Cryptocoin Mining?

[Smartazz]

Honestly, unless you game a lot, you shouldn't buy a 7950/7970 if you already have a 6870. It would take a long time for such expensive cards to pay for themselves.

 

[sojuhasu]

Thank you for the many advice !

I guess I needed some justification to buy a 7970 because I currently have a grand in the bank from tax return and nothing to spend it on
After considering your inputs, I've decided to keep my 6870 and try bitmining a little bit with it. See if it suits me.

Yea, my favorites games are actually rather lightweight in the GPU such as Paradox's grand strategy titles (EU3, HoI3) and only play heavyweight games on weekends. I guess I am just a little bit OCD and hate to see fps dip below 60fps when gaming (e.g. Witcher 2)

 

[Smartazz]

Thank you for the many advice !

I guess I needed some justification to buy a 7970 because I currently have a grand in the bank from tax return and nothing to spend it on
After considering your inputs, I've decided to keep my 6870 and try bitmining a little bit with it. See if it suits me.

Yea, my favorites games are actually rather lightweight in the GPU such as Paradox's grand strategy titles (EU3, HoI3) and only play heavyweight games on weekends. I guess I am just a little bit OCD and hate to see fps dip below 60fps when gaming (e.g. Witcher 2)

Heh, I'm in the same boat where a 6870 is more than enough for my needs. I'm currently playing Rise of Nations from 2003 which allows me to Bitcoin mine and play at the same time haha.

 

[blastingcap]

Paxum backed out of bitcoin exchanges just because the government looked at them the wrong way, and now I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop: Dwolla. I expect that it won't take much pressure for Dwolla to also back out. Even if you don't personally cash out of bitcoins using the big exchanges, other people do; they have real server expenses and such to take care of. The merchants who take bitcoins probably need to go through MtGox and by extension, places like Dwolla.

The last thing we need is even MORE miners and even higher difficulty and lower bitcoin prices.

 

[airdata]

What kind of MH does a 79xx pull?

 

[Smartazz]

What kind of MH does a 79xx pull?

Depends on how much it's overclocked. This is a helpful chart: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mining_hardware_comparison

 

[sojuhasu]

I just started bitcoin mining. Joined deepbit, fired up GUIMiner, the 2011-08 version.
My average at the moment is only 190+ Mhash/s for my 6870. Did I mess up something ?

My core clock is at 948 and Memory clock at 1114
On this page : https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mining_hardware_comparison
6870 at similar speed have around 270-300 Mhash


I do notice a general system slowdown ever since I started mining. Screen redraw is particularly noticeable. Is there some way to limit the miner to 90% gpu usage so that screen redraw would be smooth ? I disabled hardware acceleration in firefox for the moment.

 

[MrTeal]

I just started bitcoin mining. Joined deepbit, fired up GUIMiner, the 2011-08 version.
My average at the moment is only 190+ Mhash/s for my 6870. Did I mess up something ?

My core clock is at 948 and Memory clock at 1114
On this page : https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mining_hardware_comparison
6870 at similar speed have around 270-300 Mhash


I do notice a general system slowdown ever since I started mining. Screen redraw is particularly noticeable. Is there some way to limit the miner to 90% gpu usage so that screen redraw would be smooth ? I disabled hardware acceleration in firefox for the moment.

The old version of Guiminer is slower. If you can deal with a command line, download Phoenix. I just made two batch files, and when I want to run slow I just use this command line.

phoenix.exe -u http://UN:PW@api2.bitcoin.cz:8332/ -k phatk2 DEVICE=0 VECTORS4 WORKSIZE=128 BFI_INT AGGRESSION=4

It updates fine with that, and I get 280 vs 320@1000MHz with fastloop off and aggression 13

Edit: You don't need to OC your memory. It doesn't speed anything up and just increases power draw.

 

[Smartazz]

I just started bitcoin mining. Joined deepbit, fired up GUIMiner, the 2011-08 version.
My average at the moment is only 190+ Mhash/s for my 6870. Did I mess up something ?

My core clock is at 948 and Memory clock at 1114
On this page : https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mining_hardware_comparison
6870 at similar speed have around 270-300 Mhash


I do notice a general system slowdown ever since I started mining. Screen redraw is particularly noticeable. Is there some way to limit the miner to 90% gpu usage so that screen redraw would be smooth ? I disabled hardware acceleration in firefox for the moment.

Use the flags: -v -w128 -f120

That'll make things smoother and speed up mining.

 

[MrTeal]

The new 12.2 driver gave me a "free" boost of about 20mhash on my single 5830 system. I haven't updated my other boxes yet, but from the bitcoin forums it sounds like these are the drivers to use now.

http://support.amd.com/us/kbarticles/Pages/catalyst122precertifieddriver.aspx

I am planning on trying these out once I get a little testing done for efficiency. Was there any flags that helped optimize for the new drivers, or was it update and forget?

