Bitcoin Forum

Hi guys,

Saw Bitcoin mentioned on a thread today, and after doing a little research the idea is fascinating! I've got a fairly basic rig at the moment, although I have two 8800 Ultras which are great for folding - though I noticed that Nvidia cards are severely outperformed by ATIs, why is this?

Looking at various charts the yields / difficulties seem to have reached the asymptote some time ago, so is it a little too late to be thinking about joining, even in a pool?

Would appreciate some feedback.

Thanks,
Mike

if you don't pay for electricity, you can mine as much as you want.

If you thought about getting graphics card upgrade, get AMD one and you can get some of the money back from mining. But getting stuff just for mining.... your guess is as good as mine :)

Ati's are better at raw integer calcs, while nvidia cards are better at floating point calcs.  The former is a better fit for bitcoin hashing, the latter a better fit for scientific simulation.

There is hadware bitwise shifts support in ATI cards, but not in the nVidia ones. Not to mention BFI_INT :)

Damn, I didn't expect replies that fast!

Ahh, that would explain things a lot - guess ATI is the way to go then.

For the next three years or so power expenditure will be zero, so I guess it would be wise to make the most out of it! That said I'm not going to go and blow a load on an entire new rig, will probably just invest in a couple of new GPUs - it looks like the ATI 58XX models are the way to go?

Thanks for the quick replies everyone :)

Keep in mind that although your power expenditure is zero, your likely income stream will approach zero as well if difficulty keeps going up.  Mining for $0.1 a day isn't really that good at paying off buying two ATI 58xx cards.

Hmm, if the difficulty rises so sharply, how are people justifying the continuation of mining? Would this scenario not change if one were to join a pool?

Whether you're in a pool or not...
Difficulty increases affect everyone equally.

If it gets twice as hard for any individual to solve a block...
It gets twice as hard for any pool to solve a block...
Rewards are decreased accordingly, and nothing maintains the balance except for the BTC/USD ratio.

At the moment, profits are declining, because the value of BTC isn't increasing as fast as the network hash speed and difficulty.

Everything is speculation as far as that's concerned, but the certainties are that as more people join, the higher the difficulty goes, the lower your BTC rewards are.

Thanks for that. I guess I have missed the boat then.

http://bitcoin.atspace.com/income.html

Imagine a horizontal line at your daily costs per 100 MH/s (Example: your rig does 300MH/s and costs 3 USD/day --> 1 USD).

If you would cash yout every BTC you mine at the same day, and this graph is above this line, mining is still worth it.

BUT:

If you want to buy hardware for mining, keep in mind that you will have to earn for it as well! A 180 USD GPU with 300MH/s to be paid off in 60 days would need to have this graph (at 0 electricity costs) on average above 1 USD (please note the logarithmic scale!) for the following 2 months.

If you only need to buy 2 couple of GPU's, I'd say it's not too late. If it was a whole rig it'd be harder to say, but 2 GPU's aren't that risky of an investment.

Sure profits have diminished with exponential difficulty growth, but the growth seems to have stalled for now (http://bitcoin.sipa.be/speed-lin-10k.png). Who knows what the future holds, but if the hashrate stays around where it's now, the next difficulty jump won't be very big. Current estimate is something like 512k, only a 18% jump whereas the last one was 80%.

With 2x 58xx being able to do some 700-800+ MH/s, you wouldn't need many weeks (http://www.alloscomp.com/bitcoin/calculator.php) to get your investment back, if difficulty and price stay around where they are. I'd say go for it.

You only missed the boat if you are looking for an insta rich solution here. Bitcoins are still young in their existence, minting wont be exhausted for decades to come if the concept lasts that long. The boat is still leaving harbor if you care about more than just making money. Every day more and more services and companies are accepting bitcoins. Every day the word gets out more and more. Every day i make a little bit more bitcoins to spend as an alternate currency for things like pizza and amazon products and cheesy gambling.

This "floating point Nvidia myth" keeps being repeated, but it is not true.

