Cryptocoin Mining?

[Cuhulainn]

Were you mining with a client that supported OpenCL on the GPU?

I don't know. I'm a noob. Are you asking because of the hash rate? If so, the rates I'm getting are in line with other GTX460's on the Mining Hardware Chart.

 

[frostedflakes]

You guys definitely missed the bus on this one. Difficulty is destroying miners profits pretty effectively. I used to make ~30 bitcoins/day with my dual 6970s in February. Since then difficulty has increase from 25k to 250k and difficulty is about to jump by over 70% in the next ~24 hours.

Those of you who are naysayers, it isn't a pyramid scheme with a nasty catch. The system is completely open source, you aren't crunching numbers to destroy America. The one catch is that it is not free money, you may make some money in the short run, but unless you have cheaper electricity and can stay ahead of the pack hardware wise, and I'm not just talking about GPUs. People are starting to develop ASICs for this and using FPGAs due to their better performance per/watt. In a few months time I'll probably be selling all my cards because the difficulty just continues to march ever higher and I won't have the capital to purchase swarms of FPGAs and the ASICs probably won't be sold to the public.

It always seemed like a matter of time until people started using dedicated logic for mining. My understanding is that the hardware for generating hashes is pretty simple, so you would be able to fit a ton of them on a chip. This is one reason AMD cards tend to do better than nVidia, for this kind of workload more simple cores are better than fewer complex ones. Hashing is just *massively* parallel. ASICs could probably be many orders of magnitude faster than GPUs for hashing, would really change the dynamics of mining. Could do to GPU mining what it did to CPU mining: Make it so that it isn't even worth it or possible to mine on a GPU. Will definitely be interesting to see how it pans out.

 

[Chiropteran]

I think there are easier one, compute for cash. Just google it

I was curious, so I checked this out. It's currently paying $.112 per work unit. My GPU finishes 1.005 work units per hour. Over a day, that is 24*1.005*.112= $2.70

I guess that probably covers the cost of electricity, but it's not much.

In comparison, I produced 1.8 bitcoins in the last 24 hours. At current $8.70 USD value, that is $15.66. Even if the difficulty increase is 100%, I'll still be making at least .9 coins/day on average which is $7.83/day, handily beating "compute for cash". Maybe in a few months after multiple difficulty increases compute for cash will make more sense, but at the moment I am going to ignore it in favor of bitcoin mining.

 

[Chiropteran]

It always seemed like a matter of time until people started using dedicated logic for mining. My understanding is that the hardware for generating hashes is pretty simple, so you would be able to fit a ton of them on a chip. This is one reason AMD cards tend to do better than nVidia, for this kind of workload more simple cores are better than fewer complex ones. Hashing is just *massively* parallel. ASICs could probably be many orders of magnitude faster than GPUs for hashing, would really change the dynamics of mining. Could do to GPU mining what it did to CPU mining: Make it so that it isn't even worth it or possible to mine on a GPU. Will definitely be interesting to see how it pans out.

There was an analysis of it somewhere. Basically the Mhash/s per watt was much better than GPU mining, but the raw material startup cost is much higher because the FPGA need to be custom built. Given the volatility of the bitcoin and a lot of unknowns about it's future, do you think someone or some corporation would be willing to invest $50k in FPGA devices to mine? It seems risky to me, I doubt they will take over anytime soon.


relevant thread: http://forum.bitcoin.org/?topic=5379.0

Current Performance
Device: Altera Cyclone 3 C120 Dev Kit
Performance: 70Mhash/s
Power: 2.26W
Efficiency: 30.9 Mhash/W

cost: $1000 ( http://www.altera.com/products/devkits/altera/kit-cyc3.html )

It's amazing Mhash/watt, but you would need 4 of them to match a $100 radeon 5830. It would take a LONG time for energy costs to make up that $3900 initial investment.

 

[frostedflakes]

I would have thought even a basic FPGA would have been capable of far more. Maybe his implementation just sucks? Have others attempted this?

 

[Chiropteran]

Here is another thread and another implementation:
http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=9047.0

At 80 MHps, I will need at least 3 of these to achieve a single 5830 hashrate.
That is $595.-x 3 = $1785.- at full price, vs. $190.- for the 5830.

Giving the 5830 is consuming $11.- a month in electricity, and assuming this board will consume zero electricity, it will take more than 145 months, or 12 years to recover the investment, always comparing to a 5830.

Seems non-viable.

