My CPU and GPU plot time tests (based on 5TB drive)



  • @Vneck Its an very unequal comparison! As others said with Xplotter you've got optimized and whith "gpuplotter buffer" you've got unoptimized plotfiles! But since the disk you're using is a SMR drive, "gpuplotter direct" would not have really worked anyway! Or, it would have worked but would have taken a week also!
    However, you've confirmed that Xplotter does not work very good on SMR drives!-)
    They are perfectly fine for mining! I have a few of them.

    The fastest way to plot these type of drives and get optimized plotfiles is probably still to plot to a "normal" PMR drive first and the copy it over or use the plotoptimizer!



  • Hi Superfriends! Thank you so much for the support, critiques, and feedback. I will take them all under consideration. I only have the 1 5TB drive, so optimizing will have to wait until I buy more drives, as I'm currently mining with this. My other drives I mine with don't have the capacity to hold/optimize another 5TB plot. Once I get more space, I will run another test and update this thread.

    Also thank you for the updated Optimized GPU settings, I will definitely try that when I get more space. Much appreciated.

    Once I build my 3rd rig (for some other GPU based cryptomining) with some AMD based video cards, I will dedicate that to plotting.

    Much love and appreciation for the advice. BOOM! Boom...and all that!



  • Minor update:

    I did a GPU "Direct" plot this time on another (but same model Seagate 5TB USB 3.0 Expansion drive. BUT I only did a 1TB plot for testing the optimization. This time I used 10GB of system RAM out of the 16GB I have.

    1TB GPU Optimized plot took 1day, 12hrs, and 37mins for the GPU Direct "Optimized". I don't know if something is wrong or if this normal on an SMR drive.
    0_1488691467081_3-4-2017 2-45-43 PM_1TB_test_GPU Optimized_Final.jpg

    Here is an access/time comparison of the optimized 1TB plot versus a 5TB non-optimized plot. Both are on 2 separate drives, both are on the same model Seagate 5TB USB 3.0 external drive. Granted the 1TB will be faster, but if you multiply the 1TB by 4.5 or 5, it does come out faster than the 5TB non-optimized plot.

    1_1488691467081_3-4-2017 3-00-12 PM_Segate_1TB_Optimized_vs_5TB_non_optimized.jpg

    The GPU Optimized 1TB plot is averaging around 3.4-3.5 secs access time, versus the the 35~36 secs access times of the 5TB non-optimized plot size.

    In theory, the 3.5sec(1TB) optimized x 4.5TB or 5TB "COULD" end up being 15.75~17.5secs, which is a GOOD thing. At least that's an estimate if I did optimize the full 5TB (minus room lost during partitioning).



  • @Vneck said in My CPU and GPU plot time tests (based on 5TB drive):

    partitioning

    From what I know, increasing RAM will not affect the speed at all as bottleneck is the HDD itself.
    1863~ nonces is slow for your 980Ti, you should get something around 8000 as minimum in Direct mode.
    From my tests with GPUgenerator, I found that disconnecting your HDMI (or whatever display port) from the plotting card and connecting to the embedded VGA will help alot your operation. Its not science, but its something I observed.
    Anyways, keep plotting in direct mode even if its deadly slow coz its worth it for the mining phase :)



  • @Vneck I find it a little strange it's taking you that long to plot a 5TB HDD with your cpu. I used my i3-6100 to plot 4 and 5TB external HDDs (seagate/WD) using the aio wallet cpu plotter (AVX) with 3 of 4 threads, using the default 4gb of ram, and I was plotting in 2-3 days - 5 days sounds like a lot. I'm pretty new to burstcoin as well but I figured i'd just chime in and share my experiences. Not sure if 5 days is typical for the rest of you.



  • @rnahlawi Yes very strange. When it started, the nonces/min were at 25000~26000 nonces/min, then dropped when I checked the next day.
    0_1488706126025_3-2-2017 9-30-51 PM - 1TB GPU Optimized 10GB_RAM.jpg



  • @vier23 Thanks, that's what I'm trying to figure out too. Others have said it's my CPU, number of threads I use, RAM, etc. I'm not sure. Granted the Seagates are bit on the slower side, but still 5 days is nuts. Once I have time and more drives, I'll do another CPU optimized plot test.

    I did the GPU plot because I got impatient, and wanted to get up and running. lol I know some people with dual Xeons and 256GB of RAM, can do CPU plotting with 25TB, and get it done in +-24hours, which is crazy fast.


  • admin

    @Vneck said in My CPU and GPU plot time tests (based on 5TB drive):

    RECAP:

    CPU plot: 5 and 1/2ish days
    GPU plot: 20ish hours.

    Thanks for your test, but like mentioned before, you can not compare this two results directly, as the CPU plot is already optimized. So for me the result should look like:

    CPU plot (optimized): 5 and 1/2ish days

    GPU plot: 20ish hours. (buffered mode)
    GPU plot (optimized): ~1 day 11,5 hours (2nd drive needed, ~15,5h optimize @90mb/s)

    GPU plot (optimized): running ... (direct mode)

    I'm not sure if the optimizer is really that fast ... could also be double time :-)



  • Hi Superfriends. I bought another 5TB drive, as I'm still using the other 5TB plotted earlier (non-optimized), and have started a new GPU Direct "optimized" plot. I'll let you know what times I get.

    @blago thanks for the settings tip.


  • admin

    @Vneck SMR drives are a PITA to plot, they mine fine, but plotting is slow.



  • @haitch

    Yup, finding that out the hard way. lol Are there other external drives you can recommend? Trying to avoid buying bare drives and then buying a separate enclosure. I used to be a big WD fan back in the day, but I haven't kept up on the latest tech since I left desktop support.



  • @Vneck Check this thread: https://forums.burst-team.us/topic/4290/wd-external-hdd/
    More recommendations are: Toshiba and HGST.
    Work around SMRs is to plot on a normal (faster) drive and copy the plot to SMR drive.



  • @rnahlawi Yes I'm thinking the same. I'm gonna get a WD drive next and do another test. If the WD drive is faster, I'll continue that route.


Log in to reply
 

Looks like your connection to Burst - Efficient HDD Mining was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.