Cryptocoin Mining?

[JSt0rm]

ouch. Time to buy! buy! buy! oh wait...

 

[Acanthus]

It has been hovering around $16 today.

The graph is a bit misleading as it is shown.

It bounces from $15-$25 week to week.

 

[JSt0rm]

It has been hovering around $16 today.

The graph is a bit misleading as it is shown.

It bounces from $15-$25 week to week.

yeah I think the graph is from last Friday lol. I've been busy as hell

 

[ultimatebob]

Bitcoining is a game which currently runs well only on 5 and 6 series AMD hardware. You max out your machine running it, and your score is in dollars. If you're good, you end up with more dollars than you've spent on power and hardware.

As far as worrying that the BTC craze is over: nobody knows the future. But looking at the past you have nothing to worry about so long as bitcoinwatch.com shows total computing power in the network increasing.

Personally, I'll be keeping an eye on Mt. Gox and seeing what the exchange rate is. If it gets below $8 a coin, I doubt that it would be profitable to mine them anymore due to the power consumption.

 

[ViviTheMage]

So how do you convert from bits to cash?

 

[hdfxst]

So how do you convert from bits to cash?

mt.gox>dwolla>bank acct. or you can just trade them for gift cards,i used this place and had good service http://www.btcbuy.info/Default.cshtml

 

[Chiropteran]

So how do you convert from bits to cash?

https://mtgox.com/ is the most popular exchange.

https://www.dwolla.com/default.aspx is the best way to get USD into and out of mtgox.com without excessive service fees.

As an alternative, you can sorta spend your bitcoins directly through
http://spendbitcoins.com/
...however the site owner is currently backlogged by up to 48 hours. I am trying to use this service myself to buy some hardware via bitcoins, I'll update this when I actually get my newegg gift card.

 

[RussianSensation]

Up and running in deepbit, averging about 231 per GPU..pulling 440w from my wall according to the ol' kill-a-watt.

That it? Hmm. My 6950@ 6970 speeds gets 370-375 Mhash/sec. There is no way a single HD6970 is 60% faster than a 5850.

HD6970 = 880 x 1536 x 2 ops per clock = 2.7 Tflops
HD5850 = 725 x 1440 x 2 = 2.09 Tflops

I think you should overclock your cards. I am thinking there will be a huge performance boost (i.e., 850mhz and you should crack 300 Mhash/sec on each).

mt.gox>dwolla>bank acct. or you can just trade them for gift cards,i used this place and had good service [URL="http://www.btcbuy.info/Default.cshtml"]http://www.btcbuy.info/Default.cshtml[/URL]

Just checked that place out. Thanks for the link. But there is no address for the Payee? Who do you pay your Bitcoin to? Or they send you a payee number in the email once you put the basics in?

 

[hdfxst]

you get the bitcoin address to send payment when you check out.

 

[hdfxst]

I had a problem getting my gift card and had to contact him.he checked with newegg and found i had misspelled the email address,.He was quick to reply and straighten out my screw up and i got my card

 

[Chiropteran]

When you were running 3 5830s, were they overclocked or overvolted? Would you mind telling me the full system spec? I have a system with a 130W processor, several hard drives, and a Corsair TX 750W. I was thinking if the GPU's were drawing ~200W each it would be a bad idea to try to hook up 3, but from what you're describing it sounds like it might work.. I'm running 2 right now and it would be really nice to add a 3rd.

Okay, some more info now that I am home.

The power supply is this:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817371031
A fairly low-end 620W supply. I bought this long before I was thinking about bitcoin mining, and didn't intend to ever run more than one video card, but it's ran fine so far.

I normally run with my secondary card at F1, and my primary card (which is also used for 3D gaming and desktop acceleration) at F128.

I run 2 hard drives, 1 SSD, 2 sapphire 5830s @ 875MHz (1Ghz RAM), several case fans, and load on my UPS is 440-460W while mining. IIRC it was around 550W peak when I was running 3 5830s, although I did not have them overclocked. 492-494 MHash/s total at this speed (w/ 2 5830s).

As a point of comparison, if I return the cards to default clock speed (800Mhz) the load goes down to 424-449W. 446-453 MHash/s

At 600Mhz, it's 372-388W pulled from the UPS. MHash total is 339/s


That said, I don't know how accurate the load reading on my UPS is. It's an APC Back-UPS XS 1000. The numbers make sense though, and I have no reason to doubt that they are reasonably accurate.

 

[Chiropteran]

That it? Hmm. My 6950@ 6970 speeds gets 370-375 Mhash/sec. There is no way a single HD6970 is 60% faster than a 5850.

