In May 2021, NVIDIA launched the GeForce RTX 3070 Ti graphics card, thus continuing the rollout of GPUs based on its Ampere microarchitecture. Compared to the “non-Ti” GeForce RTX 3070, the new card features slightly higher base and boost clocks, 256 more shading units, 8 more TMUs and Tensor cores, as well as 2 more RT cores. Interestingly enough, the card features the same number of transistors (17.4 million), but is able to deliver 6.8% higher FP32 compute performance (21.75 TFLOPS).
Read also: The Best PCI-E Riser Cables for Cryptocurrency Mining in 2022
Compared to the standard GeForce RTX 3070, the GeForce RTX 3070 Ti features a built-in cryptocurrency mining limiter, meaning its maximum mining potential is locked. This means that all RTX 3070 Ti cards available on the market come with the built-in “LHR” (lite hash rate) technology, and unlike the GeForce RTX 3060 Ti, there are no variants of the RTX 3070 Ti that don’t come with a built-in limiter. For a long time, the built-in mining limiter made the RTX 3070 Ti a very unprofitable card for mining, however, with the advent of new miners featuring “full LHR unlocks”, the RTX 3070 Ti is finally turning out to be a fantastic card for mining, even with the built-in mining limiter.
As of May 7th 2022 all LHR cards can now be fully unlocked! If you plan to mine Ethereum with the RTX 3070 Ti LHR we strongly recommend using the latest version of NBMiner or NiceHash QuickMiner. These miners fully bypass the card’s built-in mining limiter, thus allowing the card to achieve its maximum mining speed.
Without any overclocks and tweaking, the stock GeForce RTX 3070 Ti LHR is able to deliver 46 MH/s hashrate while mining Ethereum, which is roughly on par with the fully unlocked GeForce RTX 3060. Overall, this is quite poor performance, given the fact that the RTX 3070 Ti features a 58% higher MSRP than the GeForce RTX 3060, and comes with a 52% higher TDP, meaning its price-to-performance ratio pales in comparison to the RTX 3060.
Fortunately enough, with a few tweaks and proper software, the GeForce RTX 3070 Ti can now be turned into a mean and powerful mining graphics card. Thanks to the new mining software offering “full LHR unlock” features, the card’s base Ethereum mining hashrate can now be increased from the initial 46 MH/s to up to 79 MH/s. You can also fine-tune the card and lower its GPU clock in order to decrease its power consumption, and increase its mining performance. In this guide we’ll show you the best overclock settings for mining with the RTX 3070 Ti, and examine which miner performs the best with this card.
Best OC Settings for Mining ETH with GeForce RTX 3070 Ti
Before you start mining Ethereum or any other crypto with the GeForce RTX 3070 Ti, we recommend overclocking the card in order to improve its mining performance as much as possible. However, it must be noted that you should use overclocking at your own risk! ViCadia.com does not take any responsibilities related to overclocking or performing any adjustments to your computer. You have been warned!
Before you begin mining with your RTX 3070 Ti, first download the latest version of the MSI Afterburner and HWiNFO64. Use MSI Afterburner to manually adjust core clock, memory clock, and power limit parameters for your GPU. For keeping a close eye on core clock and VRAM temperatures, we recommend using the HWiNFO64 tool. If you notice any strange behavior from your GPU, reset to the original settings immediately!
For purposes of this guide we’ve used the ZOTAC Gaming GeForce RTX 3070 Ti AMP Holo OC. Down below you can find overclock settings which worked best for our card. These OC settings may not necessarily work for your card! Each AIB model of the RTX 3070 Ti may perform slightly differently.
