Cryptocoin Mining?

[BallaTheFeared]

I wonder how fast/costly FPGA's will be for Litecoin...

Considering I was only able to get 20 KH/s with my 7950 on a Phenom II system with 1GB of DDR2 (you need more ram to run higher thread concurrency, miner was reporting 550, but the website was only showing 20...

Anyways, second 7950 TF3 came today, it's a 6+8 version.

 

[24601]

I wonder how fast/costly FPGA's will be for Litecoin...

Considering I was only able to get 20 KH/s with my 7950 on a Phenom II system with 1GB of DDR2 (you need more ram to run higher thread concurrency, miner was reporting 550, but the website was only showing 20...

Anyways, second 7950 TF3 came today, it's a 6+8 version.

So far, it seems the 7950 TF3 7970 PCB is the best version.

The second best being the Sapphire 4L 7950 7970 PCB with reference cooler which is significantly cheaper.

Sapphire 2L is using reference 7950 PCB
Was able to get 1.188v@1125 core 1.600v@1700 mem

The HIS IceQ (haven't tested the IceQ2) 7950 seems like it has a good blower but the board is inferior to reference 7950 due to lack of VRM temperature sensors. Was only able to get stable @ 1.3v@1050 core 1.7v@1575 ram

 

[Silverforce11]

The reference design has a huge metal plate on the VRM as well as vram, keeping the entire setup cooler. This has to be worth something for 24/7 ops.

 

[wbynum]

I wonder how fast/costly FPGA's will be for Litecoin...

Considering I was only able to get 20 KH/s with my 7950 on a Phenom II system with 1GB of DDR2 (you need more ram to run higher thread concurrency, miner was reporting 550, but the website was only showing 20...

Anyways, second 7950 TF3 came today, it's a 6+8 version.

When I had that happen it was because of a to high intensity setting. Card was basically throwing errors on the shares. It was not until I ran reaper that the errors were obvious (cgminer did not report them). I have to mine scrypt at intensity 13. I have no clue how people are successfully doing it at intensity 20.

 

[BallaTheFeared]

I'm pulling 1350~ KH/s with both running 1100 using intensity 20.

It would not work at any intensity, and the highest thread concurrency I could use was 4000. /shrug

 

[24601]

I'm pulling 1350~ KH/s with both running 1100 using intensity 20.

It would not work at any intensity, and the highest thread concurrency I could use was 4000. /shrug

24000 threads @ 2 lookup gap (0 is same as 2 as 0 defaults to 2) uses 1504mB vram and consequently 1504mB system ram.

Anything under 21000 threads will lower performance in litecoins for 7950 significantly. Any Intensity less than 20 for 7950 will lower performance in litecoins.

This means you should have about 768 mB ram for system as well as 1504 mB ram per 7950 when you're calculating a build on Windows 7.

Processor clock speed matters as well when running high thread con-currencies and high intensity, so make sure your core clock for your CPU does not lower on low load. I do not know if this is due to the fluctuating of the clock speed or because of the absolute clock speed.

 

[BallaTheFeared]

It's the AM2+ board that is lacking ram, I looked but couldn't find the other sticks.

Either way it only has 1 PCIe anyways so it's pretty worthless and probably not worth trying to get ddr2 sticks for it.

Phenom II 555 work in AM3+?

 

[Keysplayr]

I'm pulling 1350~ KH/s with both running 1100 using intensity 20.

It would not work at any intensity, and the highest thread concurrency I could use was 4000. /shrug

Balla, do you mean MH/s ? Or 1.35GH/s ?

 

[blastingcap]

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=185816.0

(edit to add: and people are already talking about next-gen ASICs: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=179033.0 not to mention Avalon itself will probably transition to smaller node sizes etc. now that ASIC mining is proven to work and lucrative... they apparently made their stuff at a very ancient 110nm node size for cost reasons at TSMC, for the original Avalon chips. Further, FPGAs for Litecoin are being planned.)

Avalon ASICs will continue to flood the market. They already have 1200 more ASICs with what, 70 GH/s power each coming soon. Now there is word of 150 TH/s coming by August. On top of GPUs, FGPAs, ASICminer's ASICs running, and BFL Jalapenos shipping out with BFL rigs soon to follow. Current difficulty is 70 TH/s so this implies something like 4-5x increase in difficulty by August. A drop of 75-80% revenue implies a drop of more than that in profit, if you pay more than zero in electricity... probably more like 90% drop in profits.

Balla, do you mean MH/s ? Or 1.35GH/s ?

