AMD Radeon RX 6600 XT crypto mining efficiency surprises

by Mark Tyson on 12 August 2021, 12:11

Tags: AMD (NYSE:AMD), NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA)

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There is no cryptomining limiter tech in the AMD Radeon RX 6600 XT hardware or driver, but it was thought that it wouldn't really be of much use for this type of computational endeavour. The AMD RDNA2 architecture, particularly the way memory/caching is handled, doesn't naturally lend itself to cryptomining, but post-release, aficionados of this dark art have found that this little GPU is actually one of the most efficient available for mining Ethereum.

ComputerBase.de references work by a YouTuber called Dizzy Mining and Redditor Trollatopoulous, alongside a chart illustrating the surprising attractions of the RX 6600 XT. Taking these findings at face value, it appears to be the case that the smallest RDNA2 GPU can be optimised to become the most efficient GPU for ETH mining that is now available. However, at its best 32MH/s performance, you will need more of them in your mining rig.

The above table is in ETH mining performance per watt rank, with the best card at the top, the RX 6600 XT. As you can see, it is significantly better by this metric than some of the alternative out there. Also, please consider that the Nvidia GPUs ranked in the table are the non-crypto-limited models – in other words, they aren't the newer LHR models which have had their MH/s performance slashed by approx half.

Out of the box, a 'standard Radeon RX 6600 XT will deliver about 29MH/s while using a smidgeon under 100W of power. However, Dizzy Mining has implemented tweaks to achieve 32MH/s at just 55W. The particular changes implemented to hit that sweet spot were a GPU clock reduction to 1.2GHz max, and a GDDR6 overclock to 2.2GHz.

It is hard to know if the above info will lead to RX 6600 XT cards being snapped up by miners, particularly ETH miners who are looking down the barrel of a significant change to the economies (PoW to PoS) of this cryptocurrency due to occur at the end of 2021/early 2022.

BTC and ETH prices have enjoyed a boost since mid-July, with ETH recovering from lows of about $1,700 to break $3,200 earlier today. ETH's best valuation was in May this year, when it achieved an all-time high of $4,383.



HEXUS Forums :: 8 Comments

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Still seems far to little for the return in my risk-averse opinion.

Whattomine.com gives $2.42 more like $2 after electricity. A part-time gamer and casual miners would probably never run 24 hours in any day and with one GPU the power overhead of the computer to run it would be far higher.
But imagine those profits were static $60 per months so IF the profits remained like that for 3 months they might have made back $180 on a $400 card. Not bad, but not great either. Profitability remaining steady is unlike. But then again I had though it would all be over by now but BTC is nearly $45k and ETH is back up to over $3000 so what do I know?

Big time miners and commercial users might be interested but what is the max PCIe slots they can muster per board even at x1? Maybe 6 or 8? Anyway, that is why the part-time gamer/miner with their one GPU cannot really compete as the overhead of having to run a computer 24/7 is far worse for someone with just one GPU.
The bargain won't last long then! ;)
If it can traffic away from the cards that is actually better gaming cards, then sure.
On the topic of mining on AMD Radeon GPUs, HXL on Twitter has just spotted a Sapphire-made ‘RX 570 Duo’ ETH mining add-in-card
that achieves 60MH/s at 125W.