Cryptocoin Mining?

[Acanthus]

Seems interesting to say the least.

I'll give it a shot when i get home from work, i have 3x 6850's.

 

[Muyoso]

I think I'd smell burnt pcb if I tried for those settings, that one of those extra nice cooling models?

My case had horrible airflow. I just rigged a 120mm fan in the place of 3 5.25" slots and it dropped the temps 10c.

 

[dust]

Can I use the second PCI-E slot on my mb for an additional card without cross-firing it to the first one? I could get a 6850 for cheap even here. The second card would be exclusively for mining.

 

[Dark Shroud]

Yes, even better mining works with slower slots so 4x & 1x are ok.

 

[v8envy]

Places like cablesaurus also sell PCIe extension cables, so you can use the previously worthless 1x and 4x slots for a card. And with the extensions you can locate your cards far away from each other (a crossfire bridge is NOT needed for this) for better cooling. Maybe even point a Walmart box fan at them.

Another 20% crunching capacity added to slush's pool since this time yesterday. Simply amazing. Just on tuesday I was excited to see a terahash/sec, today we're at 1.4. With the current bitcoin price anticipating another 80% or so increase in difficulty I'm glad to be seeing any bit coins at all. My 520 Mhash/sec are averaging about .03 coins/hour or so now, but I expect I'll be happy to see .03 coins/day come July.

IMO the currency is meant to be deflationary but not *this* deflationary. What we're seeing now is borderline stupid. Won't be long untl even large compute farms will take a month to generate a coin, and they'll be like $20000 ask and no bids on the exchanges. Imminent collapse of bitcoins predicted. =)

 

[chihlidog]

Has anyone seen a card just crap out due to running at full load constantly? Im mining now, and my temps are great (77c under 99% load, fan only at 32%) but I am just paranoid about leaving it run constantly like that.

 

[Acanthus]

Hmm, something isn't right, i have an account set up with BTC Guild, workers set up properly.

Problem 1: Using the following settings is giving me 5-6 MHASH/s which is awful.

Problem 2: Every time i try to enable the BFI_INT argument it instantly crashes to desktop after opening.

I am using Phoenix with this string of arguments.

(slow)
C:\phoenix-1.48\phoenix.exe -u http://username:pass@btcguild.com:8332/ -k poclbm DEVICE=1 VECTORS AGGRESSION=5

(crashes to desktop)
C:\phoenix-1.48\phoenix.exe -u http://username:pass@btcguild.com:8332/ -k poclbm DEVICE=1 VECTORS AGGRESSION=5 BFI_INT

Edit: It appears to be using the CPU and not the 6850. All 8 threads are running 96-100%. Kind of amazing i didn't notice any stalls in general usage while this is running.

 

[v8envy]

Both are symptomps of using the wrong device -- in this case I suspect you're running somewhere around a 3.5 ghz i7.

If you run the clinfo program it should tell you which device is your video card.

What's worse is different versions of the SDK change device numbers. Try device 0 or 3, see if you get the numbers you expect.

edit: woops just read what you have on your rig. 5-6 Mhash/sec was waay low for an i7 at 5 ghz though, something else needs a bunch of tweaking. Try AGGRESSION=12 and see if you can still use your CPU for general tasks.

 

[Muyoso]

Hmm, something isn't right, i have an account set up with BTC Guild, workers set up properly.

Problem 1: Using the following settings is giving me 5-6 MHASH/s which is awful.

Problem 2: Every time i try to enable the BFI_INT argument it instantly crashes to desktop after opening.

I am using Phoenix with this string of arguments.

(slow)
C:\phoenix-1.48\phoenix.exe -u http://username:pass@btcguild.com:8332/ -k poclbm DEVICE=1 VECTORS AGGRESSION=5

(crashes to desktop)
C:\phoenix-1.48\phoenix.exe -u http://username:pass@btcguild.com:8332/ -k poclbm DEVICE=1 VECTORS AGGRESSION=5 BFI_INT

Edit: It appears to be using the CPU and not the 6850. All 8 threads are running 96-100%. Kind of amazing i didn't notice any stalls in general usage while this is running.

DEVICE=1 is prob your CPU. Try DEVICE=0.

 

[Vesku]

Bitcoin difficulty is based on the amount of computing in the peer group correct? If so wouldn't it cycle around an equilibrium point based on the currently available hardware? If difficulty jumps up to the point that someone with a single Radeon gpu only gets 0.2 Bitcoins every week or longer then they are likely to drop out of the network entirely. As more of those people stop mining the difficulty level would adjust downward until it entices those people to get back in and the difficulty climbs again.

 

[dakU7]

Bitcoin difficulty is based on the amount of computing in the peer group correct? If so wouldn't it cycle around an equilibrium point based on the currently available hardware? If difficulty jumps up to the point that someone with a single Radeon gpu only gets 0.2 Bitcoins every week or longer then they are likely to drop out of the network entirely. As more of those people stop mining the difficulty level would adjust downward until it entices those people to get back in and the difficulty climbs again.

I've been thinking about the exact same thing. In that situation, will the difficulty decrease?