He's talking about litecoin mining, which is about 1000 times slower than BTC mining and is optimized differently (NV GPUs suck at mining either one, compared to AMD GPUs). As BTC mining goes through the roof GPU miners will likely flood LTC mining and make LTC far more difficult to mine. There's no escaping the rise in difficulty.

 

[Keysplayr]

Ah, gotcha. TY BC.

 

[Qianglong]

Guys do you think the gold rush is coming to an end quick and will there be any future cryptocurrencies that will match the popularity of bitcoin in the future

 

[Zargon]

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=185816.0

Avalon ASICs will continue to flood the market. They already have 1200 more ASICs with what, 70 GH/s power each coming soon. Now there is word of 150 TH/s coming by August. On top of GPUs, FGPAs, ASICminer's ASICs running, and BFL Jalapenos shipping out with BFL rigs soon to follow. Current difficulty is 70 TH/s so this implies something like 4-5x increase in difficulty by August. A drop of 75-80% revenue implies a drop of more than that in profit, if you pay more than zero in electricity... probably more like 90% drop in profits.



He's talking about litecoin mining, which is about 1000 times slower than BTC mining and is optimized differently (NV GPUs suck at mining either one, compared to AMD GPUs). As BTC mining goes through the roof GPU miners will likely flood LTC mining and make LTC far more difficult to mine. There's no escaping the rise in difficulty.

who knows whats really going on there.

I will probably stand up a LTC miner in the next week or so so get some while its easy and sit on them

 

[Chiropteran]

Guys do you think the gold rush is coming to an end quick and will there be any future cryptocurrencies that will match the popularity of bitcoin in the future

It's possible, but I doubt it. Bitcoin has years of momentum to it's advantage.

Hypothetically, lets say NewCoin comes out and has a couple clear advantages over bitcoin, and it even jumps up to $100 per NewCoin fairly quickly.

1- People who worry about the volatility of bitcoin, NewCoin is immensely more volatile! It was worth zero a month ago and now $100?

2- Most of the people who are willing to try these alternate cryptocurrency are already invested in bitcoin. It's against their own interests to switch to NewCoin.

3- The advantages of NewCoin, if they really are advantages and not just trade-offs, could easily be implemented into bitcoin. It's not like bitcoin is unchangeable.

4- People wonder, if NewCoin was just invented and already has taken this value from bitcoin, what will prevent NewCoin2.0 from coming out and taking value from NewCoin? Once you switch once there is nothing to hold you back from switching every time there is a new cryptocurrency.

I think there is a small subset of the people who are interested in bitcoin who obsessively mine and push every alternative cryptocurrency, because they missed out on the early days of bitcoin and want to get in on the ground floor of SOMETHING. Some people think bitcoin is being hurt in the long run because it's value is manipulated by speculators, well every single new alt cryptocurrency that effect is multiplied 100 fold because these new cryptocurrency have ZERO real world use and are only used for speculation, unlike bitcoin.

 

[Qianglong]

https://give-me-ltc.com/news

Seems down...DDoS again...

 

[HydroSqueegee]

well i have mixed feelings now about mining in a pool. in the past week i've found 3 blocks.

 

[Rikard]

I am still mining on my general purpose machine, and as such I need to turn off or lower intensity when I need to use it for other things than mining. Since mining puts no strain on the CPU, I was thinking that it should be possible to either use the integrated graphics or another GPU for simple things such as browsing. I have a 9800GT that is feeling a bit lonely in my drawer. If I connect a second cable between my NV card and the screen, would it just be a matter of changing input source of the screen or is this a bad idea? Would driver conflicts be an issue?

 

[birthdaymonkey]

I am still mining on my general purpose machine, and as such I need to turn off or lower intensity when I need to use it for other things than mining. Since mining puts no strain on the CPU, I was thinking that it should be possible to either use the integrated graphics or another GPU for simple things such as browsing. I have a 9800GT that is feeling a bit lonely in my drawer. If I connect a second cable between my NV card and the screen, would it just be a matter of changing input source of the screen or is this a bad idea? Would driver conflicts be an issue?

I had no problems using GUIMiner with a 7790 alongside a GTX 670. It would probably be better to use modern integrated graphics rather than a 9800GT. You'd have to switch over to your AMD card when you wanted to play games either way.

 

[KentState]

So, let me get this straight, for almost 2/3 the cost of a 7970 Ghz, something like this will mine 10x quicker? I was thinking about going CF, but one of these toys would be fun to play with.

https://products.butterflylabs.com/5-gh-s-bitcoin-miner.html

 

[birthdaymonkey]

So, let me get this straight, for almost 2/3 the cost of a 7970 Ghz, something like this will mine 10x quicker? I was thinking about going CF, but one of these toys would be fun to play with.

https://products.butterflylabs.com/5-gh-s-bitcoin-miner.html

That's correct. The question is if/when you'll ever receive it if you order it now and whether it'll make enough to pay for itself once it does eventually ship.

