Bitcoin Forum

I picked up a couple old ATI 6870 card for cheap and figured that I would put together a GPU mining PC and try out some other altcoins other than SHA256 and Scrypt.

I have never tinkered with anything other than SHA256 and Scrypt. BTC mining I still have going, Scrypt mining with gridseeds, I gave up on about 8 months ago, and I really have not been paying attention to what has been happening in the altcoin world.

Now that I have the machine built out of spare parts ... 3.6Ghz Pentium 4 Xeon, 4gb ddr2 ram, 80GB SATA HD, 2x ATI 6870 GPUs , running Ubuntu 14.04.3 Desktop AMD64, I have a clean slate to play with.

I just need to decide on coin to mine...

Problem is ....now, looking at the forums and whatnot trying to see what is popular or has potential for staying alive, its like looking at the old 80's Pizza Hut smorgasbord... slices as far as the eye could see .... well, same with the altcoins, way too fooking many, many scam coins, many dying coins, many .... WTF, confusing and bewildering.

I did try to set up the pc to mine Ethereum, but after spending hours in front of the system trying to get the thing to sync with the network, I gave up.

Soooo,  I'll ask here ....

What do you guys like to mine with your GPU rigs?

Thanks

These are the ones that I've been mining:

Vertcoin (VTC)
digitalcoin (DGC)
Feathercoin (FTC)

Axiom does well with CPU and GPU

Well, I did figure out why I could not get the system to sync with the Ethereum network.

I wasn't using SUDO in the "run" command.... BUT then .... Once I was synced, I ran the mining command and and error popped up .... I need more GPU ram to mine Ethereum. My 6870 cards are only 1gb a piece ....

DAMNIT!

Now, even if I get a couple of used R9 290's ... I've seen them on Craigslist, lowest priced was $200 each.... a pair is $400. That's a lot of change.

Add in the cost of electricity ( I mine off peak, 8pm to 8am, so for 12 hrs each day, I get electricity for $0.05/kwh - Sat, Sun and holidays are $0.05/kwh also)

I cannot even calculate ROI yet, I need the cards and tweak them in order to find the hashrate.

I did set up and start mining Vertcoin, I have to tweak it and then take a amperage reading of the system running and see if its at all profitable.

Not many altcoins are profitable.... why are they even alive yet? I do not get that concept.

Bad luck buddy, Ethereum is by FAR, the most profitable coin to mine right now with GPU. I would advice you to look for alternatives like Bytecoin (BCN), Monero (XMR) or Quark.
Try minergate and a miner client like Claymore's GPU. Also, you can gain some profit CPU mining with bytecoin.

Well.... if I upgrade to some R9 290's .... I could always use these 6870's to build a multi-monitor flight simulator <grin>

i like darkcoin, but i dont think its profitable any more, try feathercoin :) its been around for a while

8)  Agree.

but not always favorable. not always

HD 7970/R9 280x, HD 7990 and R9 295x2 are the best hash power per watt per unit for ETH mining.

I have 22 7950s that do ok gpu does 23mh/s  around 138 mh/s per rig or 158mh/s on a 7gpu rig

I dont see the point of 7970s or 7990s or 295x2 since they cost about twice the price of 7950s

you can get 7950s for 140 or  vs 190-200 for 280x and way higher for the 7990s and 295s

How do you get your rigs going with full hashrate? I have a 7x 280x rig and cant seem to run past 80MH/s

the only way that happens if you have some GPUs that are not recognized by the ATI driver.

Its easy to see which GPUs are hashing, they will be warm to the touch and the others will cold/cool since they are not doing anything.

Just becasuce the fans on a GPU is spinning does not mean its active.  on Ubuntu/Linuix the commad :

#!/bin/bash;
export DISPLAY=:0 ;
export GPU_MAX_ALLOC_PERCENT=98;
export GPU_USE_SYNC_OBJECTS=1;
sudo aticonfig --adapter=all --odgt;

will tell you how many GPU's you have active.

Watch the ANN RSS feed for new coin launches and have your rigs ready.

You should decide what to mine by what's most profitable coin to mine ATM

You can do the math here:

http://www.coinwarz.com (http://www.coinwarz.com)

Or you can try to stay on new launched coins mine them while diff is easy and sell them at their highs

They are being recognized by my drivers, I used to mine x11 with no problem... I run windows 8.1 with 13.12 drivers.

If you are mining with GPUs, this thread might be of interest for those looking for new GPUs with nice discounts: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1207919  :)