Unusual of system behavior while mining?

[OnsideAura01]

So I recently started mining Litecoin via EasyMiner as my first shot at Crypto mining, had a spare PC, so I figured why not make some money. I did some research and familiarized myself with how it works, methods of mining, etc and settled on GPU mining for reasons that I would think are obvious to most miners. The Mining Rig in question has a Zotac Amp 1660TI in it (No OC or tampering), and she has been going for around 12 hours, give or take, since yesterday afternoon and I disabled sleep and popped open Task Manager to monitor the system behavior while this is going on. The System behavior is just really odd to me and I am not at all sure if it is behaving the way it should, or at least I did not expect it to behave like it is. That behavior being almost 0 activity and usage. GPU is at 1% all the time, and it's only been as high as 3% while my CPU routinely sits around 7-8% having seen as high as 10%, but that is it. This has given me a has of has of around 698 kHz and that is it (mining Litecoin if that matters). As I am new to mining with some research I am unaware of the hash rate and how good that actually is, and I expected a massive GPU usage, surely not 1%. Are these truly oddities or is this just me not knowing what to suspect as a new miner?

 

[Caring1]

Sounds like the GPU isn't being utilised at all.
Hopefully someone experienced can chime in here.

 

[OnsideAura01]

Sounds like the GPU isn't being utilised at all.
Hopefully someone experienced can chime in here.

That is what I was thinking, and it’s also not seeming to utilize my CPU either despite being set to use GPU mining. I have little idea where to start for fighting this out.

 

[Caring1]

@phill any suggestions or ideas?

 

[trog100]

try using nicehash and see if that works..

trog

 

[Jhart1228]

This is normal as task manager is only looking for usage on the video engine of the GPU and not the frame buffer or memory, which is used for mining. I can confirm this because I'm using a 3060 right now and getting 45mh/s ether mining on nicehash while task manager says the GPU utilization is at 1-3%. Try using HWmonitor or GPU-Z instead!

 

[atifsh]

off topic, switch to eth / etc / rvn for better profits

 

[Zach_01]

Nanominer from Nanopool is nice too.

 

[londiste]

This is normal as task manager is only looking for usage on the video engine of the GPU and not the frame buffer or memory, which is used for mining. I can confirm this because I'm using a 3060 right now and getting 45mh/s ether mining on nicehash while task manager says the GPU utilization is at 1-3%. Try using HWmonitor or GPU-Z instead!

Looked at Task Manager while mining ETH. Windows 10 20H2.
Task manager shows 100% GPU utilization and close to that 100% on Copy 1 and Cuda.

 

[Sybaris_Caesar]

Is litecoin mining even profitable?

 

[Zach_01]

Is litecoin mining even profitable?

Hardly... difficulty is too high.

 

[Sybaris_Caesar]

Yep: https://www.investopedia.com/tech/how-do-you-mine-litecoin/

@OP just mine ETH while it's still profitable. Is supposed to mining-dead by either June-July or end of next year.

Nvidia GTX 1660Ti mining calculator ⛏️ | minerstat

Nvidia GTX 1660Ti can reach 30.92 MH/s hashrate and 69 W power consumption for mining ETH (Ethash). Find out more hashrate, consumption, difficulty, and profitability for mining 321 different coins on 146 algorithms.

minerstat.com

 

[agentnathan009]

So I recently started mining Litecoin via EasyMiner as my first shot at Crypto mining, had a spare PC, so I figured why not make some money. I did some research and familiarized myself with how it works, methods of mining, etc and settled on GPU mining for reasons that I would think are obvious to most miners. The Mining Rig in question has a Zotac Amp 1660TI in it (No OC or tampering), and she has been going for around 12 hours, give or take, since yesterday afternoon and I disabled sleep and popped open Task Manager to monitor the system behavior while this is going on. The System behavior is just really odd to me and I am not at all sure if it is behaving the way it should, or at least I did not expect it to behave like it is. That behavior being almost 0 activity and usage. GPU is at 1% all the time, and it's only been as high as 3% while my CPU routinely sits around 7-8% having seen as high as 10%, but that is it. This has given me a has of has of around 698 kHz and that is it (mining Litecoin if that matters). As I am new to mining with some research I am unaware of the hash rate and how good that actually is, and I expected a massive GPU usage, surely not 1%. Are these truly oddities or is this just me not knowing what to suspect as a new miner?

If you set up everything properly and you see a hashrate in command window then your card is working. Different coins utilize the GPU differently. They may use parts of the GPU that don't register as loading the GPU because GPUs are designed for gaming so when you play a game you will see a load. Mining is different so it doesn't register as being loading the GPU.

What hashrate are you getting with 1660Ti? As others have said, mine Ethereum for now until it switches to Proof of Stake (ETH 2.0). Right now ETH is generally the most profitable. There are other coins that are also profitable such as Ravencoin, among others.

