Bitcoin mining with Integrated graphics

4

I have Intel HD Graphics Family

I thought this would be powerful to mine bitcoins really well. Is this even a GPU ?

I used different miners (DiabloMiner, OpenCL, cgminer...) which all use just the CPU instead of the GPU.

Any ideas on how I could increase my hashrate - currently at a mere 1.6 Mh/s :(

user217420

Posted 2013-04-16T10:22:50.163

Reputation:

Which CPU do you have? The precise model number, e.g. "Intel i7 920", or "Intel core -i 3240T". Once you know that you can enter the model at http://ark.intel.com/ and it will tell you if your CPU has an onboard GPU part. If it has once then the fun starts, since Intel GPUs and openCL drivers have had some issues.

– Hennes – 2013-04-16T10:33:28.220

Yes, its an integrated GPU within the CPU. Is it powerful enough to mine Bitcoins, sure, just not very powerful. Even the slowest GPU is better then a CPU because of the type of process mining Bitcoins involves. – Ramhound – 2013-04-16T10:45:58.067

I have Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-2400 CPU @ 3.10GHz (4 CPUs), ~3.1GHz

If that helps... – None – 2013-04-16T11:07:38.770

Answers

3

Nehalem and Sandy Bridge CPUs

The GPUs inside Core iX-YYY and Core iX-2YYY aren't OpenCL capable, so mining operations are actually performed by the CPU, not the integrated GPU.

Ivy Bridge CPUs

The GPUs inside Core iX-3YYY are OpenCL capable, but even the fastest of them (Core i7-3xx7U) have 16 execution units and a core clock of up to 1300 MHz.

In comparison, an AMD Radeon HD 7950 has 1792 stream processors1 and a core clock of 850 MHz. Therefore, the AMD card will mine (1792 * 850) / (16 * 1300) = 73.23 times faster than the Intel GPU.

Since the former mines at roughly 450 MH/s, the latter will mine at roughly 6.14 MH/s. That's magnitudes better than the results your getting, but not worth the trouble.

Sources


1 For bitcoin mining, a stream processor is comparable to an execution unit.

Dennis

Posted 2013-04-16T10:22:50.163

Reputation: 42 934

I have a Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-2400 CPU @ 3.10GHz (4 CPUs), ~3.1GHz

So, I will continue mine at 1.6 MH/s ? No way I can improve to something like 100 or 200 MH/s ? – None – 2013-04-16T11:10:02.200

Sadly, no. The mining hardware comparison lists your CPU at 14 MH/s when using CPU miner. – Dennis – 2013-04-16T11:16:10.253

1

Both NVidia and AMD have a separate programming languages (CUDA and OpenCL) to allow access to their GPUs for non-3D game programming. The bitcoin mining programs are using these interfaces to take advantage of the highly parallel nature of the GPUs to accelerate the computations.

At this time Intel GPUs only accelerate 3D games through DirectX (there is also some support for OpenGL but a lot of reported issues). There is talk of Intel supporting on of the existing GPU programming languages or adding their own. This would be needed for the bitcoin mining programs to take advantage of the GPU. Until then the fall back on the CPU.

You need to either buy a dedicated graphics card or look at one of the new ASIC devices specifically dedicated to bitcoin mining. For dedicated cards AMD performs much better than nVidia (see here) but both will perform better than the CPU. The ASIC devices will perform much better than any of them.

Brad Patton

Posted 2013-04-16T10:22:50.163

Reputation: 9 939

Nvidia dosen't seem to do well in bitcoin mining, for this, at least ATI is a clearly better choice – Journeyman Geek – 2013-04-16T11:01:32.080

@JourneymanGeek meant that either was better than the CPU. Updated answer to clarify, Thanks. – Brad Patton – 2013-04-16T11:09:35.433

0

Don't forget about this. http://software.intel.com/en-us/vcsource/tools/opencl-sdk

Intel is working on openCL for CPU & it does work with some miner apps.

the miner apps thinks its a GPU but its the CPU. have fun ;)

E-TARD The LifeCaster

Posted 2013-04-16T10:22:50.163

Reputation: 1