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Notes and hints on CPU mining

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kenshirothefist edited this page Apr 11, 2017 · 10 revisions

  1. Please note that CPUs without AES / AES-NI extension are not supported. You can check your CPU details on CPU World website.

  2. xmr-stak-cpu CryptoNight miner has support for LOCKED PAGES; it will give more performance when enabled. How to enable: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-gb/library/ms190730.aspx (even though the how-to is for Windows Server, the same settings applies for Windows 10; please note that you may have to restart OS after changing). You have to be logged into Windows as Administrator or run NiceHashMiner.exe As Administrator (right-click -> Run as Administrator) in order for this feature to work. To properly benchmark CPU mining it is best to reboot the system with as little auto-start applications as possible before benchmarking.

  3. If you have a recent Intel CPU and you are used to overclock CPU, you can tune some CPU cache settings in order to achieve best performance. You can try to set BIOS setting CPU Cache Ratio to the same value as your max CPU Ratio. For example if a CPU Ratio for a 4.5 GHz Intel CPU with 100 MHz BLCK is 45, then the Min and Default CPU Cache Ratio has also to be set to 45. As always, be careful with overclocking and keep in mind that overclocking or forcing manual settings might void your hardware warranty or damage your hardware.

  4. By default the optimal number of used CPU Threads is automatically determined during benchmark. This setting is set for each algorithm in "Less Threads" setting (Settings / Devices/Algorithms / CPU / selected algorithm / Less Threads field). Please note that NiceHash Miner might utilize 100% of your CPU - thus not leaving some adequate CPU power for the background processes (such as GPU mining if you are also using GPUs in your system). If you wish to leave some thread/core unused by CPU mining, then you should set "Less Threads" to a value, greater than 0 (1 = leave 1 thread unused, 2 = 2 leave 2 threads unused, etc.).

  5. If you have a CPU with Hyper-Threading support (HT), then you might also want to experiment with special "Extra Launch Settings" (Settings / Devices/Algorithms / CPU / selected algorithm / Extra Launch Settings field). If you enter enable_ht=true in this field, and set "Less Threads" to 0, then NHM will use per-core affinity and run mining only on physical cores, leaving HT threads unused. In some cases this yields in a bit higher performance. You'll notice that only 50% of overall CPU utilization will be show by Task Manager or similar utilities, however due to the nature of mining algorithms and the nature of how Hyper-Threading works, 100% of CPU compute power will actually be used.

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