner mining program

A special software called CGMiner has managed to gain popularity among miners due to the fact that it provides the highest crypto mining performance. This software is based on the NeoScrypt algorithm, which increases the overall profitability of cryptomining. Due to the lack of a graphical interface that facilitates the process of user interaction with the software, cgminer is configured exclusively through the console.

For this reason, cryptominer CGMiner is much more popular among the old-timers of the mining market, who know how to use the console and understand the meaning of using this or that command to set up mining. In this article, we will try to understand in detail how to properly use in practice this professional software. It should be noted that sgminer was originally created for fine-tuning the functioning of crypto farms formed from AMD graphics cards. Owners of crypto farms made of NVIDIA graphics cards are recommended to use Claumore’s DualMining software for fine-tuning cryptomining.

As for the features of CGMiner software, they include:

software overclocking of video cards installed in a cryptocurrency farm;
start working through a proxy;
use of balancing software algorithms;
availability of the possibility to adjust the speed of rotation of video card coolers;
launching mining of Bitkions, Etherium and many other popular cryptocurrencies;
automatic shutdown of inoperative vorkers.

Despite certain difficulties encountered by beginners when working with ccminer still this software is rightly considered the best and most advanced for setting up and then launching the process of crypto mining with the help of cryptocurrency farms based on AMD graphics cards.

Setting the operating parameters

You can download CGMiner software miner to your PC on the page of the software creator, located on the Bitcointalk cryptocurrency forum. From this web resource you can always download the latest version of the miner. On the same resource you can communicate not only with other users discussing the software, but also ask a direct question to the developers of CGMiner.

All manipulations and changes to the structure of CGMiner cryptocurrency software are made using special text commands, which is due to the absence of the visual shell that many people are accustomed to. In order that after restarting the program or starting the mining of a new cryptocurrency did not have to make new changes to the software settings, it is recommended to initially create a Bat-file and remove all the necessary changes to it. This file is created in the folder with the cryptominer itself as an ordinary text file with a bat-extension.

In general, the most important settings to ensure the normal operation of the cryptominer look like this:

cgminer – this parameter directly points to the file to be launched by the program;
-scrypt – here you can enter information about the use of this or that software algorithm for crypto mining;
-o – information about the address of the cryptocurrency pool is specified;
-u user.1 – information about the login of the created worker within the previously selected pool;
-p x is the password of the worker created inside the pool.

It should be understood that a properly configured software miner will be able to provide a high level of performance of crypto mining tokens, which will help speed up the payback process of the equipment used in the farms. Thus, the final efficiency and profitability of mining will directly depend on the correctness of the settings.

A clear example of a bat-file with the basic settings entered

Creating and making certain changes in the Bat-file is conditioned by the necessity of specifying settings for normal functioning of program tools.

The initial configuration of cgminer involves entering the following parameters:

setxGPU_MAX _ALLOC _PERCENT 100;
setxGPU _US E_SYNC _OBJECTS 1;
cgminer.exe — scrypt worksize 256—intensity 2— auto-fan –;
lookup— gap 2— thread-concurrency 25524–gpu -engine 1060—gpu-memclock 1866—gpu-powertune;
20-o cryptopool address:port -u worker -p password.

Also, the following additional settings can be used to increase the performance of the miner and the final profitability of crypto mining:

-auto-fan – automated setting of the rotation intensity of the fans of the video chips air cooling system in order to maintain the temperature selected by the user;
-auto-gpu- activate automation of the graphics chip frequency adjustment of video cards installed in the crypto farm to maintain the chip temperature set in the settings;
-device (-d) – a parameter that allows you to choose to start a specific device. In this case, all devices used by the farm to mine crypto coins are activated by default;
-disable-gpu (-G) – forced disabling of the video chip;
-gpu-threads (-g) – selects the number of active video processor threads;
-gpu-dyninterval – set the intensity interval for video processors in milliseconds;
-gpu-engine – selection of the operating frequency for GPU cores. In this case, the user can set the frequency range himself;
-gpu-fan – specifies the intensity of work of fans of the graphics chips cooling system in percent. Cooler speeds can be fixed at a certain mark, as well as their working range can be selected;
-gpu-map – manual mapping of the order in which OpenCL devices are used;
-gpu-memclock – specifies the parameters of the operating clock frequency for video memory. Experienced users recommend lowering this value slightly when mining bitcoins, and raising it when mining Lightcoins;
-gpu-memdiff – set the difference between the memory and graphics processor clock speeds of the video cards installed in the crypto farm;
-gpu-powertune – this parameter is responsible for selecting the operating voltage of the graphics core, which allows you to slightly reduce the level of power consumption of mining equipment and increases the final profitability of crypto-mining;
-gpu-reorder – re-sort graphics adapters;
-gpu-vddc – change the parameters of the operating voltage to the graphics core;
-intensity (-I) – parameter that allows you to customize the intensity of crypto mining;
-kernel (-k) – manually select a working kernel for a specific device that is part of a cryptocurrency farm made up of multiple graphics cards;
-ndevs (-n) – display the list of devices installed in the farm with individual numbers assigned to them;
-temp-hysteresis – this parameter allows you to select a boundary value of how much the GPU temperature can differ from the originally set values;
-temp-overheat – selection of the graphics processor temperature boundary value, when a sharp reset of clock frequencies should occur and start the cooling system operation in the maximum performance mode;
-temp-target – manual setting of target values of the graphics processor operating temperature;
-vectors (-v) – set the width of the vector in the specified range;
-worksize (-w) – this parameter allows you to manually set the size of graphics video memory. It should be noted that it has almost no effect on the final performance of the equipment used in mining farms.

