Ethereum is getting closer and closer to the 4GB DAG file limit and all problems previously seen and described for Ethereum Classic before its hardfork become relevant for Ethereum as well.
Stop using Claymore ETH Miner
First and foremost, stop using Claymore miner.
We fully understand and acknowledge that this miner has been a big part of the mining scene, but its development has been completely nonexistent for over a year (the last patch being Aug 2019).
Obviously, it doesn’t account for a lot of changes that have occurred since not to mention the errors found in the Ethereum libraries code.
We’re aware that Claymore guaranteed support up to epoch 384, but the fact is that the miner appears to break even at 373. This is especially the case for AMD card owners. In addition to all of this, there’s a significant lack of support/poor optimization for recently released cards. As such, we can no longer recommend this miner and advise you all to change to actively supported variants.
Change and Update miner
What do we have in the miner menu as of 02/02/2020?
| Miner name | Platform | Unique features |
|---|---|---|
| nanominer | N + A | Zombie mode support |
| lolMiner* | N + A | Zombie mode support |
| Gminer | N + A | |
| T-Rex Miner* | N | Nvidia timings, Nvidia Pascal optimization |
| SRBMiner-Multi | A | |
| TeamRedMiner* | A | Zombie mode support, best hashrate on pool side, best miner for AMD Vega |
| PhoenixMiner | N + A | Zombie mode support, AMD rxboost, NVidia strap |
| NBMiner | N+A | Nvidia timings |
| TT-Miner | N | |
| EthMiner* | N+A | DevFee Free |
*Recommended miners
Zombie mode
“Zombie mode” is a special mode that enables the use of DAG file after its size exceeds the available video memory size.
This mode allows you to mine a little longer, but with each subsequent epoch, the hashrate will drop by 4-5%. Additionally, it may be necessary to revise the overclocking to be less aggressive.
This mode is of interest to 4GB card owners. For this mode to work correctly, you need both a miner that supports it, and 20+ series drivers (included in the latest Stable Hive OS image).
If you are interested in this mode, update your image by overwriting the media using the hive-replace utility or flashing it to your storage device using balenaEtcher or Rufus.