 

[Chiropteran]

Bitcoin difficulty is based on the amount of computing in the peer group correct? If so wouldn't it cycle around an equilibrium point based on the currently available hardware? If difficulty jumps up to the point that someone with a single Radeon gpu only gets 0.2 Bitcoins every week or longer then they are likely to drop out of the network entirely. As more of those people stop mining the difficulty level would adjust downward until it entices those people to get back in and the difficulty climbs again.

Yes, except BTC value has been trending upward very closely with difficulty increases.

Right now you make 1 BTC/day, 1 BTC is worth $30, so you make $30/day.

Next week, difficulty doubles.

You make .5BTC/day. But BTC value jumps to $60, and you still make $30/day. It sounds a little crazy, but this is what has been occurring so far, more or less.

 

[Vesku]

I've been thinking about the exact same thing. In that situation, will the difficulty decrease?

That's something I'd like to hear from someone knowledgeable, does it decrease or just not grow as quickly? Is the difficulty purely based on the length of the chain? If so it would just stagnate and you wouldn't see small miners come back in until you get quite a leap in individual GPU hashing power.

 

[Mark R]

That's something I'd like to hear from someone knowledgeable, does it decrease or just not grow as quickly? Is the difficulty purely based on the length of the chain? If so it would just stagnate and you wouldn't see small miners come back in until you get quite a leap in individual GPU hashing power.

The difficulty is meant to dynamically adjust so that there are about 150 new 'blocks' per day.

At the moment, each block yields 50 BTC to the creator of the block, in order to pump up the 'money supply'. In due course, the yield of each 'block' will reduce. Once 20 million BTCs have been created, mining will cease to yield any new BTC.

Crunching will still be needed in order to process transactions, but the idea is that people will continue to 'crunch' because they have the option to charge transaction processing fees.

 

[Acanthus]

DEVICE=1 is prob your CPU. Try DEVICE=0.

Switched to Device=0 and it shot up to ~185 and now the INT switch works.

Thank you.

 

[Darkstar757]

ATOT folks join the simplecoin.us pool. Its open source and free to use!

 

[Auric]

Now overclock!* :awe:

My 6850 with poclbm and -v -w 128 executes 190 Mhash/s. @ 950 MHz, 230-240 depending upon -f value. Phoenix with phatk up to 252 but 244 for desktop usability. So, a few percent higher for equivalent.

*Pro-tip: but underclock memory near to but not minimum as that limits rate slightly (try around 350 MHz).


I'm curious what would be considered the maximum safe overclock for constant use -inclusive of any voltage increase. My understanding is that 6850 (775 MHz) load voltage ~ 1150 mV but 6870 is the same core without any parts deactivated and clocked @ 900 MHz with ~ 1175 mV. So, while my arbitrary 950 MHz is already a 23% increase, even 1000 MHz (for instance) would still be a mild 11% for a 6870 (or 6850 with 1175 mV). Nay?

 

[Dice144]

So am I a fool for not jumping on the Bit coining mining? Gear in sig, I been planning to buy a 6950 anyhow...

 

[Dark Shroud]

Not with a GTX 460, you would have just been wasting eletricity. Nvidia cards are no good for Bitcoin mining.

 

[Chiropteran]

ATOT folks join the simplecoin.us pool. Its open source and free to use!

I've tried. Registration doesn't work for me. it says account created, and then won't work saying wrong password.

Slush's giving good returns, anyway.

 

[dakU7]

I've tried. Registration doesn't work for me. it says account created, and then won't work saying wrong password.

Slush's giving good returns, anyway.

Really? it hasn't been good to me lately. With ~1Gh/s i'm no where near my estimated BTC per day.
Is it a good idea to join a relatively small pool? Will I see slower but overall better results with a pool pushing ~200Ghash/s?

 

[pcm81]

Remember that pools are competeing agains eachother. So, that means a very large pool, may be solving a block every 20 minutes, but a small pool is soliving a block every 2 days. The larger the pool the more stready your income will be, however in a very long term (think 1 year +++) your income from any pool or even solo will be the same.

 

[repoman0]

Almost tried this a couple weeks ago, I really wish I had. Started this morning at around 11AM, running 195Mhash/s with a single HD5770 and I've made .25BTC in slush's pool, at this rate turns into about $200/month.. not bad for hardware I already have, will very easily pay for electricity + some nice extra money.

 

[v8envy]

Pretty much everyone with an ATI card is dogpiling on. All pools are seeing a stunning day to day growth (20% each).

I found with AGGRESSION=5 I can not only mine but also play some games while I do so. D&D Online for instance runs just fine (but gives me about a 40 Mhash/sec haircut). I may do that just for the convenience.

As far as difficulty -- it auto adjusts every 210000 blocks. If it's sky high and people stop mining it'll take a very, very, very VERY long time to adjust again.

Switched one of my miners to BTCGuild pool with a .5% donation. Not that I have anything against slush, but I'll try both pools at once for a week or so and see if there's a significant payout difference. Been getting waay too many rejects in slush's pool, going to see if long polling support helps.

 

[OVerLoRDI]

So am I a fool for not jumping on the Bit coining mining? Gear in sig, I been planning to buy a 6950 anyhow...

It's a trap