I am the author of: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Why_a_GPU_mines_faster_than_a_CPU#Why_are_AMD_GPUs_faster_than_Nvidia_GPUs? The same 2x-3x performance advantage that AMD has applies to both integer and floating point GPU instructions. It used to be that Nvidia had a (slight) fp advantage, but not anymore. Even when comparing against Nvidia's professional Tesla range which has a fully unlocked double precision unit:

* HD 6970 = 5100 single precision GFLOPS and 1275 double precision GFLOPS
* Tesla 20xx = 1030 single precision GFLOPS and 515 double precision GFLOPS

Regardless of Bitcoin price, those who have ways of not paying for electricity, will certainly have a huge advantage over those who have to pay.

Also, GPU development is entirely graphics focused at the moment. Folding and Bitcoin is extremely niche.

In 2 year, yes, the difficulty will be ALOT higher, however, GPU's are faster and need less power to run. Software has gotten better. Bitcoin price has risen (maybe?). More stores online (and offline?) will be taking Bitcoin.


All in all... If you have the money, it's a fun hobby. One that could potentially pay off. The worst case scenario? You spend $1.000~ on a hobby that doesn't pay off

It's a gamble, but it's a gamble you have a degree of control over and it's a gamble that you can somewhat tilt in your own favor by making the right choices at the right times.

Have fun  8)

Even if it doesn't pan out in the next few months because of difficulty increases Im still having fun and that's well worth it  in my case.

Mining stops at 21 million BTC.  At best, there is 5.6 years left.  However, that is theory based on 6 blocks generation per hour which is the premise behind the setting of difficulty levels.  If the BTC/USD rises significantly and confidence in it is strong, then there will be a flood of new hardware once again and we may see 13-15 blocks / hour.  Also, if new hardware becomes available [i.e. the next greatest mining hardware, GPU or not] and it is cost effective, then there will be another flood of hardware causing another spike until difficulty catches up and brings it back down to 6 blocks / hour.

So, 5.6 years is almost certainly not how much time we have left; I am guessing 1 to 2 years at most and it is highly speculative since it needs to have a real world application when coin mining ends [there are still transaction fees ... but that isn't mining] which means a real market of some type has to grow around this, not just trading coins for cash (that would just be a bubble ready to pop).  Fortunately, there are signs that some smaller vendors are getting into this, but we need to see much more growth around the bitcoin economy to support it when mining comes to an end.

did your calculation include the diminishing returns on solved blocks? last i heard the estimated time frame for the end of minting was around 2036 or some jazz?

5850 is the most cost effective card, in terms of performance/$, but they're rare, even more rare than 5970, or 6990. 5830/5870 are the next best cards. use 5830 if you don't have much money to invest with, or 5870 if you have lots of cash.

One thing to remember in reading all the pro-mining posts is that most posters have a vested interest, that is, they will be better off if mining continues to be profitable.  This isn't to say they are being deceptive - just that nobody likes to believe the gravy train they are riding will stop.

NEVER is too late  ;D

Difficulty drives solved blocks per hour to 6.  So, it is unlikely we will drop below 6 for any period of time so I consider that the long term best case scenario.  6 blocks is 300BTC.  21M BTC - current minted amount and divide by 300 and you get the number of hours.  Divide by 24 and again by 365.25 and you get the number of years.  Simple.  Now, if you look historically, BTC generation has FAR exceeded 6 blocks per hour and thus the large number of coins and currently minted.  I think there is little doubt that at some point in the future [probably months], there will be another influx of hardware and the race to 21M BTC will pull that calculated value back to an earlier date. 

You do realize that some of the really early miners have in all likelihood tens of thousands of bitcoins in their wallets [unless they cashed them out continuously]?  They do have the ability to buy a lot of new equipment if they deem it worth while.

It would be in a miner's best interest to deny profitability because any additional computing power added to the network decreases the bitcoin income of the existing miner.

It's still profitable and will be for at least 30 days. Why should you care about 30 days? Because that's when many electronic store return periods end for video cards. So long as you don't mind returning video cards for, at flat worst, store credit minus a 15% restocking fee, you aren't risking much on a few-videocard investment.