 

[Darvil]

For those of us with dedicated mining box you can easily increase the mhash. Easily reach over 400 for the 5870 and close to 400 with 5850 (the sapphire ones at least). Just modify the video card bios (although test it good though). I notice that the xfx ones are not as stable when you pushed hard (although I am getting 355Mhash with them on linux).

I also found out about bitcoins in Feb thanks to steve gibson's security now. But I didn't really pushed for it on my 5870 (although I did get 100 coins by solving 2 blocks soloing) until I started seeing the value increased by alot.

Will be interested in seeing how bitcoin will be in the next few months.

 

[bryanW1995]

Folding@home favors Nvidia cards.
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/graphics/2011/04/26/best-graphics-card-for-folding/3

f@h has a more advanced software program for nvidia. Supposedly they're working on a new amd-optimized app that will bring them to parity or better vs nvidia.

 

[Chiropteran]

Reading about the crazy bitcoin miner rigs with 3X5830s or multiple 6990s makes me wonder just how much of AMD's market share is due to this one program.

 

[Cuhulainn]

Difficulty is now up as Overlord suggested earlier in the thread. Nearly 450k. Me and my 60Mhashes are shutting down unless things become more favorable or I at least find an AMD card.

 

[pcm81]

1.6GHashes gives about 3.4 coins per 24Hr.

 

[YoungGun21]

My friends and I are jumping into this. Should be interesting to see where the next few months takes us. Even if the difficulty keeps increasing, we should still be profitable.

EDIT: Also, question...They say that the goal is for a block to be found every 10 minutes. With pooled mining, isn't any difficulty bump pretty much negated? There will always be 6 blocks/hr found, and they will for quite a while stay at 50BTC each. I understand that they will make it harder to find a block, but with the pool running together at over 500GHash/s and number of blocks being found held constant, I don't see how it really affects anything? Maybe there is something I'm missing.

 

[Chiropteran]

Basically, while 1 block per 10 minutes is the goal, it's been above that number for awhile now. Each time the difficulty adjustments goes through it's not enough to fully reduce the speed down to 10 minutes, and/or people just keep buying more hardware to compensate. This has been the case with the latest adjustment, which has people on the bitcoin forums talking about the next difficulty increase already because it's known that it will occur. So you see that while the goal is 50 BTC per 10 minutes, in reality it's been higher than that. As the difficulty increases try to push it down the rate of bitcoin production really will go down from the level it is at now, unless new hardware is added to the equation- but even new hardware simply delays the production decrease, as it will cause another difficulty increase.

The thing is, while the overall rate remains the same, your personal rate will go down unless you upgrade your hardware, which is costly and cuts profits down. It might seem like the pool insulates you from this, but it really doesn't. Your rate of bitcoin gain goes down just like everyone else's, unless you upgrade your hardware to compensate for the difficulty boost.

Then there is the school of thought that as difficulty increases perhaps the USD value of a bitcoin will increase. Supply and demand, as it becomes harder to mine a bitcoin more people will buy them instead of mining, driving up the cash value. It's interesting to think about, but nobody can really know for sure what will happen.

 

[imaheadcase]

While its interesting, i don't see the purpose. Whats they point when the only real use of bitcoins in trading between other people. Lets be honest, the places that do accept bitcoins is nothing exciting or useful.

To many worse things that could occur vs good with this. Namely government intervention, which has happened to other projects like this in the past.

Not saying i don't like it at all. Just to many IFs involved.

 

[YoungGun21]

Basically, while 1 block per 10 minutes is the goal, it's been above that number for awhile now. Each time the difficulty adjustments goes through it's not enough to fully reduce the speed down to 10 minutes, and/or people just keep buying more hardware to compensate. This has been the case with the latest adjustment, which has people on the bitcoin forums talking about the next difficulty increase already because it's known that it will occur. So you see that while the goal is 50 BTC per 10 minutes, in reality it's been higher than that. As the difficulty increases try to push it down the rate of bitcoin production really will go down from the level it is at now, unless new hardware is added to the equation- but even new hardware simply delays the production decrease, as it will cause another difficulty increase.

The thing is, while the overall rate remains the same, your personal rate will go down unless you upgrade your hardware, which is costly and cuts profits down. It might seem like the pool insulates you from this, but it really doesn't. Your rate of bitcoin gain goes down just like everyone else's, unless you upgrade your hardware to compensate for the difficulty boost.

