With any available graphics card today, how far ahead of power costs can you be? My ATI 4870 pulls about 100W, costing roughly twice in power what it mines.
The 4xxx series is the oldest series to have OpenCL support... and the least efficient. That said, it all depends. In Ontario, electricity rates average <0.09$ (we have different rates for different times of the day, as low as 0.06$ at night). If I were paying electricity, I would still break even. 
Topic: my mining experiences so far (Read 2280 times)
With any available graphics card today, how far ahead of power costs can you be? My ATI 4870 pulls about 100W, costing roughly twice in power what it mines.
Depends on the card and the cost of your electricity.
M
So much for fear. I've invested $80 in a 5830 and $40 in an Antec VP450 and used some of my spare parts with a motherboard box as a case with holes cut for venting. Accumulated ~30BTC and recently spent most of it on a pre-order with BFL. Started playing around with p2pool. But over 24-hours later my "Payout if a block were found NOW:" is only 0.17BTC. I expected less but I can make 0.4-0.45BTC with a centralized pool...
p2pool seems to be having problems and regularly performing far under par what "standard" pools pull.
M
With any available graphics card today, how far ahead of power costs can you be? My ATI 4870 pulls about 100W, costing roughly twice in power what it mines.
So much for fear. I've invested $80 in a 5830 and $40 in an Antec VP450 and used some of my spare parts with a motherboard box as a case with holes cut for venting. Accumulated ~30BTC and recently spent most of it on a pre-order with BFL. Started playing around with p2pool. But over 24-hours later my "Payout if a block were found NOW:" is only 0.17BTC. I expected less but I can make 0.4-0.45BTC with a centralized pool...
dont know never tried them.
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order a few extra...they are fragile and rip easy.
I'll keep that in mind.
Do the 1x->16x work as advertised? Simply plug and play, nothing special to worry about? I know of read things about needing extra power for the card, but I've never seen details on it. I've always seen it significantly decreases your bandwidth, but for mining you get the same result.
A board with 2x16 and 2x1 is a lot cheaper than 4x16.
Thanks.
order a few extra...they are fragile and rip easy.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/270879087303?ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1497.l2649
thats what I got. waiting to install them.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/270879087303?ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1497.l2649
thats what I got. waiting to install them.
Also can't wait to get out of newbie status on this board. Been reading following for almost a year, but this is only my third post. I think I know enough finally to be useful on other boards. 
Shameless plug: don't forget to be useful on the Bitcoin Stackexchange too ;-)
eBay for PCIe cables. I just bought a box full at $4/cable and I got them 3 days after I ordered.
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I got mine off ebay from hong kong i think...shipping took about 20 days but the total price for 5 of them was about 30 bucks!
Thanks! I feel better now, I'll order 4 and see if I can get my rig boxless.
Cool story, good luck with rest of your mining life
Thanks for sharing your experiences in mining... I read everything ._.
Hopefully you'll have better luck/insight in the future--I have a feeling that you will!
Hopefully you'll have better luck/insight in the future--I have a feeling that you will!
eBay for PCIe cables. I just bought a box full at $4/cable and I got them 3 days after I ordered.
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I've also checked out getting riser cables and building a custom open rig. Cablesaurus wants $15/pop for cables. That's $60+ shipping. For that I could get another MB, I already have memory, a CPU, and a power supply to put in it. And if bitcoin goes flop, they are not resellable. But computer hardware is, or worse case, I can donate it to needy family members who are using ancient computers.
I got mine off ebay from hong kong i think...shipping took about 20 days but the total price for 5 of them was about 30 bucks!
A few more random thoughts:
- 600 watt ps is not enough to run a 5870 and a 6870. Don't ask how I know.
- 600 watt ps is not enough to run a 5870 and a 6870. Don't ask how I know.
Then you are doing it wrong
.In all seriousness though, a good quality 600W power supply should be sufficient. What brand and model were you using, if I might ask? Seasonic PSUs are typically your highest quality power supply (and the companies they manufacture for, such as Corsair, except for their builder series). Lower quality power supplies, as well as using cheaper parts, can be unstable and often have a lot less than 600W available on the 12V rails (used for the GPU and CPU), not to mention being only barely able to handle their advertised load.
It's a no name brand that only has two 6-pin pcix connectors. I used two dongles to convert 4 standard PS connectors to pcix. I was on the same train of thought as you, this one just doesn't cut it. My replacement is going to be thermaltake 750 bronze 80. Forget which one at the moment, but an Antec 750 is running my other two 5870s, figured it'd be good for my 6870 and 5870.