I'm not telling you to buy cards with the intention of returning them. Rather I'm saying that the risk is limited because, should the shit hit the fan, you could get most of your investment back. You'll have 29 days of mining to decide whether continuing is worth it or not.

Until then, you don't need to make a bunch of calculations and predictions on what mining will be like past the next few difficulty increases. It's possible that the exchange rate will rise to match difficulty. It's possible that I may fart doves out of my butt the next time I eat a big bowl of chili. The thing is, you don't want to be left out and miss the dove farts, especially when you can join in with little risk and also enjoy a big bowl of chili, which you were probably going to eat anyway because you made it a few days ago and you don't like throwing out leftovers when you spent so much time making that chili in the crockpot. You even used turkey meat to try to make it "healthier" before you gave up on healthfulness and added sausage that you found in the bottom of the freezer. That way, your arteries say "Hey, man, I appreciate the healthy option" right before they get clogged full of sausagey goodness and swear to end you for your trickery. Also, for some reason, you added garbanzo beans. In fact, I don't think this is chili at all anymore, which just supports my point even more, even though I can't remember what it was. Hey, I should put sour cream on this.

Yes! I also lost thousands of dollars on mining. Everyone should quit. The police will raid you for growing marijuanas. It's a fact!
 and the ozone from my overclocked 5850 gave me lung cancer. :o

yes, quit so the difficulty will be lower.

Except that once again, it would appear that your calculations aren't taking into consideration that the bounty gets halved every 210,000 blocks... not all 21m coins will be minted at 50btc per block. After 210,000 blocks, the bounty drops to 25btc per block, then at 420,000 it drops to 12.5? btc a block, etc. This drastically increases the amount of time it will take to mint all 21 million coins. Sure, the network is solving blocks faster than the optimal 6 per hour, but even at an increased rate, its not going to reduce decades of time into a couple of years.

If miners were perfectly rational and willing to lie, then yes, it would be in their best interest to deny profitability.

However, most people posting here like to think that they are honest people.  As such, they express their "true" opinion, and not lies.  And most people who mine do so because they think it is profitable - just like most people who flipped houses in 2006 did so because they thought it was going to continue to be profitable - even when data was staring them straight in the face that houses were getting too expensive.  People will go to extraordinary lengths to continue to believe easy money will keep coming.

If there's one thing I learned from watching the first two thirds of MC Hammer's Behind the Music, it's that the money never stops.

5830's are far more cost effective than 5850's.  I got some 5830's for $90 after rebate.  5850's cost me $160.  I'm doing 288M hashes with 5830's and 318M hashes with 5850's.

try to overclock 5850 too :) I'm doing 250 on my 5830 @880. I wonder what is your clock?

the party is over.

I've got a few 6850's. Already have one installed and i get ~237 MHash/s...
Dont think its worth mining with these. They are great for gaming, but not for mining. Why is that?

So, should i go and mine with these badboys? What do you think?

I was wondering this as well

5850 and 6950 refurbs are the same price locally. which would be best?

I've spent a lot of time reading this forum over the last few days and I don't agree with your statement.

I have found so much negativity, conflicting points of data, defeatism and what seems to be disinformation. Sr. members and experienced miners contradicting their data points and profatibility estimates....oi!!! What's a newb to do?

I for one will be getting a rig and will ignore the naysayers. If I lose money I'll have some sweet gaming stations. Being a gamer I don't care. Also, being an investor I'm prepared to lose money.

But for the other newbs, if I had listened to everyone who had opinions before I made certain investments 3 years ago, I would have been out on 10's of K's of $. You have to DO something for yourself to figure out if it's going to work or not.

I'm not questioning the moral integrity of the majority of members of the board, but logic would dictate that when two or more (1?) people get together you immediately have conflicting agendas and emotion will cause logic to stray. One of the first rules of being a scientist, never trust your own data. Test, test, test.

Well said.

Except you won't have sweet gaming stations.  5830, 5850, and 5870 are last gen technology and were not the best technology to boot.  Gaming-wise the 69xx series or NVIDIA HW are much better gaming platforms.