Then there is the school of thought that as difficulty increases perhaps the USD value of a bitcoin will increase. Supply and demand, as it becomes harder to mine a bitcoin more people will buy them instead of mining, driving up the cash value. It's interesting to think about, but nobody can really know for sure what will happen.

I guess that is the good thing about our plan, we will just keep adding mining rigs until it isn't really feasible anymore. With each extra rig, they will pay for themselves fairly quickly (~3 weeks). After that, it is profit, that will most likely just be used to build another mining rig.

While its interesting, i don't see the purpose. Whats they point when the only real use of bitcoins in trading between other people. Lets be honest, the places that do accept bitcoins is nothing exciting or useful.

To many worse things that could occur vs good with this. Namely government intervention, which has happened to other projects like this in the past.

Not saying i don't like it at all. Just to many IFs involved.

It can be converted to USD. Takes a minute to set up, but that's what my group is doing.

 

[Dark Shroud]

Yeah I'm going to invest in more hardware in a month or two. Because I went from 10 coins a week to 6 coins.

My only question is what cards should I get?

 

[Campy]

This whole bitcoin mining thing seems highly speculative at best.

 

[Dark Shroud]

It is, I want 60 coins by the end of August to invest into hardware and hopefully 100 coins by Christmas.

I'm just wondering if a HD 5830 is better at mining than a HD 6850 card.

 

[imaheadcase]

I guess that is the good thing about our plan, we will just keep adding mining rigs until it isn't really feasible anymore. With each extra rig, they will pay for themselves fairly quickly (~3 weeks). After that, it is profit, that will most likely just be used to build another mining rig.



It can be converted to USD. Takes a minute to set up, but that's what my group is doing.

That right is is reason to suspect it won't last for long.

 

[Chiropteran]

It is, I want 60 coins by the end of August to invest into hardware and hopefully 100 coins by Christmas.

I'm just wondering if a HD 5830 is better at mining than a HD 6850 card.

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mining_hardware_comparison

5830 around 240 MHash/s
6850 around 200 MHash/s

5830 is also cheaper (some deals around $109), so it clearly wins. Actually, the 5830 is widely considered to be the best mining card from a cost perspective. A triple GPU machine with 3 5830s > many much more expensive single card machines at mining.

However, for my personal use I decided to buy a 6970. From a cost/MHash perspective it's nothing great, but when bitcoin mining difficulty reaches absurd levels I can just keep it as an effective gaming card.

 

[airdata]

I just started last week....

The sad thing is that it's clearly extremely late to be joining the bit mining field. The people who have been doing this for a while have undoubtedly made some serious money.

Some of these people are mining @ 2500MH+ which comes out to more money than I make working a full time job.

As far as it being speculative... what about the US economy? The US dollar has lost something like 95% of it's value since it's inception and it's only going down because of things like "quantitative easing" and just printing money out of thin air with nothing backing it.

With the difficulty level going up, it's probably not really worth investing a ton of money into mining equipment this late in the game. I picked up a 6870 and 2 5770's this week but still have one 5770 not running. I'm just wanting to mine steady for a few weeks and see what the actual return is for me.

 

[bart1975]

The more I read about bitcoin the more I am turned off by it. It seems like a waste of time and money to me. All the distributed computing projects seem like a waste. It is hard to believe that people are buying systems just to do free work for other people.

 

[sandorski]

As far as it being speculative... what about the US economy? The US dollar has lost something like 95% of it's value since it's inception and it's only going down because of things like "quantitative easing" and just printing money out of thin air with nothing backing it.

.

The $US is far more based in reality than you think.

 

[YoungGun21]

I just started last week....

The sad thing is that it's clearly extremely late to be joining the bit mining field. The people who have been doing this for a while have undoubtedly made some serious money.

Some of these people are mining @ 2500MH+ which comes out to more money than I make working a full time job.

As far as it being speculative... what about the US economy? The US dollar has lost something like 95% of it's value since it's inception and it's only going down because of things like "quantitative easing" and just printing money out of thin air with nothing backing it.

With the difficulty level going up, it's probably not really worth investing a ton of money into mining equipment this late in the game. I picked up a 6870 and 2 5770's this week but still have one 5770 not running. I'm just wanting to mine steady for a few weeks and see what the actual return is for me.

Yea we are buying some cards to mine for a few months and hopefully come out well ahead, but those early adopters had to make a TON of money!

 

[WelshBloke]

I really dont understand the concept here.

You provide compute cycles.
Someone pays you money.

Where is the money coming from? Is someone buying your compute cycles and what are they doing with them?