 

[phill]

So I recently started mining Litecoin via EasyMiner as my first shot at Crypto mining, had a spare PC, so I figured why not make some money. I did some research and familiarized myself with how it works, methods of mining, etc and settled on GPU mining for reasons that I would think are obvious to most miners. The Mining Rig in question has a Zotac Amp 1660TI in it (No OC or tampering), and she has been going for around 12 hours, give or take, since yesterday afternoon and I disabled sleep and popped open Task Manager to monitor the system behavior while this is going on. The System behavior is just really odd to me and I am not at all sure if it is behaving the way it should, or at least I did not expect it to behave like it is. That behavior being almost 0 activity and usage. GPU is at 1% all the time, and it's only been as high as 3% while my CPU routinely sits around 7-8% having seen as high as 10%, but that is it. This has given me a has of has of around 698 kHz and that is it (mining Litecoin if that matters). As I am new to mining with some research I am unaware of the hash rate and how good that actually is, and I expected a massive GPU usage, surely not 1%. Are these truly oddities or is this just me not knowing what to suspect as a new miner?

I'm not sure why your GPU is idle, is there more than one in the system? Do you have any screen grabs with it mining and doing something?

As you can see below my GPU is flat out constantly...

But then it's mining, crunching, folding, it's a very busy system Having things open as well such as web browsers, videos, etc. will effect your hash rate and can do a lot. I mean example when I run my online version of Command and Conquer, my hash rate drops to about 80MH with my 3090... 3090's suck at mining as well, so just bare that in mind

From what you're saying I'm not sure its setup correctly, but we need to see some screen grabs or something to find out what is going on... Can't help with what you have described I'm afraid...

 

[Zach_01]

Here is another (AMD) example where task manager shows 0% GPU usage, yet the GPU is running Nanominer (ETH).

 

[Hardcore Games]

I have heard from several miners that earnings from video cards has tumbled. This is why Bitmain has announced their new Antminer E9.

Coin miners need to move to the E9 when it arrives and even so I have also discussed Bitcoin S19 users who report earning are all over the dial due to variations in trading etc.

 

[Zach_01]

I have heard from several miners that earnings from video cards has tumbled. This is why Bitmain has announced their new Antminer E9.

Coin miners need to move to the E9 when it arrives and even so I have also discussed Bitcoin S19 users who report earning are all over the dial due to variations in trading etc.

GPUs is nowhere near what they used to mine in terms of coin count compared to few years ago. But because the coin prices gone up since, still the gains are significant.
Right now a single 5700XT can mine around 9$ worth of ETH with ~3KW/h per day. For me the cost of power is 0.37$/d. 250+$ and ~11$ cost per month. Assuming that ETH price stays the same with slight growth.
Even “old” RX580s can profit. Less but still.

 

[RadFX]

No one here mining Vertcoin? It's super easy to setup, great for 4gb or less gpu's, easy on your GPU's and profitable. There is also a 1 click miner.

https://www.reddit.com/r/vertcoin/comments/mxz467

 

[R-T-B]

No one here mining Vertcoin? It's super easy to setup, great for 4gb or less gpu's, easy on your GPU's and profitable. There is also a 1 click miner.

https://www.reddit.com/r/vertcoin/comments/mxz467

Vertcoin is still alive? Jesus, that's a name I haven't heard in ages...

 

[agentnathan009]

GPUs is nowhere near what they used to mine in terms of coin count compared to few years ago. But because the coin prices gone up since, still the gains are significant.
Right now a single 5700XT can mine around 9$ worth of ETH with ~3KW/h per day. For me the cost of power is 0.37$/d. 250+$ and ~11$ cost per month. Assuming that ETH price stays the same with slight growth.
Even “old” RX580s can profit. Less but still.

I'm not sure where you are getting 3KWH per day with 5700XT. I have an old AMD X3 435 that burns 90 watts because it lacks fine grained power throttling, it is either full power or low power idle with no activity, plus an RX 480 and a 1660 (whole computer with two GPUs mining ETH) and it uses around 3.68 KWH per day while getting very close to 5700XT hashrate between both cards. I have a breaker panel power monitor (Emporia) so I can see what each circuit is using in my house plus I am using smart plugs to monitor mining machines power draw and use.

 

[Zach_01]

My 5700XT (unmodified BIOS) draws about 120W and hashes around 52.5MH/s. PC was always on before I started to mine with 5700XT anyway so I don't count that (100W).
GPU clock has been decreased to 1200MHz (from 2100MHz) and VRAM increased to 1840MHz (from 1750MHz). GPU voltage to 0.750V from 1.16V and VRAM voltage its the default 0.85V as I have no control to it.
5700XT is very efficient compared to RX480/580. I also have a few 580s (modified BIOSs) with 30MH/s each and a draw 130W each on different machine(s).

I have digital PSUs (on all of them) that report power draw (software) and with the monitor smart plugs I also have on each machine are reporting the same power draw.