Cryptocoin Mining?

[TakeNoPrisoners]

This is my dilemma too, doesn't make a LOT of sense. I might just stick with using my 4x6950's.

If you have 4 6950's there isnt much else to upgrade to. Unless you buy a new rig.

 

[ViviTheMage]

If you have 4 6950's there isnt much else to upgrade to. Unless you buy a new rig.

That is kind of the plan...but seems overkill, haha.

 

[Ares1214]

I have a 4890, wonder if this is worth doing...Maybe could upgrade to some 5850's for this. How profitable has this been for people? I guess we all know why Nvidia's stocks have been dropping

 

[TakeNoPrisoners]

That is kind of the plan...but seems overkill, haha.

You could always get a quad 5830 rig. It seems to be the way to go. I know I was saying 5970's are the way to go a page ago but you cannot deny the efficiency of the 5830's.

 

[Aikouka]

That is kind of the plan...but seems overkill, haha.

If you're going to buy any new hardware, I would go with 5830s if you can find them. They have the lowest cost of entry and can perform admirably compared to its bigger brother(s).

I might need to change my username to Negative Nancy after all this, but I'm losing faith day after day in the Bitcoin market in regard to being profitable. Just watching the pools gradually rise... BTCG went from ~1.2GH to ~2.4GH over the course of one week. This severely hampers the average Joe's ability to gain bitcoins as it will only be the people that continually invest in their infrastructure that see similar rewards as more workers join.

The problem there is... they're adding more hardware (aka spending more money) simply to see the same amount of return. The worst part is that bitcoins aren't even trading for as much as they used to, so technically they're adding hardware at even less of a return considering conversion rates.

Note that some of my figures tend to come from me looking at block statistics on BTCG, which shows you how much people earned (sorted by highest BTC gained) per block. The highest person when I started earned ~1 BTC per block and the highest person now still earns ~1 BTC (around .8 it seems). Given the rise in difficulty and more people adding workers (that are in turn taking shares away), these people have to add more hardware to see the same return.

So, in short... adding hardware tends to help you "keep up with the Jones" and also keep your own level of BTC reward as the difficulty increases, but overall $/hour seems to be getting worse compared to $ invested. The worst thing as an investor is to see your ROI go down (especially considering ROI / time).

 

[gorobei]

right now its only worth mining if you already have the equipment. the cost of a custom mining rig with new multi pcie slot mb, multiple cards, and high wattage psu makes the initial outlay too big to recoup costs quickly. which means you are in for the long haul and highly dependent on bitcoin exchange rate.

some of the rackmount builds i've seen on the bitcoin forums are insane. triple 6950 boards x5 in a custom rack. multiple Ghash rates.

the real question is will everyone eventually be forced to work in pools just because the compute power has grown to big?

 

[JSt0rm]

well i was going to wait for the 7000 series from amd to upgrade my 4890 but if this thing tanks I would probably pick up a 6950 for cheap.

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

A 6950 is about $200... do you think you'll be able to recuperate that much money if the price doesn't bounce back? It'll probably only give you between 270-300 MHashes extra.

well either way i have a full system setup. my only cost now is to get a new graphics card.... a 6950 should repay itself decently running 24/7

 

[Chiropteran]

Got my newegg gift card from spendbitcoins.com The memory I was going to buy was sold out, so I went with cheaper and only got 4GB, and had to fill in with some flash drives to spend all my gift card.

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This system will be used with 3X5830s I bought last time newegg had them in stock at $109. I have a myopenpc open enclosure to set it up in, and a spare mouse/keyboard somewhere, will install windows via USB so no need for an optical drive. Going to also be used as a desktop of sorts by my GF, so I decided to opt for the dual core CPU instead of a cheap sempron. Am I the only person who thinks scanning electron microscope porn when i see that CPU name? When/if bitcoin mining loses it's luster, I can add a bulldozer and turn this into my main system.

