How to get over 1000H/s on CryptoNight-R algorithm with AMD RX series

The AMD Radeon RX 570/580 is one of the best and cheap mining cards. It can be pushed above 1000H/s mining with the CryptoNight algorithm and over 30MH/s on Ethereum mining. Out of the box at stock settings, this card does nothing on a single thread, but with some simple tweakings, you can boost its performance. Also, the power consumption is a must, this card can mine at only 75W and it’s impressive. The AMD Radeon RX 590 is also more competitive, but more expensive and a little more power-hungry.

The issues are started with the latest Monero PoW algorithm: the CryptoNight-R. Hashrate has dropped deep and fast. And power consumption has climbed high and quickly. What’s happened? And what to do?

The RX590. Perfect for AAA games at full HD and 1440p resolutions, but also for mining
The RX590. Perfect for AAA games at full HD and 1440p resolutions, but also for mining

AMD Radeon RX 570/580 card can do high hashrate also on CryptoNight-R algorithm

AMD’s middle-class Radeon RX 570 and RX 580 are designed for folks who want to not spend a lot of money to buy a video card for mining but want high-class performance. They are ideal to mine CryptoNight like the best ROI AMD Radeon RX 550 and can do an amazing ~1000H/s with Monero and also a super fine ~30,5-31,5MH/s on Ethereum mining. Radeon RX 590 cards can do more, but cost more and use more electricity.

For the fair money, you can buy also a super good performance at gaming. It’s clear a bargain.

Like the old Radeon RX 480 before it, this RX570/580 is a fully enabled Polaris 10 GPU. Taking advantage of their manufacturing gains, AMD is bumping up the boost clock by 6%, from 1266MHz to 1340MHz. Meanwhile the base clock – which has proven somewhat arbitrary on RX 480 since it rarely throttles anywhere near that much – is increasing by 12%, from 1120MHz to 1257MHz. As we’ll see further in this review, expect the performance gains to closely mirror the boost clock changes. Also, similar to the RX590, the AMD Radeon RX 570/580 is absolutely one of the best cards for ROI (Return on investment): pay less, do more. RX580 mining 1000H/s and the RX590 can go over!

Sidenote: all the RX570 and RX580 require an additional 6 pin power, but you can also find AMD Radeon RX 580 cards with 8 pin dock for additional PSU power cable. I suggest you stay away from those models because they cost more, they consume more and they do a pretty same performance. And also you need additional cables and a bigger PSU. If you don’t mind, this is a link to buy AMD Radeon RX 580 cards with 8pin power on Amazon. Also, all the RX590 require additional and you’ll find the AMD Radeon RX 590 cards with 8 pin dock for additional PSU power cable. I suggest you get quality additional cables and a bigger PSU.

We need to make a BIOS modification to push high the RX 570/580/590, so a big WARNING: if you’re new to mining, or aren’t really too techie, pay attention because you can basically brick your GPU if you do it incorrectly.

So, let’s see how to get from 800H/s to 1100H/s mining CryptoNight-R with RX series cards.

Let’s start. First you need a Linux or Windows 10 operating system with installed AMD Adrenaline Radeon driver because the official ReLive Blockchain driver, specifically for blockchain computing, released by AMD doesn’t work well with the CryptoNight-R algorithm.  So you can find the Adrenaline at https://www.amd.com/en/support/graphics/radeon-500-series/radeon-rx-500-series/.

Pay attention to use 18.5.1, 18.6.1 or 18.9.3 versions on Windows and a version prior to 18.40 on Linux. Also, don’t forget to enable compute mode! Here the link to the article for you: How to disable CrossFire and enable Compute Mode for AMD GPU cards.

In our experience, the best combination for hash rate and power consumption is a cleaned Win 10 Pro (Not LTSB or LTSC normal or N version) with the AMD Adrenaline 18.6.1, but remember that every machine is different, every card is different, so you could have different results.

How to Switch Between Graphics and Compute GPU Workloads Within AMD Radeon™ Settingshttps://support.amd.com/en-us/kb-articles/Pages/DH-024.aspx

Or using this dword in Windows registry:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00


[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4d36e968-e325-11ce-bfc1-08002be10318}\0000]
"KMD_EnableInternalLargePage"=dword:00000002

Also, you need the AMD/ATI ATIFlash utility. This is the program to flash and back-up the BIOS of the card. For Windows 10 at https://www.techpowerup.com/download/ati-atiflash/ and for Linux at https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1809527.0.

Then, to make the modification of BIOS you need the Polaris Bios Editor. I suggest you the Jack Edition because it has a simple ‘one-button click’ to make the time strips mod optimal for your card. You can also modify the clock settings of the GPU and the memory of the card. You can find it both for Win or Linux at https://github.com/jaschaknack/PolarisBiosEditor.

On Windows 10, you also need the AMD/ATI Pixel Clock Patcher. This is because your PC could not recognize the graphics card after the reboot. So, get it at https://www.monitortests.com/forum/Thread-AMD-ATI-Pixel-Clock-Patcher.

I suggest you also to get one of the following programs, they are for editing some parameters (especially frequencies and voltages) in the modern AMD cards. So with these, you’ll be to tweak a bit more your cards. Get OverdriveNTool for Windows at https://forums.guru3d.com/threads/overdriventool-tool-for-amd-gpus.416116/ or AMDCOVC for Linux at https://github.com/matszpk/amdcovc.