Also, putting money in bitcoins (and mining rigs) is not investing, it is speculating.  Bitcoins have no real income stream other than people buying them thinking they may be worth more in the future.  They don't throw off interest, have no real assets behind them, and are not guaranteed by anything.  Putting money in bitcoins or mining HW is nothing like buying stocks, bonds, CDs, etc. - it is strictly a speculation that there is someone else out there who is willing to spend even more money in buying bitcoins than you did.

When I invested in BTE in 2008 I had no experience drilling for oil (and none since), but I made 10s of Ks of $ selling BTE 1.5 years later.  Your statement that one has to DO something to know if it will work is thus proved false.  You don't have to do something to figure out if it is a good investment or not.  You do research, examine the fundamentals/trends, and put your money in or not. 

Nonsense - I know lots of scientists, the experiments/tests they run are built on top of on the data and studies of others. Pretty much nobody except pure mathematicians start from nothing and prove/test everything all the way up (and the maths guys just do it to show how cool they are).  One can make a decision about bitcoin mining without actually participating in it.

There are lots of contradictions in what people say, but consider this - if you go to a gold investing forum (e.g. Kitco forums), where most people there own gold/are buying gold, do you expect the majority to say gold sucks and is a terrible investment, or to say gold is awesome and well worth buying?  Obviously the latter - just like in the Bitcoin mining forum the majority says/thinks Bitcoin mining is a good idea.  People talk their wallet, it is human nature.

Totally weak but whatever. I have no response for that trite. You win.

Sorry for the necro-bump, just wanted to thank everyone that replied for their helpful advice.

:)

I suppose I've a skewed perspective...

I was going to buy a computer anyhow...it's just that time.  I have a high-end laptop that I was using, but no tower type PC; so, I was buying a computer anyhow (mining or not). And a year ago, I didn't even know what a bitcoin was!  However, something I've always known, is that for my primary purposes of using a computer (emails, Word, PPT, watching DVDs, browsing the web), most off-the-shelf computer systems were MUCH more powerful than what I was using them for...

Now enter bitcoin --  at least, in some small way, I can get at a minimum, a novelty return of some sort, even if it's miniscule.  However, now that I do know about bitcoin, I opted to get a 'gamer' system, enter the:

CyberpowerPC Gamer Ultra 2062 Desktop PC Phenom II X4 965(3.4GHz) 4GB DDR3 1TB HDD Capacity AMD Radeon HD 6870 Windows 7 Home Premium 64-Bit. 

I got it in less than 10 days - delivered to a remote Contingency Operating Station in Iraq, with shipping for less than $900.  Note that it includes the elusive AMD Radeon HD 6870 - which in none tweaked form, out of the box, in less than an hour, was generating ~300 Mhash/s -  just GPU, I've not even start trying to manipulate the CPU cores yet.

It helped that I'd already been experimenting with my laptops NVIDA GX card (a measly 24Mhash on the GPU, 4.1 Mhash/s on the CPU).  So now, I'm making like .21 BTC per day; and I'm not paying for electricity, so... I can't complain.

Not for nothing, but rather for $1500.00 - I did actually jumped on that 'bitcoin bandwagon', and to that end, have bought 2 HD 6990 cards (albiet on back order) @ PC Connection.  When they come in, I may have to get creative, but the CyberpowerPC Gamer Ultra 2062 Desktop PC has the pci slots (and supposedly the harness rotates out) necessary to run these. AND the system even came with all of the Crossfire cabling and mounting brackets I might need (and I didn't even ask them for it).

So far, I'm more than pleased, but back on topic... so suppose someday I do have to return to a land where I have to pay for electricity (at least noone will be trying to launch rockets and mortars at me, so there's some intangible value in that too), even if I do have to pay for electricity, I WILL AT LEAST be making some sort of return! Something, as opposed to nothing, EVEN if it only partially compensates - it's still more than NOTHING!!!