 

[KentState]

That's correct. The question is if/when you'll ever receive it if you order it now and whether it'll make enough to pay for itself once it does eventually ship.

That was my only concern. They say first come, first server which may turn into 4th quarter at this point. By then, video cards will be pointless and a 5Ghash may be the equivalent of my 7970 today.

 

[x3sphere]

That was my only concern. They say first come, first server which may turn into 4th quarter at this point. By then, video cards will be pointless and a 5Ghash may be the equivalent of my 7970 today.

Not if Litecoin takes off.

 

[Chiropteran]

That was my only concern. They say first come, first server which may turn into 4th quarter at this point. By then, video cards will be pointless and a 5Ghash may be the equivalent of my 7970 today.

There is no question in my mind that someday it will be just that. But it's really hard to say how soon the difficulty will "catch up" and make even ASIC profit slow down. It seems that all of the ASIC manufacturers are having trouble shipping in bulk in a timely manner. It might take years before enough items ship to really kill the profit.

And of course difficulty is only part of the equation, if price goes up or down that can throw everything off.

Now, I could be way off here, but this is my theory:

Mining on a GPU is highly profitable now. It has almost always been at least somewhat profitable, at least with my power costs, even when bitcoin crashed hard after $31.90 high of 2011 mining profits were still greater than electricity cost. Now, the total bitcoin produced is a static number. The more people in the mining game, the smaller my share gets. Still, it has always been somewhat profitable.

On an ASIC, I think the same basics will apply- mining on an ASIC will be profitable to a degree for a long time, even if value crashes. Someday newer ASIC built on a more advanced process might replace the current devices, but I think that is a long way off. But here is the difference: every gamer with a bit of brains and an AMD video card can bitcoin mine today, and many do. When ASICs are more readily available, this won't be the case anymore- only dedicated miners who buy ASICs will be mining. Instead of competing with 10000 AMD video card using gamers, I'll be competing with 2000 ASIC using professional miners. All in all I feel that the shift to ASIC will cut down the competition, and in turn my effective profit will be a little higher than it would otherwise be.

In any case, I pre-ordered before the price hike too, so that helps. I'm less inclined to buy a 50GH single for $2500, the 60GH single for $1200 was a significantly better deal. Though, I might just order a jalapeno or two to supplement my singles because I think it would be a neat little conversation starter.

 

[KentState]

So if i have $300 to blow on a toy, getting the 5GH/s is not a horrific idea? Might just get my name in the queue and see how it goes.

 

[blastingcap]

Not if Litecoin takes off.

You do realize that ASICs will simply push the hordes of GPUs into litecoin and thus litecoin difficulty go waaaaaaay up, right?

And all "coin" prices are driven by demand and supply, not by difficulty, so price doesn't automatically rise just because difficulty rises. But supply is fixed--the same number of coins get mined each day whether it's 1 miner or 1 million miners. So therefore prices are ALL about demand, and there isn't as much demand for LTC as there is for BTC. Litecoins are already in a slow fall in prices because people mine them just to dump for bitcoins--this is despite the huge increase in difficulty.

 

[x3sphere]

You do realize that ASICs will simply push the hordes of GPUs into litecoin and thus litecoin difficulty go waaaaaaay up, right?

And all "coin" prices are driven by demand and supply, not by difficulty, so price doesn't automatically rise just because difficulty rises. But supply is fixed--the same number of coins get mined each day whether it's 1 miner or 1 million miners. So therefore prices are ALL about demand, and there isn't as much demand for LTC as there is for BTC. Litecoins are already in a slow fall in prices because people mine them just to dump for bitcoins--this is despite the huge increase in difficulty.

I realize this. Still, Litecoin will be a level playing field for GPUs. If the price goes up to say $15-20 it could be worth it to continue mining for a lot of people.

Litecoin have been appreciating in value as of late actually, what's most interesting is the increase in LTC to BTC exchange rate. Just a week ago my holdings were worth around 15 BTC and now 21 BTC. The value used to always be pegged directly to BTC for the most part and now it's starting to break away.

All in all, I think putting $300 towards buying BTC/LTC or getting a GPU to do some LTC mining on the side, is probably a better bet than ordering one of those BFL ASICs. I could be wrong, we'll see 3-4 months from now