Ethereum DAG Hashrate Drop FIX – AMD Official Mining Drivers Are Now Out

AMD Official Mining Drivers

Apparently AMD wants to avoid shortages of their new Vega cards at any cost. Consequently, the company is doing their best to help miners to keep their older GPUs functional for mining. In order to do that, AMD issued an official driver release aimed to improve GPU mining hashrate.

AMD has been working on this driver for a while now. In fact, it became available for download about two weeks ago, though it was an unofficial beta release. Today, AMD posted the same driver on their official webpage.

Radeon Software Crimson ReLive Edition Beta for Blockchain Compute

I have tested this new driver on my rigs and I can confirm that they it does improve hashrate, no more hashrate drop, everything is back to normal. I suspect that the driver reverse the DAG epoch issue, rather than making GPUs mine faster.

I have tried the driver on RX 400 and RX 500 cards, though according to AMD webpage, the Crimson ReLive Edition Beta is compatible with a wide variety of GPUs, starting from the Radeon HD 7×00 series and up to the Vega edition.

Sapphire Also to Release AMD-based Crypto Mining GPUs(cryptomining)

Not a lot of details about the upcoming AMD-based Crypto Mining GPUs from Sapphire Yet, though they have been already listed for pre-order over at Overclockers UK. There are four Sapphire Mining Edition video cards listed that are based on AMD’s Radeon RX 470 GPU with different video memory configurations, all of which are without external video connectors. There is also a single AMD Radeon RX 560 GPU also labeled as Mining Edition, though it is a bit different with a single DVI connector on the back, so it can be used for other things than just crypto mining. It is interesting to note that the Sapphire Mining Edition cards do come with 1 year warranty instead of the regular two or even 3 years warranty that Sapphire cards targeted at gamers usually have (depending on the market).

Sapphire Mining Editions cards:
– Sapphire Radeon RX 470 MINING Edition 8192MB GDDR5 Samsung 7 Gbps (11256-38-10G) – 25-28MH/s ETH
– Sapphire Radeon RX 470 MINING Edition 8192MB GDDR5 7 Gbps (11256-37-10G) – 24-27MH/s ETH
– Sapphire Radeon RX 470 MINING Edition 4096MB GDDR5 Samsung 7 Gbps (11256-36-10G) – 24-27 MH/s ETH
– Sapphire Radeon RX 470 MINING Edition 4096MB GDDR5 7 Gbps (11256-35-10G) – 23-26 MH/s ETH
– Sapphire Radeon RX 560 Pulse MINING Edition 4096MB (11267-11-10G) – 12-15 MH/s ETH

It is interesting to note that the store lists the type of memory on different models and what mining performance they will be able to offer for mining Ethereum (ETH). There are two values that apparently represent the stock and the modified BIOS result, though it is not yet clear if the dual BIOS comes with modified settings, or Sapphire has just left that part to the miners. Unfortunately the prices listed for pre-order are not making these very attractive alternative compared to the regular models, though with the current shortage miners may not care that much as long as there is stock of these new Mining Edition cards from Sapphire available.

Something that is important regarding the warranty of regular Sapphire GPUs that are not originally intended for mining, the website of the company has some additional terms listed about mining usage, here is a quote below.

Warranty may vary from Country/Region, the customer must verify directly with the SAPPHIRE Authorized Dealer/Reseller from where the product was purchased as to the specifics of Warranty provided.

Warranty also varies for products used in Industrial , Block chain and crypto currency mining applications and the customer must verify with the SAPPHIRE Authorized Dealer/Reseller from where the product was purchased for more information.

So make sure you check the warranty information of the seller whether you are buying regular gaming GPUs or any of the Mining Edition cards to make sure about the warranty period you get with each. We have already received reports form users that some retailers are selling GPUs without any mention about warranty getting void on their websites if they are being used for crypto mining and you get that told to you after you purchase the cards and have them shipped to you.

Flashing RX470/RX480 Cards

This is just a quick guide for how to flash you RX470/RX480 cards. I hope it helps.

Download these.
https://www.techpowerup.com/downloads/2728/atiflash-2-74
https://github.com/caa82437/PolarisBiosEditor
https://www.techpowerup.com/gpuz/

Use GPU-Z to see what kind of memory your card has

1, open atiflash, MUST RUN AS ADMINISTRATOR
2, click on save to save the original bios, save it as RX470ogBIOS.ROM or RX480ogBIOS.ROM (for convenience)
3, open polaris bios editor
4, click open at the top left and open the OG bios you just saved
5, edit the timings according to your cards memory
6, click save, save it as RX470modBIOS.ROM or RX480modBIOS.ROM
7, open atiflash again, MUST RUN AS ADMINISTRATOR
8, at the top select the card you want to flash
9, click load image at the bottom left
10, search for the modded bios you just saved and open it
11, click program
12…wait a minute to finish, when its done it’ll say to restart…if you’re done click yes, if you have more cards to flash click no and repeat steps 8-12 until you’re done.

Also, when selecting cards to flash, it will only show 3 cards, so if you want to flash more than 3 cards, only have 3 cards connected to the motherboard at a time, flash the cards, restart, make sure it worked, shutdown, switch cards and repeat. And then make sure you have the right driver installed.

This is what works for me. I hope it works for you too.