How To Mine Any Coin Using AMD GPUs On X13 Algorithm

A few days ago we did an article on “How to mine coins with AMD GPU on X11 Algorithm” and since we mentioned there that we would be doing some more, here’s another article on “How to mine coins with AMD GPU on X13 Algorithm”. Both the algorithm may sound same, but yet they are different. Though not so different that you’ll need another miner to mine coins on the X13 Algorithm.

Yup, this one is pretty much same as (yet different) to the X11 algorithm article, and what’s more is that the only difference you’ll notice is in the commands and performance. So before proceeding further ahead, have a look at the mining on X11 algorithm article written briefly, cause this time we won’t be covering the basics as we did in that article.

Basically mining on all algorithms follows the same trend, but the miners and commands may differ. So without further ado, let’s get right into the steps. For demonstration purpose we will be using a MSI R9 280X.

Mining with X13 Algorithm

For mining using the X13 algorithm, as mentioned above, you won’t be needing a separate miner, the SGminer would do the work since it’s a multi-miner. But if you don’t have it, just grab yourself a copy from here.

Extracting and Setting Up The Miner:
So once you’ve got the miner, extract it somewhere on your drive. And similarly create a .bat file in the miner’s directory like we did for X11. The following commands goes in the whatever.bat file.
setx GPU_MAX_ALLOC_PERCENT 100
setx GPU_USE_SYNC_OBJECTS 1
sgminer.exe –kernel x13mod -o stratum+tcp://pool_URL:port -u Weblogin.worker -p password

Differences between X11 and X13 mining setup.

If you’ve read the previous article, you should have noticed the difference in both commands. The only difference between both is the “–Kernel”, if you put” x11mod” after it, the miner is given instructions to mine coins on X11 algorithm, but if you put “x13mod” after it, the miner is given instructions to mine coin on X13 algorithm.

So basically that was all that you had to do if you wanted to mine coins on X13 algorithm, next steps are just following the basic trend of joining a pool, creating a worker, and configuring your miner.

Joining A Pool:

There are various ways by which you can search a pool to mine on, or if you’ve already decided on a coin based upon X13 algorithm, you can search directly on their website or their bitcointalk.org threads. Once again I’ll be using the trademybit.com for demonstration. And even before registering on such pools you can test their pings by heading over to getting started page, like described in X11 article. Once you’ve decided upon the best pool for you and your location, join it.

Creating a worker:
Once on the pool you’ll need to create yourself a worker, simply head over to their Worker/ My Worker tab and create one with whatever names or passwords you desire. But just a friendly recommendation, I personally name them in numbers and single letter passwords so I can remember which miner is running on which system.

Editing The .Bat File:
Once you’ve got the worker created, now you will need to edit the whatever.bat file. Here’s what the final commands would look like:
setx GPU_MAX_ALLOC_PERCENT 100
setx GPU_USE_SYNC_OBJECTS 1
sgminer.exe –kernel x13mod -o stratum+tcp://east02.us.trademybit.com:3528 -u Ahmy.1 -p x

Port 3528 is for Keycoin, make sure you have put the correct port for the coin. No need to be concerned about ports if you’re on a dedicated coin pool, they’ll only have one port.

To The Moon!
Well that’s a chant of dogecoin community, but by that I meant you’re now all prepared for the miner’s launch. There isn’t much of a difference in both X13 and X11 algorithm coins mining thanks to the SGminer which supports both algorithm but you’ll notice a performance difference in both. Well lets run the miner and have a look at how it looks:

What you should know is that the numbers directed by the Yellow Arrow is your GPU temperature while mining, the numbers marked by Orange Arrow is the power generated by your GPU and if your HW – as pointed out by the Red Arrow in this image – is higher than 0, then there is an issue with your CFG, however you shouldn’t see it go beyond 0, if you haven’t used the tweaked CFG.

Well that’s basically how you mine coins on X13 algorithm, or rather i should say that’s basically how you switch from X11 algorithm to X13 algorithm for mining. And I highly recommend you to read the X11 tutorial article because that one have been cover briefly and includes more information, without which this article might not even make sense to a total newbie. We’ll be covering two more article for the AMD GPUs which would be using different miners as well this time, so stay tuned and share the info among your friend and feel free to ask any questions.

Notes:
SGminer doesn’t support SHA-256, Scrypt, Scrpyt-N and some other algorithms. Basically, it is used for switches between X11/X13 algorithms.
You can find out what to mine, as for the time, using some profitability calculator such as the one found at http://whatmine.com/
There are still quite a few tweaking commands that can be added in the .bat file, such as –temp-target, –temp-cutoff, –failover, –auto-fan, etc. Explaining all of these commands would just make the article long enough that it would become too long and boring to read. Basically, this article was written to give an idea on how to set up a miner and join pools, you can search the CFGs for your GPU online, or ask on forums, and replace/add them in your .bat file as you see fit, for the best performance.
Overclocking/Underclocking is a major factor that also affects mining performance, and once again, you can search in a search engine for/ask on forums about the best clock settings for your GPU on specified algorithms.
The performance gained, in the resulting image, was obtained by a further-tweaked CFG, but it doesn’t mean that the miner won’t run with the base cfg as provided above.
Original cfg:
setx GPU_MAX_ALLOC_PERCENT 100
setx GPU_USE_SYNC_OBJECTS 1
sgminer.exe –kernel x13mod -o stratum+tcp://east02.us.trademybit.com:3528 -u Ahmy.1 -p x -I 20 -g 1 -w 512 –thread-concurrency 28500 –gpu-engine 1080 –gpu-memclock 1500 –auto-fan –temp-target 70 –temp-overheat 82 –temp-cutoff 85 –gpu-fan 65-85
Most of the miner works best with old AMD Catalyst drivers like 13.12, doesn’t mean they won’t run with the newest, but are best tweaked by the developers for older versions.
There are dedicated hardware for mining also, called ASIC which are far better than GPUs, but not all algorithm have ASIC and it affects the coins profitability as well.