 

[gorobei]

well either way i have a full system setup. my only cost now is to get a new graphics card.... a 6950 should repay itself decently running 24/7 when i'm running it at a school lab

http://www.alloscomp.com/bitcoin/calculator.php

at 18$=1btc (last known rate before hack/selloff) you will need over a month at ~300+ Mhash

 

[notty22]

Owners of mtgox on live right now
http://onlyonetv.com/?page_id=178

http://twitter.com/#!/brucewagner

Going to be down 2-4 more days.

will open soon.
http://claim.mtgox.com

 

[Spike]

So, assuming everything comes back just fine is there any reason I should not try this? I have a 6970 in my main gaming rig sitting around doing nothing right now except when I play some games. I also have a 5870 in my lan box that is used very seldomly, only 10-12 times per year. Would it be worth setting both (or 1) up and just letting it go? We have cheap power here and my PSU's are somewhat efficient so I'm not worried on that end.

Just wondering what the down sides are. Is my PC basically useless for anything else while it's running? Can I interrupt the process without much consequence or do I need to have a pc I can dedicate to this? For that matter would my old pc with the 4870 512 thats almost never used work as well?

Thanks!

 

[repoman0]

^You can set priority with GUIminer. -f 30 in the extra flags and you will still be able to play any game you want (for less mhash/s bitmining obviously). -f 0 and it will be laggy during light use (but your mhash/s will stay very near its max).

Might as well go for it, you'll for sure end up a few bucks ahead!

 

[NoStateofMind]

bitcoins.lc and BTCguild.com down?

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

Is there a need to use 64-bit OS?

Will Windows XP work fine for dual 6950s?

It's a dual core Opteron rig with only 2gb RAM, so I'd probably stay on XP, but if I need I have a Vista license I'm not using right now (yuck). If XP is ok, I'll just hop onto Newegg and buy my 6950s later tonight.

I've never messed with heavy GPUs (I'm only on a 4850 now and I had a 7800GT before), but I'm probably gonna have to get some 80mm fans for my old case which has 0 working case fans right now. The CPU will be cooled by a 120mm cooler thankfully.

 

[hdfxst]

I'm using xp 32 bit with a 5850 and 5830 and getting 550 Mhash/s

 

[Dark Shroud]

bitcoins.lc and BTCguild.com down?

I don't know about BTCguild but bitcoins.lc is running. I haven't stopped mining during all this hassle.

 

[dust]

All the servers report normal load except for the second Netherlands server, which is high ATM.

 

[TakeNoPrisoners]

http://mining.bitcoin.cz/ is down

 

[repoman0]

http://mining.bitcoin.cz/ is down

I beg to differ

 

[Spike]

I followed the instructions in the OP but have some issues. first off the miner program can't find my 5870, something about no opencl device detected and possibly needing to install the stream SDK? Second, I can't get the miner to start, not even on CPU, as I can't seem to find the pool I joined in the list. I just picked the pool from the OP (mining.bitcoin.cz). Any ideas?

thanks!

 

[aka1nas]

I followed the instructions in the OP but have some issues. first off the miner program can't find my 5870, something about no opencl device detected and possibly needing to install the stream SDK? Second, I can't get the miner to start, not even on CPU, as I can't seem to find the pool I joined in the list. I just picked the pool from the OP (mining.bitcoin.cz). Any ideas?

thanks!

Yes, you need to go install a video card driver with openCL support (the cats usually have a version with or without on AMD's site, and you can optionally install the Stream SDK separately).

Slush's pool is the name of the pool in question in GUIMiner.

 

[gorobei]

you need to install opencl driver. cat11.5 or higher.

as far as pools go. i mine at multiple pools just in case one has server/network issues.
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Comparison_of_mining_pools
guild
deepbit
bitcoins.lc
every so often you may get one with a couple of seconds to a minute of idle or low connection and your hashrate will go lower. to make up for the gaps i mine on 3 to make sure my full rate is being used all the time. guiminer faq page has info on how to set priority on 1 pool.

 

[Spike]

Thanks for the answers, I got it working on my lanbox running at ~350Mh. I have no idea whether this speed is worth it or not but thats what I will run with for now. I game too often on my main PC to want to tie up my 6970, at least for right now.

We will see what this 5870 can net me...

 

[Chiropteran]

Updated OP to add that you need a recent cat driver for openCL support.