The GeForce RTX 3080 was first released on September 1st, 2020, and at the time was the first NVIDA RTX 30 series graphics cards to hit the shelves. Featuring a whooping 28.3 million transistors, 8,704 CUDA cores, and 10GB of GDDR6X VRAM, the RTX 3080 took the crown of the most powerful gaming graphics card on the planet. Thanks to its great shading performance, many users saw huge a mining potential of this card, which is why the GeForce RTX 3080 became almost impossible to obtain only a few months after its release due to an incredibly high demand.
Read also: The Best PCI-E Riser Cables for Cryptocurrency Mining in 2022
In 2022, the GeForce RTX 3080 is finally becoming more easier to find, although getting one at the MSRP is still a difficult task. All custom designed models of this card feature a built-in LHR cryptocurrency mining limiter. Fortunately, this limiter has been bypassed in May 2022, meaning that you can now mine Ethereum at full speed.
However, mining Ethereum is becoming very unprofitable, and after the Merge, mining Ethereum with GPUs will no longer be possible. This is why many miners are now switching to other crypto coins, such as Ergo and Neoxa. In this overclocking guide, we’ll solely focus on the best overclock settings for mining Ergo.
It must be stressed that the GeForce RTX 3080 is available in two different variants. The first one features 10GB of GDDR6X VRAM, while the second one, which was released in January 2022, has 12GB of GDDR6X VRAM. The variant with more VRAM also comes with additional 256 CUDA cores, meaning it can boast with slightly better shading performance. In this overclocking guide we’ll focus on the older 10GB variant, which is now widely available and can be purchased from any major retail store.
The GeForce RTX 3080 can also be used for mining other cryptocurrencies, including Aleph, Conflux, Gemlink, and Toncoin. Despite its pretty high average power consumption, the RTX 3080 is a fairly energy-efficient card, given the fact that it can deliver very high mining hashrate.
Best OC Settings for Mining Ergo with GeForce RTX 3080 10GB
Before you start mining Ergo or any other cryptocurrency with the GeForce RTX 3080, we suggest overclocking the card in order to improve its mining performance and improve its efficiency. 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 start mining Ergo with your RTX 3080, first download the latest version of the MSI Afterburner and HWiNFO64. Use MSI Afterburner to set core clock, memory clock, and power limit parameters of your GPU. For close monitoring ofk 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 Gigabyte GeForce RTX 3080 Gaming OC 10G (REV2.0). 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 3080 10GB may perform slightly different.
Here are the overclock settings that worked best for our card:
- Decrease GPU core clock by -300 MHz (use MSI Afterburner or NVIDIA SMI/miner config file)
- Increase Memory Clock by +1,400 MHz (use MSI Afterburner or NVIDIA SMI/miner config file)
- Set Power Limit to 100%
- Set Fan Speed to Auto
Ergo Mining Performance & Benchmarks
In order to benchmark our card’s mining performance, and determine which miner performs the best with the RTX 3080, we’ve tested two different miners: NBminer 42.3, and T-Rex 0.26.5. All tests were performed with applied custom overclock settings, and on PC running Windows 10 with the NVIDIA’s 516.94 display drivers. Fan speed, GPU core temperature, memory temperature, and total power consumption were recorded via HWiNFO64 v7.22. Down below you can see our benchmark results.
RTX 3080 LHR 10GB | Hashrate (avg.) | GPU Temp (avg.) | Fan Speed | Total Power Draw | Eff./Watt |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
NBMiner 42.3 | 219.00 MH/s | 44°C | 99% | 189 W | 1.158 MH/W |
T-Rex 0.26.5 | 218.05 MH/s | 43°C | 99% | 189 W | 1.153 MH/W |
On average, the NBMiner 42.3 is 1 MH/s faster than the T-Rex miner. Both miners consume around 190 watts of power on average, however, we’ve observed more pronounced power fluctuations with NBMiner (ranging from 125 W to 190 W), while T-Rex was more steady.
The NBMiner turned to be slightly more power efficient, however, this difference compared to T-Rex miner was negligible. Our card also ran a few Celsius degrees hotter with NBMiner, so if you are trying to optimize your cooling performance as much as possible, consider using T-Rex miner.
Overall, the Ergo mining performance of GeForce RTX 3080 10GB is pretty impressive. Without custom overclock settings the card consumes more than 300 W of power, and runs quite hot. This is why we strongly recommend overclocking the card to optimize its mining performance and lower its power consumption. Given the fact that Ethereum is no longer interesting for mining, we strongly recommend using this card for mining Ergo (at least until a new and more profitable coin arrives).