Also, I've been getting some great efficiency numbers with turning down the OC and volts on my 6870. I'm now down to 1000MHz @ 1.168V core, which is giving me 318MHash/s and a total system draw at the wall of about 210W. Considering my idle is about 90-95W, that's pretty decent. It's not Furmark stable at the voltage, but it's fine for mining and browsing the internet. 1000MHz @ 1.16V is actually stable for mining, but I'll get driver crashes if I'm browsing around on flash heavy sites.

 

[Chiropteran]

I am planning on trying these out once I get a little testing done for efficiency. Was there any flags that helped optimize for the new drivers, or was it update and forget?

I just used the same flags as before, -v 2 -w 256 for 5830s (on diablominer) and saw the mhash gain.

However, on my first home mining box, the update didn't give the same results as it did on the other box. Somehow I lost 7mhash by updating, as far as I can tell. However I have a second system nearly identical to this one, before I update it I'm going to test the mhash with 12.1 in a couple different ways in case it was something I missed that I changed.

Based on the bitcoin forums it sounds like 12.2 is a gain for almost everyone, so at this point I'm assuming it's some error on my side and I didn't really lose performance due to the upgrade.

 

[Smartazz]

I am planning on trying these out once I get a little testing done for efficiency. Was there any flags that helped optimize for the new drivers, or was it update and forget?

Also, I've been getting some great efficiency numbers with turning down the OC and volts on my 6870. I'm now down to 1000MHz @ 1.168V core, which is giving me 318MHash/s and a total system draw at the wall of about 210W. Considering my idle is about 90-95W, that's pretty decent. It's not Furmark stable at the voltage, but it's fine for mining and browsing the internet. 1000MHz @ 1.16V is actually stable for mining, but I'll get driver crashes if I'm browsing around on flash heavy sites.

What's stock voltage on your 6870?

 

[MrTeal]

What's stock voltage on your 6870?

It's this guy.
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814161389
Stock is 900MHz core, 1050MHz mem, 1.2V vcore.

At stock settings, I get 289MHash/s with phatk2, vectors4, worksize 128, fastloop off and aggression 13. That draws on about 202W from the wall measured with a Kill A Watt. Temps stabilize at 56C/43% fan speed with a custom profile.
At lowest stable volts, I get 289MHash at 900MHz core, 1050MHz memory, 1.024V, 167W at the wall at 49C/34%.

Pretty decent since my system idle @1.24V is 93W. That gives me a ΔP of 74W to do 289MHash. I leave my system in 24/7 anyway, so electricity costs are pretty low.

 

[sojuhasu]

How safe is it to mine if my 6870 is at 50 C when idle and 80 C when mining ?
Cos I notice you are at 50 C when mining !

PS
synchronize takes forever !

 

[Imouto]

MrTeal, as fas as I know lowering your memory clock to the floor would give you the same hash/h and energy savings.

 

[MrTeal]

MrTeal, as fas as I know lowering your memory clock to the floor would give you the same hash/h and energy savings.

Yeah, for some reason my memory clocks aren't lowering. If you look at the image I'm trying to set them to 900 in afterburner, it just doesn't do anything. I can set them above 1050, just not below. Obviously I need to investigate more.

Upgrade results
Core/Mem/Voltage/Power/Temp/Fan%/MHashs

CCC v11.12
900/1050/1.024V/167W/49C/32%/289
1000/1050/1.168V/207W/55C/43%/320
1040/1050/1.25V/239W/57C/80%/335

CCC v12.3 (not sure why it should 12.3, I thought it was 12.2)
900/1050/1.024V/165W/51C/34%/290
1000/1050/1.168V/206W/56C/43%/321
1040/1050/1.25V/235W/57C/80%/333

I'd say for me it's basically a wash.

sojuhasu, I'd say it's fine as long as you can deal with the noise. I have an Arctic Cooling Accelero Twin Turbo II, so my temp and fan speed results aren't really comparable to a stock blower.

 

[Chiropteran]

I could never lower my mem speeds more than 100mhz until I got a copy of clocktweak.

http://bitcoinx.com/clocktweak/

It's not free but it nearly is, .2 bitcoins for a DRM-free download which you can then use on all your computers.

I'm sure there are other cheaper solutions to lowering your memory clocks, but I found this easy enough to use and I didn't mind spending less than a dollar to get it.

In other news, I "fixed" my headless box to operate fine through splashtop remote, so I can check and restart miners or adjust video card clocks all remotely, I should never need to attach a mouse keyboard or monitor to this system again. I could even theoretically do these things from my cellphone, but using windows without a mouse on a cellphone is a bit awkward.

 

[Imouto]

I used AMD GPU Clock Tool and Sapphire Trixx on my 5850 for perma 300 Mhz memory.