Here are the overclock settings that worked best for our card:
Use these settings if you plan to mine with NBMiner, GMiner or T-Rex miner:
- Lock the GPU core clock to 900 MHz (use NVIDIA SMI or edit miner config file)
- Set the Memory Clock offset to +1,150 MHz (use NVIDIA SMI or edit miner config file)
- Set Power Limit to 100%
- Set Fan Speed to Auto (you can also decrease it, but don’t go below 85% because the system will crash)
Ethereum Mining Performance & Benchmarks
In order to examine our card’s mining performance, we’ve tested five different miners: NBminer 41.0, NiceHash QuickMiner v0.5.4.0 RC, GMiner 2.71, lolMiner 1.37, and T-Rex 0.24.6. All benchmark tests were performed with applied overclock settings, and on PC running Windows 10 with the latest NVIDIA’s 512.59 graphics drivers. Fan speed, GPU core temperature, VRAM temperature, and total board power draw were recorded via HWiNFO64 v7.22. Down below you can see our benchmark results.
| RTX 3060 Ti LHR (OC) | Hashrate (avg.) | GPU Temp (avg.) | Fan Speed (avg.) | Total Power Draw | Eff./Watt |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| NBMiner 41.0 | 79.45 MH/s | 49°C | 90% | 194 W | 409.53 kH/J |
| NiceHash QuickMiner 0.5.4.0 RC | 76.70 MH/s | 48°C | 100% | 195 W | 393.33 kH/J |
| GMiner 2.71 | 58.10 MH/s | 49°C | 78% | 174 W | 333.90 kH/J |
| T-Rex 0.24.6 | 59.30 MH/s | 48°C | 85% | 187 W | 317.11 kH/J |
| lolMiner 1.37 | 56.20 MH/s | 48°C | 80% | 183 W | 307.10 kH/J |
As you can see from the table above, NBMiner 41.0 and NiceHash QuickMiner 0.5.4.0 RC pretty much obliterated other miners in terms of mining speed. Both of these miners feature 100% LHR unlockers , so it’s no surprise that these two showed to be no match for other miners. Even though both of them were able to deliver magnificent mining hashrate, we did notice NBMiner performing better, as it was able to deliver higher mining hashrate than QuickMiner (79.4 MH/s vs. 76.7 MH/s).
Speaking of other miners, there isn’t much to say about them, since right now they are pretty much obsolete. The T-Rex miner performed decently, as it was able to secure 59.3 MH/s on average, however, in the light of new circumstances, this result pales in comparison to what NBMiner and QuickMiner can offer. The only exception is GMiner, with which our RTX 3070 Ti ran the coolest and quietest. This miner was also the least power-hungry among all tested miners, but yet again its mining speed and efficiency pale in comparison to what new miners can offer.
As you can see, the NBMiner 41.0 is currently the fastest and the most efficient miner to use with the GeForce RTX 3070 Ti. The NiceHash QuickMiner falls slightly behind NBMiner in terms of speed an efficiency, which is why it is in second spot. The very fact that the NBMiner now enables GeForce RTX 3070 Ti to deliver 409.5 kH per watt is quite simply amazing. This is more than 27% better efficiency rating compared to what GMiner or T-Rex miner can currently offer.
Overall, both NBMiner 41.0 and NiceHash QuickMiner are now able to deliver fantastic mining performance on RTX 3070 Ti, meaning that there is no point using any other miner right now. We must admit that we preferred NBMiner more over the QuickMiner, not just only because it was able to deliver slightly higher hashrate, but also because applying custom GPU clocks was much more simpler, and the miner didn’t show any signs of system stability issues like we experienced while using NiceHash QuickMiner.
Conclusion
After more than a year of waiting, we now have miners that feature 100% LHR unlocks. This is absolutely fantastic news which, unfortunately, seems to be coming a little too late. Nevertheless, many miners who own LHR cards can now rejoice, because their cards can now deliver fantastic mining performance and increase their mining profits.
Given the fact that prices of GPUs have never been so low in the past two years, now is the right time to purchase a new graphics card. Speaking of the GeForce RTX 3070 Ti, we now strongly recommend getting this card, as it’s able to deliver better mining performance than the flagship AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT for less money. Efficiency-wise, there are better alternatives out there, but if price-to-performance ratio is what matters the most to you, than this card here is a clear winner.
We’ll continue updating this guide with new mining benchmarks. Be sure to get back here from time to time for some new info. We hope you liked our guide, and that you found the information we’ve provided here to be useful. If you have any thoughts you want to share with us, feel free to post a comment below. Stay safe & happy mining!
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