Cryptocoin Mining?

[note235]

No doubt a lot of lurkers on tech forums do indeed read these posts and take our advice, my LTC pool's worker count jumped by 6000 additional in the past two days. That's a lot of radeon sales, never to be accounted for by steam surveys, hidden, printing $$.

definitely agree

i just increased my own hashrate by 2x

 

[Xpage]

i check on this thread occasionally, looks like i should have jumped on btc 2.5 years ago and mined from my rig that sits idle. oh well.

 

[Smartazz]

Does anyone know of a good bit coin to amazon or similar site?

 

[blackened23]

How do CFX 290s compare to CFX 7970s for litecoins in terms of net gains minus electricity costs?

 

[gbeirn]

Does anyone know of a good bit coin to amazon or similar site?

bitcoinsaresexy.com

I've used them for $700 of Amazon on gift cards the past month and a half. Pretty quick service, they respond to e-mails if you have any questions or problems, great service. They are based in Dubai so depending on your time difference it can take a few hours to get the gift card.

 

[Silverforce11]

How do CFX 290s compare to CFX 7970s for litecoins in terms of net gains minus electricity costs?

Electricity price isnt even a factor because LTC is worth so much. You want something that hammers out as much kHa/s as possible in your rig.

Go play with the numbers:
http://dustcoin.com/

7950 OC to 1.1ghz can pull 600 kHa/s, 7970 seem to top out around 650 kHa/s (with OC).

STOCK:
290 get around 826 kHa/s if you can prevent them from throttling (max fan speed cap!).
290X seems to get 880 kHa/s, again if they do not throttle.

 

[blackened23]

I see, thank you. Aftermarket 290s need to be released stat....not gonna lie, that sounds pretty tempting.

 

[nwo]

290s are way too expensive right now.

Dual 7950 or 7970 is definitely the way to go if you want the best bang for the buck since you can get one for $200 or less (if you are lucky) while 290s start at about $400.

Not saying 290s won't pay for themselves, just saying they aren't the best bang for the buck in terms of kH/s/$

 

[Shmee]

yes, but they are great for gaming as well, and still good miners

 

[Silverforce11]

290s are way too expensive right now.

Dual 7950 or 7970 is definitely the way to go if you want the best bang for the buck since you can get one for $200 or less (if you are lucky) while 290s start at about $400.

Not saying 290s won't pay for themselves, just saying they aren't the best bang for the buck in terms of kH/s/$

kH/s only matters before they pay for themselves, after that, its purely kH/s as the only factor.

After 3 weeks, a R290 pays for itself. After that, pure profit.
A 7950 pays for itself in 2 weeks, after that, pure profit.

The delta is about a week. How long do you want to mine.. or rather, how long until newer ASICs obsolete GPU miners? Probably another year.

 

[Shmee]

Also, I expect the hashrate to increase as optimizations are made and people find better settings.

 

[Smartazz]

The r9 290's cooler is so bad it's not worth it.

 

[Shmee]

ordered a Gelid icy for mine.

 

[Smartazz]

ordered a Gelid icy for mine.

Oh how much are they running for? Maybe it's a worthwhile card, but all I play is BF4.

 

[Shmee]

got the cooler for about 60 bucks shipped, including taxes. The card was about 430 w/ tax, and it unlocked. Great in BF4 even at 1600p on High. Needed to unpark my CPU cores though in order to not get some weird lag.

 

[Smartazz]

I'm wondering if the 290x is worth the extra money once I'm spending $460 for a 290 and a cooler. What do you think?

 

[Silverforce11]

Mining would be the only reason where R290X are worth it over a R290, since in gaming, the difference isn't worth the price delta. Once optimized, R290X should pull ~10% extra kHa/s clock for clock.

 

[Smartazz]

Mining would be the only reason where R290X are worth it over a R290, since in gaming, the difference isn't worth the price delta. Once optimized, R290X should pull ~10% extra kHa/s clock for clock.

The 290x costs way more than 10% more. I wonder if I should get a 7970 on cyber monday or get a 290. I'm sure I'd love the 290 for BF4.

 

[BallaTheFeared]

The 290x costs way more than 10% more. I wonder if I should get a 7970 on cyber monday or get a 290. I'm sure I'd love the 290 for BF4.

You could get 3 7950s for slightly more than one 290, or slightly less than one 290 with a Gelid cooler.

For mining the answer there is pretty simple.

Depending on how deep down the rabbit hole you want to go your limit will be PCIe lanes for 7950 vs R290.

Then you have to start factoring PSU and boards/chip crappy cpus/HDDs.


My TF3 7950 pulls 650 khash/s at 1100, but for me it's kind of stupid because desktop consumption with just the one card running is exactly the same as what I get running both cards at 800/1500 which is right around 1000 khash +/- a few.

In the long term, either LTC price will drop, or diff will offset the price. Efficiency will win out, and I don't think R290 will beat the 3.2 khash/w that two 7950s can achieve while also outputting higher raw khash.

Really depends on how you look at it, I never saw it as a get rich quick deal and have sat on my LTC for almost a year now anyways.

For me since my rig is inside it comes down to heat and noise, 800/1500 is still good as far as I'm concerned. Bumping that up to 1300 khash/s would yield more profit in the short term, but at the cost of ware, heat, noise, and efficiency.

 

[suklee]

Just bought the Sapphire 7970 Vapor-X, time to say goodbye to Windows Vista (finally!) and install a fresh copy of Windows 8.

 

[Silverforce11]

It all comes down to where you believe the price of BTC and LTC will be in a years time. If you think it will be higher than today, then the priority is to get as many coins as you can from mining (if you're not buying them outright). Therefore, higher long term kHa/s is better than efficiency since the electricity cost is so minor compared to overall LTC earned.

 

[Smartazz]

You could get 3 7950s for slightly more than one 290, or slightly less than one 290 with a Gelid cooler.

For mining the answer there is pretty simple.

Depending on how deep down the rabbit hole you want to go your limit will be PCIe lanes for 7950 vs R290.

Then you have to start factoring PSU and boards/chip crappy cpus/HDDs.


My TF3 7950 pulls 650 khash/s at 1100, but for me it's kind of stupid because desktop consumption with just the one card running is exactly the same as what I get running both cards at 800/1500 which is right around 1000 khash +/- a few.

In the long term, either LTC price will drop, or diff will offset the price. Efficiency will win out, and I don't think R290 will beat the 3.2 khash/w that two 7950s can achieve while also outputting higher raw khash.

Really depends on how you look at it, I never saw it as a get rich quick deal and have sat on my LTC for almost a year now anyways.

For me since my rig is inside it comes down to heat and noise, 800/1500 is still good as far as I'm concerned. Bumping that up to 1300 khash/s would yield more profit in the short term, but at the cost of ware, heat, noise, and efficiency.

The problem is that it's impossible to find these cards at reasonable prices though. People are going nuts for Litecoin mining.

 

[AnonymouseUser]

The problem is that it's impossible to find these cards at reasonable prices though. People are going nuts for Litecoin mining.

The only Radeon cards on the shelf at Micro Center yesterday were 2 overpriced 7850s ($165) and 7770s/R7s or lower. Plenty of Nvidia cards, though.

 

[Pandora's Box]

The problem is that it's impossible to find these cards at reasonable prices though. People are going nuts for Litecoin mining.

yup. 7950's are going for $400 on amazon. all 280x's are out of stock (besides the xfx which has poor (aka none) vrm cooling). 290's are now $450 minimum.

 

[Smartazz]

This is ridiculous. I'm not paying that high above market price and betting on Litecoin. It's insane to think these profits are sustainable.