Topic: Lots of noob questions (Read 1831 times)

I give up. 

If windoze works for you, use it!
Quick tip: it's easier to downclock the freq of your cards' memory in windows than in linux, so take advantage of that. it will help with the cooling of your cards.

Linux is always better especially when you don't want to touch your mining rigs for months in a row.
Since your mining rig is a machine you use every day, you can reboot as many times as needed...

Just make sure you don't get you wallet.dat stolen (no advice here).

Good luck!

Thanks for the congrats

@ Matt, cheers for that info I used the flag you're using (-v -w 128) that bumped me up to 765MH/s. I'm at 900MHz core overclock without the voltage mod and think i'll leave it at that for now.

I bought my cards for gaming so anything i make back is a bonus! They're really the cheaper 6950 cards too, but i've flashed there BIOS' with a 6970 BIOS, which literally turns these cards into a pair of 6970's as they use the exact same GPU. I think they're definitely the best cards to go for with mining (or gaming), as you save money going the flashing route and get the same speed as a real 6970 which is the fastest GPU for mining.

@ coinage and bitcoin.monger, am i missing something here?? Because you can easily disable CrossFire on Windows and have always been able to. But whether it's enabled or not is not making any difference, and i can still assign a miner to each GPU even with crossfire enabled. It looks as if i'm doing atleast as well as Linux users with the same GPU's as me.
Plus on Windows theres loads of software and custom drivers to tweak my cards which isn't available on Linux, maybe theres some Linux alternatives, but not as many... i also game and work on Windows, which i've tried to do on Linux before but most isn't possible for me or simply doesn't work as well when it is possible (AMD and Nvidia Linux drivers are buggy, perform worse, lack features...).

Go ubuntu and get rid of crossfire. There are a few good threads on this forum on how to do it.

Regarding the questions on Crossfire, I've read in passing that Windows drivers do not permit disabling Crossfire, and if that's still true your mining speed is likely to be somewhat slower than if using Linux.

Linux drivers do, and of course tend to allow a great deal more customization in general.

Bitcoin is an excellent reason to consider making the move.  Plus you could buy extra coins or GPUs with all the money you'd save that would have gone to paying for software upgrades and new equipment every time your OS maker redesigns things on a profitable whim.

Oh and i've made 1 bitcoin in just over 24 hours
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Grats! I wish I could have made a coin this quick.

I'm getting between 750 to 800 Mhash/s on my 2 6970's. They are clocked to 940. You'll need to bump up the voltage to +5% and use the -v -w 128 flags (poclbm) or else you'll only get 600 Mhas/s (~300 per card). I'm doing the mining in windows using the poclbm miner.

At the current difficulty level, they are producing roughly 1 BC per day (slightly less). At current BC prices that means I can get about $400 per month.

My computer uses 650 Watts when mining. That's about $70/month in added electricity without factoring in added cooling (i.e., AC) costs.

IMO it's also prudent to assume there will be downtime on your computer and the mining pool. I'm using an adjustment factor of 0.9.

So my current back of the envelope, conservative estimate is to clear $250 / month. The big question is how fast will the difficulty increase and what will the market prices do? It's very likely that the monthly return will decrease.

If you bought your computer and/or cards for another reason (i.e. gaming) then you can definitely make some money mining for BC's. If you bought your setup for personal use (i.e. gaming) and mining, then you can definitely recoup some of your initial investment. If you're looking to break even or turn a profit....that seems less certain.

Hope this helps. I'm interested in any feedback to my comments.

Matt

Yeah man, congrats.  I see so many people going about things in such a b.s. way.  You came in, got your coin, fuck the bullshit.

Congrats on your first bitcoin!

Definitely doing atleast 720.

With GUI Miner it's saying 365 MH/s for each of my two AMD 6970 graphics cards (both are slightly overclocked. It's around 340 at default speed, which is still a bit higher than what the chart lists for a 6970).
And on the pool site that i'm using it's saying my average is 731 total. Oh and i've made 1 bitcoin in just over 24 hours, so to reach a block my 60 day estimate seems about right

Are you really doing 720, or is that what the table tells you that you are doing?

I got my estimate from this chart which is updated daily. It says one block is currently worth $646 today, and according to that chart it takes a high-end AMD Radeon 6990 card 82 days to make $718.60 (the cost of that graphics card). And a 6990 can do 670MH/s, but i can do more than that (over 720MH/s). Sooo very very roughly i was thinking it would take me around 60 days to hit my first block. Although it will likely be a little more if i take into account the rising difficulty of mining.

... But i've been using a pool anyway!

I'm new here too, but your 60 day calculation doesn't seem right.  Difficulty of mining jumps up every 10(?) days, depending on how much mining power is on the network.  So, you can't really predict when you'll get a new block that far ahead.  I think difficulty has been growing exponentially for a while though.  The best thing to do is join a mining pool which will award you Bitcoins as the pool finds them.  I'm using Slush's pool, which takes 2%, but seems to work well.  It was the first pool I found that wasn't down when I first joined, so I decided to stay with them.  Here's a list of other pools: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Comparison_of_mining_pools

Yeah sorry i didn't read the documentation. Although i wasn't even aware there was any documentation at the time

I've got everything up and running now. And i'm doing over 720 MH/s using both of my GPU's. By my very quick and rough estimate it should take me around 60 days before i hit my first block if i do it solo? Or am i totally wrong? Because Anduril said it would take just under 2 years.... unless he's not aware how powerful a pair of AMD 6970's cards are (each does around 365MH/s).

ahitman: I have Crossfire, and i've just assigned a separate miner to each GPU using GUI Miner.

ahitman: no, it does not help. it may work against you in some situations, but certainly it will not help.

alex: that works too, but it may be more time consuming 

I've been mining for a couple of weeks now and one question I haven't been able to answer is does having cards hooked up with the crossfire connectors connected help with hash rates?

Maybe that's how it should work

I'd say for most people it usually goes like this:

1. Ask questions on the forum.
2. Skip over all the hundreds of RTFM posts and gradually get tidbits of information from the non-RTFM posts.

Repeat.

Well, for most people it usually works like this:

1. read the docs. understand them. repeat a couple of times
2. formulate questions and ask them on the forum.
3. armed with the new knowledge, goto 1.

 

It was for me. The trouble is, it seems beany hasn't even read much of the forum.

Beany, the forum is not a substitute for reading the documentation...

Sorry, a block. BTCs come in blocks when mined, each block consists of 50 BTCs. The more blocks are mined, the more difficult it is to mine new ones. At current levels, and for you going on your own with a normal setup, you will need just under 2 years to mine a new block on your own. So you will have to pool.


If you're doing this on your own, yes, that's it. In 400 days or so you will have 50 BTCs