 

[hdfxst]

guiminer was just updated for anyone who's still using it https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3878.0

 

[Chiropteran]

guiminer was just updated for anyone who's still using it https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3878.0

Yeah I saw that, and I thought it was dead. Too late for me though, I've adjusted to diablominer and it's just so easy to use for every box I mine on due to it's command line interface and lack of a required install.

I keep my mining files all on dropbox, so when I setup a new box I just install dropbox and run the mining .bat file as appropriate directly from dropbox, and/or copy it out onto the desktop if I want to make box specific modifications. This makes it very easy to update, as I update the diablominer on dropbox and all my mining boxes are automagically updated the next time i stop and restart mining.

simple bat file to mine like the following-

c:\users\username\dropbox\bitcoin\diablominer\diablominer-windows.exe -o mine3.btcguild.com -u username -p password -v 2 -w 256

As easy as guiminer was, It's so much easier to not have to install anything except drivers, dropbox, and java.

 

[MrTeal]

So, I'm looking at putting together a dedicated rig, and I'm wondering what kind of MHash/$ ratio people look to get when they're buying a used card? I'm thinking something in the range of 3.5 would be about the minimum that would be acceptable for dedicated hardware. Does that sound reasonable?

 

[dajeepster]

Yeah, for some reason my memory clocks aren't lowering. If you look at the image I'm trying to set them to 900 in afterburner, it just doesn't do anything. I can set them above 1050, just not below. Obviously I need to investigate more.

Upgrade results
Core/Mem/Voltage/Power/Temp/Fan%/MHashs

CCC v11.12
900/1050/1.024V/167W/49C/32%/289
1000/1050/1.168V/207W/55C/43%/320
1040/1050/1.25V/239W/57C/80%/335

CCC v12.3 (not sure why it should 12.3, I thought it was 12.2)
900/1050/1.024V/165W/51C/34%/290
1000/1050/1.168V/206W/56C/43%/321
1040/1050/1.25V/235W/57C/80%/333

I'd say for me it's basically a wash.

sojuhasu, I'd say it's fine as long as you can deal with the noise. I have an Arctic Cooling Accelero Twin Turbo II, so my temp and fan speed results aren't really comparable to a stock blower.

I have the same problem with my 6970 and 6950.. but my 5xxx and 79xx series cards i have no problem down clocking the memory.

 

[Chiropteran]

So, I'm looking at putting together a dedicated rig, and I'm wondering what kind of MHash/$ ratio people look to get when they're buying a used card? I'm thinking something in the range of 3.5 would be about the minimum that would be acceptable for dedicated hardware. Does that sound reasonable?

If you are building an entire rig, the important value would be the total mhash/dollar ratio of the system. 3.5 seems unrealistic though.

Most of my miner systems do not have anything close to that ratio.

Hypothetical build which is fairly similar to what I recently put together:

$199 mb&cpu (I overpay some, could get buy with a cheaper option, but my miners are multi-use and used for non-mining purposes occasionally, so it's nice to have a better cpu than I need)

$80 power supply- 750w 80+ silver from a reputable brand

$50 case

$15~ ram

$330 3X radeon 5830

Total $674, mhash theoretical- 900~, 1.34mhash/$

Could save some making your own "case", or buying a minimal CPU, but I think It'd be tough to even reach 2mhash/$ unless you find some amazing values

 

[MrTeal]

If you are building an entire rig, the important value would be the total mhash/dollar ratio of the system. 3.5 seems unrealistic though.

Most of my miner systems do not have anything close to that ratio.

Hypothetical build which is fairly similar to what I recently put together:

$199 mb&cpu (I overpay some, could get buy with a cheaper option, but my miners are multi-use and used for non-mining purposes occasionally, so it's nice to have a better cpu than I need)

$80 power supply- 750w 80+ silver from a reputable brand

$50 case

$15~ ram

$330 3X radeon 5830

Total $674, mhash theoretical- 900~, 1.34mhash/$

Could save some making your own "case", or buying a minimal CPU, but I think It'd be tough to even reach 2mhash/$ unless you find some amazing values

Yes, I'm just talking about buying the cards. Most of the other stuff I have laying around, and while there's an opportunity cost associated with it, I really can't sell an old steel case for anything, and the power supplies and what not are tough to sell.

I'm looking at a used 5830 locally for $90, as well as a 6770 for $60 if I can get it. That would give me about 500MHash for an extra $150, plus an extra slot on the board if I can find another good deal. Right now my effective cost of electricity is better than normal since for every $3 I spend on electricity I save $1 on natural gas, but I'll have to reevaluate that in 3 months or so when it gets warmer.

Did you get those 5830s new or used?

 

[Chiropteran]

Did you get those 5830s new or used?

New, back when newegg had a shipment back in at prices below the average. Was one of those things were they sold out an hour later, just got lucky and bought a bunch. I sold a couple on ebay actually, because I ended up buying more than I would use, they all now in use.