Start with a back-up of your card’s BIOS and then mod it with Polaris Bios Editor. Use the ‘One Click Timing Patch’ function to patch the BIOS’ timings and leave the stock settings. Do not set the GPU Clock and the Memory Clock to higher values in BIOS, but use OverdriveNTool and AMDCOVC to push them higher. Set a memory limit to 2200 MHz and GPU limit to 2000 MHz, but if you encountered issues, use small values and try to go up with minimum increments. Save your modded BIOS with another file name and then push it to the card with the AMD/ATI ATIFlash utility. Run the AMD/ATI Pixel Clock Patcher if you’re on Windows, so you’re sure that the system will detect your GPU. Reboot your system both on Windows and Linux.

Now, the miner. I always used XMR-Stak and I like it, but you can find really a lot of programs that do the same thing. It is both for Windows 10 and Linux, you can find binaries and sources at https://github.com/fireice-uk/xmr-stak. The latest 2.10.1 release is compatible with the new CryptoNight-R and provides an auto-config mode that adjusts settings to the best value for your card. This release fixes many issues from 2.10.0 and we recommend to update to this version, also The POW cryptonight_v8_double for X_CACHE is added too. Pay attention, because the config files from 2.5.X+ are compatible and 2.4.X or older are NOT compatible with this release. If you remove the old amd.txt file you will get a new version with new tuning parameters.

When you run XMR-Stak for the first time, you will be prompted to answer really a few questions and for the question about the currency you’re mining, select the one you like or just put in “monero”. – UPDATE: after the network upgrade, you should put ‘monero’ or ‘cryptonight_r’ for mining Monero or you’ll mine for nothing – For the rest of the answers, you must type your wallet address and the pool chosen for mining.

By pressing ‘H’ with XMR-Stak running, you can check your actual hash rate value, the speed of your mining. Now shut down XMR-Stak by pressing ‘CTRL+C’ and go inside the folder where XMR-Stak program is. You’ll see many files and you must edit the amd.txt one. Open it with a text editor and make a modification of it like the following one under the “gpu_threads_conf” section.

"gpu_threads_conf" : [
 { "index" : 0,
   "intensity" : 864, "worksize" : 32,
   "affine_to_cpu" : false, "strided_index" : 2, "mem_chunk" : 2,
   "unroll" : 4, "comp_mode" : true
 },
 { "index" : 0,
   "intensity" : 864, "worksize" : 32,
   "affine_to_cpu" : false, "strided_index" : 2, "mem_chunk" : 2,
   "unroll" : 4, "comp_mode" : true
 },
 ],

Save the amd.txt file you just edited and re-run the XMR-Stak application. Check the new hash rate by pressing ‘H’. Isn’t it better now?

UPDATE: many people suggest me to use CastXMR to get the better hash rate like on CryptoNight V8. I remain with the XMR-Stak program, but if you want to try this is the link: http://www.gandalph3000.com/Sadly, CastXMR stopped the development.

If you want to get easily above 850H/s and without the tuning session headache, I suggest you use the latest TeamRedMiner mining application. This miner currently supports the lyra2z, phi2, cryptonightv8/cnv2, and CryptoNight-R algorithms. Its only configuration is via command line to set the basic parameters for connecting to a stratum pool and selecting which platforms/devices to use. Invoking the miner with the –help option will print a short help message for how to use the options.

Example of TeamRedMiner command launch for a rig of 3 AMD RX 570/580/590 cards:

  • Windows

teamredminer.exe -a cnr -o stratum+tcp://pool.somexmrpool.com:7777 -u -p MyWorker -d 0,1,2 --cn_config 8+8,8+8,8+8

  • Linux

./teamredminer -a cnr -o stratum+tcp://pool.somexmrpool.com:7777 -u -p MyWorker -d 0,1,2 --cn_config 8+8,8+8,8+8

***WARNING!!! Pay attention to go high with frequency because you can burn your cards!!! Make a step-by-step trial period to test where your cards can go because every card is different, every memory is different and maybe you lose the silicon lottery!!!***

After that, if you want to push your AMD Radeon RX 570/580/590 to the max, you need to use an overdrive tool to overclock frequencies and to undervolt voltages. So, start with the programs suggested above and make your trials.

Take a look:

  • To get around 800H/s and 30MH/s, you should put MEM frequency at 2100MHz
  • To get around 950H/s and 31MH/s, you should put MEM frequency at 2150MHz
  • To get around 1100H/s and 31,5MH/s, you should put MEM frequency at 2200MHz

Remember that any card is different, any memory is different, you can win the memory lottery or not, you just need to try a different combination of frequencies and voltages to find the best one that fits your card. You can find all the info on how to use OverdriveNTool and AMDCOVC on the relative websites.

The issue on NiceHash: getting rejected shares on CryptoNight-R or CryptoNightHeavy?

All the info at this address: https://www.nicehash.com/help/getting-rejected-shares-on-cryptonight-cryptonightv7-v8-or-cryptonightheavy

Using 3rd party miners (like xmr-stak, cc-miner, xmr, and cast-xmr), you might get rejected shares on the CryptoNight-R algorithm due to wrongly set parameters. The most common reason for rejected shares is not choosing the correct algorithm for mining the desired coin. Make sure you select the correct algorithm for the coin you want to mine! Also, check the pool compatibility with the desired algorithm. 

For CryptoNight-R please make sure you are using the following settings (xmr-stak; LOCATION: eu, usa, hk, jp, in, br):

“pool_list”: [
       {
           “pool_address”: “stratum+tcp://cryptonightr.LOCATION.nicehash.com:3375”,
           “wallet_address”: “BitcoinWalletAddress.WorkerName”,
           “rig_id”: “”,
           “pool_password”: “x”,
           “use_nicehash”: true,
           “use_tls”: false,
           “tls_fingerprint”: “”,
           “pool_weight”: 1
       }
   ],
   “currency”: “cryptonight_r"

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