I understand from a purely ROI perspective - but come on guys... You buy cars (video cards) and pay for gas (electricity) to go from point A to B (cruising the web) and MOST people don't stop to think... hhmmmm is my having a car really a money making endeavor?

So money making aside... if you've a computer, and electric service, then AT A MINIMUM what you gain, which is priceless, is a more indepth knowledge of how rpc works, how computers in general work, how to access the cmd window on your GUI based windows box.  I think, if nothing else, bitcoin awareness is rising the mark on the 'how a computer works' tideline.

Anyways, I just spent .0022435 BTC worth of electricity typing this so...

Thats my  0.002 BTC worth on the subject.

Happy mining all.
CRYPT

lol

From what I understand... It's now ILLEGAL to mine bitcoins.  The government is sending out bots to gather IP addresses of anyone running *bitco*.* anywhere in their system. 

LEAVE NOW, SAVE YOURSELVES... I will stay on long enough to detract them.  Like the designated drunk driver, I'll lure the fed's off your trail, BUT YOU MUST LEAVE THE BITCOIN MINING WORLD NOW!!!

Never too late to try, especially when the subject is bitcoin.
Today he is worth 10, tomorrow could be worth 100.

 ;)

or worth 0.1

That certainly was a great laugh at the end of the thread. Crypt has a point, you need the cards, why not have fun and dabble with electronics.

I have to say, a couple months down the line from making this thread:
Initially I thought it might be possible to use mined BTC to fund part of my gapyear travels later in the year, but it dawned fairly quickly that this is pretty unrealistic. Yet I'm still mining BTC now. Why? Because it's a bit of fun and a challenge I guess - I've cobbled together an assortment of old parts lying around to reduce the costs as much as possible, and I've had a great time trying to get 110% out of this pile of shite!

So although it's not at all profitable (at least for me), the vibe here is just great, and I'm very much looking forward to spending my hard-earned BTC @ BitBrew.net.

Mining is only really profitable if you don't have to pay for power (directly or indirectly).  Children living at home may read this and think 'sweet, dad pays the bills not me', but dad is likely to notice a few hundred dollars of extra power use on the quarterly bill.

Don't forget to factor in the cost of air conditioning, hardware and opportunity cost too.  If you would not be setting up the mining PC and taking care of it, could you be doing something more useful?  If bitcoin is fun for you then great, but don't expect to learn a lot from it.  Downloading free command line software and getting it running isn't exactly highly educational.

The BTC exchange rate is hovering just over $8 and is on a downward trend.  Unless something makes bitcoins very attractive I don't see that changing in the medium term future.  Others may disagree and think we'll return to the party days of $30 bitcoins.  If so, mine away.

And no, I don't have dozens of mining PCs therefore I would be trying to turn away new miners from mining.  I sold off most of my PCs a month ago and turned the last one off a week ago.

I guess at the end of the day it's whatever you make of it. I thought it would be worthwhile setting up an Arch install specifically for mining (I'd only had limited experience with "Linux" (Ubuntu) up until that point) - I learnt a great deal about the internals of Linux from doing that, and it's definitely been worthwhile as I am now using a fresh Arch install for just about every project that I've done since then.

I myself did it for the learning. I know people keep talking about downloading command line software and off you go.

However, What about the research you do in your purchases. GPU's, CPU's. etc. Trying to keep up to date on what is coming out. Flashing a Bios. Writing your own scripts for linux for monitoring and setup.

Sure these might be small things but I will tell you this. Being in the I.T. business knowing whats hot in hardware and linux scripting is VERY valuable!

So if your looking at doing the minimum.. read what to buy only.. set it up and leave it. Well I know I wouldn't have bothered.

But if you like a challenge and will further read on how to tweak your rig just 10 more mh/s find ways to auto reboot after a power outage and run all scripts.. over clock and change fan speed.. (linux) then sure why not.

This is less of a factor for some us now. The temps where I live are starting to drop. Right now its 65 degrees so I've been able to use a window for the majority of the day and I'm running 3 ghash which is a lot of heat.

I think its not too late as long as your electricity costs are low.