xmr-stak/doc/tuning.md

Tuning Guide

Content Overview

• NVIDIA Backend
  • Choose Value for threads and blocks
  • Add more GPUs
• AMD Backend
  • Choose intensity and worksize
  • Add more GPUs

NVIDIA Backend

By default the NVIDIA backend can be tuned in the config file nvidia.txt

Choose Value for threads and blocks

The optimal parameter for the threads and blocks option in config.txt depend on your GPU. For all GPU's with a compute capability >=2.0 and <6.0 there is a restriction of the amount of RAM that can be used for the mining algorithm. The maximum RAM that can be used must be less than 2GB (e.g. GTX TITAN) or 1GB (e.g. GTX 750-TI). The amount of RAM used for mining can be changed with "threads" : T, "blocks : B".

• T = threads used per block
• B = CUDA blocks started (should be a multiple of the multiprocessors M on the GPU)

For the 2GB limit the equations must be full filled: T * B * 2 <= 1900 and B mod M == 0. The value 1900 is used because there is a little data overhead for administration. The GTX Titan X has 24 multiprocessors M, this means a valid and good starting configuration is "threads" : 16, "blocks : 48" and full fill all restrictions 16 * 48 * 2 = 1536 and 48 mod 24 = 0.

The memory limit for NVIDIA Pascal GPUs is 16 GiB if the newest CUDA driver is used.

Add More GPUs

To add a new GPU you need to add a new config set to gpu_threads_conf. index is the number of the gpu, the index order not follow the order from nvidia-smi or the order shown in windows.

"gpu_threads_conf" :
[
    { "index" : 0, "threads" : 17, "blocks" : 60, "bfactor" : 0, "bsleep" :  0, "affine_to_cpu" : false},
    { "index" : 1, "threads" : 17, "blocks" : 60, "bfactor" : 0, "bsleep" :  0, "affine_to_cpu" : false},
],

AMD Backend

By default the NVIDIA backend can be tuned in the config file nvidia.txt

Choose intensity and worksize

Intensity means the number of threads used to mine. worksize is the number of threads working together to increase the miner performance. In the most cases a worksize of 16 or 8 is optimal.

Add More GPUs

To add a new GPU you need to add a new config set to gpu_threads_conf and increase gpu_thread_num" to the number of gpus (entries in gpu_threads_conf). index is the number of the gpu.

"gpu_thread_num" : 2,

"gpu_threads_conf" :
[
    { "index" : 0, "intensity" : 1000, "worksize" : 8, "affine_to_cpu" : false },
    { "index" : 1, "intensity" : 1000, "worksize" : 8, "affine_to_cpu" : false },
],