I want go for 5970 too
Nice read, thank you. I'm also a small-time miner; started about a month after you did (end of July). Started off with a couple of dual 6870 PCs (overclocked to 300mhps), then over the following months added some 6950's (350mphs), eventually replacing some of the weaker GPUs with 5870's (400mhps). Learned quickly which cards/fans were loud and which were quiet. You can't do much about the heat, but at least you can do something about the noise. At least to a degree.
I consider my PC/GPU investment to be paid off (in the sense that if I were to sell all of my mining hardware now, and add to it my mining profits to date, I'd end up with more than my initial investment). I'm not getting rich off of mining, but it has been (and continues to be) a great learning experience. Not to mention fun. At my peak I had 3300mhps. Currently sitting at 3000mhps in GPU's plus a few FPGA's. Good for 2 or 3 bitcoins a day. Even though the block reward will be cut in half come December, I still plan to add capacity.
Good luck with your mining, and welcome to the forums!
I consider my PC/GPU investment to be paid off (in the sense that if I were to sell all of my mining hardware now, and add to it my mining profits to date, I'd end up with more than my initial investment). I'm not getting rich off of mining, but it has been (and continues to be) a great learning experience. Not to mention fun. At my peak I had 3300mhps. Currently sitting at 3000mhps in GPU's plus a few FPGA's. Good for 2 or 3 bitcoins a day. Even though the block reward will be cut in half come December, I still plan to add capacity.
Good luck with your mining, and welcome to the forums!
A few more random thoughts:
- 600 watt ps is not enough to run a 5870 and a 6870. Don't ask how I know.
- 600 watt ps is not enough to run a 5870 and a 6870. Don't ask how I know.
Then you are doing it wrong
.In all seriousness though, a good quality 600W power supply should be sufficient. What brand and model were you using, if I might ask? Seasonic PSUs are typically your highest quality power supply (and the companies they manufacture for, such as Corsair, except for their builder series). Lower quality power supplies, as well as using cheaper parts, can be unstable and often have a lot less than 600W available on the 12V rails (used for the GPU and CPU), not to mention being only barely able to handle their advertised load.
good read :-) my experience is a bit similar
A few more random thoughts:
- I just got my 3rd 5870. I still get > 400mh, but not as much as out of my XP box. I'm guessing the video overhead microsoft added to Vista, which is in Windows 7, causes 7 to get a lower rate than XP.
- 600 watt ps is not enough to run a 5870 and a 6870. Don't ask how I know.
- I've seen in lots of places that the 2.1 API doesn't work with the 6000 series. It seems to work just fine for me. I speculated that a newer version was there once (true) and not properly uninstalled (not sure) but if that was the case, the 100% cpu bug would still show itself.
- I found some risers on ebay for < $5 a piece. Two sellers I've looked at so far ship from hong kong. One has over 100,000 ratings, but has a few negatives that make it look like it's dangerous. But it's still like 99% positive, and free shipping. I'm going to search some more to see if I can find some domestic US ones and compare before I bite the bullet. Anyone else tried these?
Also, thanks for the positive thoughts guys on my write up. Maybe next time I'll break it in 3 or 4 pieces to make it shorter and get closer to getting white listed. (hint hint!!)
- I just got my 3rd 5870. I still get > 400mh, but not as much as out of my XP box. I'm guessing the video overhead microsoft added to Vista, which is in Windows 7, causes 7 to get a lower rate than XP.
- 600 watt ps is not enough to run a 5870 and a 6870. Don't ask how I know.
- I've seen in lots of places that the 2.1 API doesn't work with the 6000 series. It seems to work just fine for me. I speculated that a newer version was there once (true) and not properly uninstalled (not sure) but if that was the case, the 100% cpu bug would still show itself.
- I found some risers on ebay for < $5 a piece. Two sellers I've looked at so far ship from hong kong. One has over 100,000 ratings, but has a few negatives that make it look like it's dangerous. But it's still like 99% positive, and free shipping. I'm going to search some more to see if I can find some domestic US ones and compare before I bite the bullet. Anyone else tried these?
Also, thanks for the positive thoughts guys on my write up. Maybe next time I'll break it in 3 or 4 pieces to make it shorter and get closer to getting white listed.
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