Cgminer for mining Decred tokens on Nvidia and AMD graphics cards

Relatively recently, the authors of CGMiner presented a revised version of their brainchild CGMiner 5.3.1. Mainly, the revised version of the program was created specifically for mining Decred tokens with the help of cryptocurrency farms based on AMD and NVIDIA graphics cards. This version of the software, according to the assurances of its developers, is characterized by higher performance indicators when mining DCR koins and forks of this cryptocurrency.

Such technologies support two protocols to achieve ball, namely the software protocol getwork and its more advanced version, working through stratum. By using OpenCL technology rather than CUDA, this updated cryptominer will be able to support both AMD and Nvidia video cards.

It should be noted that the NVML tracking function will only be available to users of 64-bit versions of operating systems. When using a 64-bit miner in practice, it was possible to achieve higher hash rates when mining crypto with NVIDIA graphics cards compared to using tpruvot fork ccMiner for crypto mining DCR tokens.

As for users who use AMD graphics cards for cryptomining crypto coins, they will not have any problems at all when starting to use this updated version of the cryptominer. In order to further increase the speed of mining Decred tokens, it is recommended to use cryptocurrency pools that have full support for the Gatework protocol via Stratum.

Cgminer for AMD graphics cards with increased computing performance neoscrypt

Thanks to the update of CGMiner cryptominer to version 3.7.8 with the introduction of official support for the Neoscrypt protocol, which adds a new high-performance kernel responsible for improving mining performance, it was possible to achieve previously unseen performance indicators of crypto mining. If necessary, users who want to try the benefits provided by the updated version of cgminer 3.7.8 Neoscrypt for windows can download this software from the page of its developers.

During the first testing of this miner with an AMD Radeon R9 280X video card without overclocking the video core and video memory, the productivity indicators reached 140 KHS. Thus, compared to the version of the software before its update, the final performance was increased by 1.5 times. At the same time, some users claim an increase in computational productivity at the level of 200 percent. True, this result was achieved with the use of video cards operating in extreme overclocking mode with an increase in voltages. Since there is no possibility to download and use CUDA-miners for Neoscrypt yet, ordinary users can use CGMiner together with cryptocurrencies based on Nvidia graphics card based on OpenCL technology. But it is worth noting that such a solution has no effect on the increase in the final performance.

Cryptonight algorithm for mining Monero and Bytecoin tokens

The main concept behind the Kryptonite software algorithm is to break down the barrier between users using traditional graphics card-based farms and users mining crypto with advanced and expensive ASIC devices. This algorithm is characterized by sensitivity to the use of a particular RAM.

The main concept of this crypto algorithm is based on allocating a large block of information to the operative with a final contingency performance in that block of information. To ensure a more convenient principle of storing information than their calculation at a new access, the block should be relatively large. At the same time, the work of the algorithm should automatically prevent the occurrence of internal parallelisms. It means that N-number of crypto-threads working at the same time implies instantaneous allocation of a larger amount of RAM.

The popular Scrypt crypto algorithm also works using RAM. However, it preserves the possibility of building and using high-performance and highly specialized devices for mining digital money based on this algorithm. When it comes to ccminer-cryptonight, unlike the Scrypt algorithm, all new blocks, which are 64 bytes in size, depend on all previously generated blocks. This updated algorithm uses 2 megabytes of RAM, which is the minimum value for the third-level memory cache of desktop CPUs. This amount of RAM does not allow the use of ASIC devices for crypto mining.

Users should understand the differences between the CryptoNote and CryptoNight algorithms. CryptoNight is essentially one way of implementing CryptoNote. CryptoNight is the basis for the crypto coins Monero (XMR), ByteCoin (BCN), and Aeoncoin.

As for the advantages of mining cryptocurrency using this algorithm, they should include:

Providing gradually fading issuance for cryptocurrency assets;
minimal time intervals between the formation of new cryptoblocks;
the impossibility of crypto-mining with ASICs;
To increase the performance indicators of cryptocurrency farms, it is possible to use hybrid bundles of CPUs and video chips;
presence of a number of significant conceptual differences from Bitcoin algorithms, which should attract the attention of new users, as well as cryptoinvestors interested in investing in new cryptoassets;
The peculiarities of koins using the CryptoNight algorithm allow them to stand out from other cryptocurrencies and attract the attention of crypto market participants;
profitability and payback rate are significantly higher than most of the existing analogs;
video card and processor heat up much less than when using other crypto algorithms, which positively affects the reliability and durability of using equipment for mining digital money.

Download CGMiner:

https://github.com/ckolivas/cgminer

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