At default clock a 5830 will easily make 230 MHash/s. Around 250MHash/s at 875Mhz, which is an easy OC without any voltage change or BIOS modding. If a 5850 is only making 230 MHash, something is not configured correctly.

 

[Smartazz]

At default clock a 5830 will easily make 230 MHash/s. Around 250MHash/s at 875Mhz, which is an easy OC without any voltage change or BIOS modding. If a 5850 is only making 230 MHash, something is not configured correctly.

Something must be wrong with my 6870 as well. I'm getting ~220MH/s at stock speeds(900MHz). It does scale with overclocks, but I still can't get it past about 235MH/s. The 6870 should be similar to the 5830 since both have 1120 shaders, but the 6870 is clocked considerably higher. Any ideas?

 

[Chiropteran]

Something must be wrong with my 6870 as well. I'm getting ~220MH/s at stock speeds(900MHz). It does scale with overclocks, but I still can't get it past about 235MH/s. The 6870 should be similar to the 5830 since both have 1120 shaders, but the 6870 is clocked considerably higher. Any ideas?

Are you using -v -w128 -f1?

Is there any possibility of it being a power issue? When I was using a 6970 I know overclocking wouldn't make a difference beyond a certain point unless I increased power.

 

[SlowSpyder]

Up and running in deepbit, averging about 231 per GPU..pulling 440w from my wall according to the ol' kill-a-watt.

What clock speed is that? I'm @ the factory (for Sapphire Vapor-X) 875/1250 and am regularly hovering around 360 Mhash per GPU. I think I'll kill-a-watt my system, but with my overclocked power hungry Phenom and two Vapor-X 5870's my system just shuts off after ~15 minutes of both cards mining. Temps for both cards are in the mid-upper 70's. To save power I think I'll put my Ph2 back to 3.0GHz.

If you have the power supply for it, I would overclock those GPU's. Even with less SP's I bet you can easily crack 300Mhash/sec.

 

[hdfxst]

Something must be wrong with my 6870 as well. I'm getting ~220MH/s at stock speeds(900MHz). It does scale with overclocks, but I still can't get it past about 235MH/s. The 6870 should be similar to the 5830 since both have 1120 shaders, but the 6870 is clocked considerably higher. Any ideas?

you have to find out what extra flags you have to run.i was pulling 260-270 Mhash until i added -v -w128 -f120 and then it went to 300-310 and i could use my computer without slow ups

 

[Aikouka]

you have to find out what extra flags you have to run.i was pulling 260-270 Mhash until i added -v -w128 -f120 and then it went to 300-310 and i could use my computer without slow ups

That's nice... I switched from f60 to f120 and my computer is a tad bit more usable heh. Although, I can easily watch the hash rate go down as I do things like type .

 

[Smartazz]

Using -v -w 128 -f 60 with my 6870. Getting almost 260MH/s now, thanks for the help!

 

[ViviTheMage]

I am on about an hour, only got .02 with 2 cards going 340 Mh/s each

this might not be worthwhile ...

 

[Chiropteran]

I am on about an hour, only got .02 with 2 cards going 340 Mh/s each

this might not be worthwhile ...

It's highly random, and that .02 is like $.32. Not bad for doing nothing. If you run it 24 hours at that rate you have about $8. Isn't that decent money for doing basically nothing, even after taking out for electricity costs?

It's not going to make you rich in a week, but it can be a fun hobby and give a little free income.

 

[Aikouka]

I am on about an hour, only got .02 with 2 cards going 340 Mh/s each

this might not be worthwhile ...

It sounds like you've just gotten some bad block luck.

http://www.btcguild.com/blocks.php

Here are the blocks that BTCGuild has completed and you'll see some really long ones in there (4 hours) but there are some that took less than 1 minute. Note that you usually gain about the same BTC per block. So if it takes four hours to finish, you're still only going to get about the same as if it took four minutes. I usually get ~.02 per block

 

[gorobei]

who are you pooling with?

i got an auto payout at 3pm, 5 hours later and i have .2 (conf + unconf)

 

[ViviTheMage]

using deepbit.

guess i'll see where it's at after 24 hours!

 

[hdfxst]

I am on about an hour, only got .02 with 2 cards going 340 Mh/s each

this might not be worthwhile ...

I have been using deepbit and according to their calculator 680 Mh/s will give you .7 btc/24h but the increased difficulty doesn't help,a few days ago my stats were 14 minutes and .50- .56 btc and the last 2 days it's 25 minutes and 28-30 btc

 

[ViviTheMage]

rough ... guess I am glad I started now then in 5 days ... haha