Title: Bitcoin / Litecoin Mining Experience + Small issue Post by: CoolIT on April 08, 2013, 02:18:51 PM I was just thinking of writing up my mining experience, in case it can help out any newbi miners.
I like to think my setup is probably one of the least complicated, more specifically regarding my choice of software. Originally I had my machine mining Bitcoins at 900 Mhash but due to the steep difficulty, I decided to switch over to litecoins, to then exchange for bitcoins. As I live in Quebec Canada, I gave a shot to cavirtex.com I sent them my bitcoins, converted them to Dollars and gave myself a direct deposit. Works nice and easy. Here are my specs: Sempron 140 (2.7Ghz Single core) MSI 890fxa-gd90 (6 PCIE slots) Originally 2 gigs ddr3, now 6. (1x1 + 2x2) 700W PSU of reliable brand. 0-0 Radeon 6950 900Mhz clock average temp 85 degrees 1408 Shaders 0-1 Radeon 6950 940Mhz clock average temp 70 degrees 1408 Shaders 0-2 Radeon 6570 725Mhz clock average temp 70 degrees 480 shaders 0-3 Radeon 5570 680Mhz clock average temp 90 degrees 400 (I know it's high but I don't care, I got another 6570 laying around) The above ran reliably for 1 month and a half and got me 3 bitcoins. So the machine paid itself off already. The software config is the following. Windows 7 Home X64 Catalyst 13.1 drivers I have mined reliably at very fair speeds using GUIMiner V 2012-12-03 I used slushpool for pool mining. I would execute GUIMiner once for every card. On all cards I added the following Extra flags -v -f0 -w128 The 6950's performed 350 to 380Mhash The 6570 did 100Mhash The 5570 did 75Mhash Overclocked using Trixx Monitored using GPUZ __________________________________________ Now, for the litecoin change. This gave me a bit of trouble. First, I upgraded my RAM to 6 gigs as I read litecoins are ram intensive. I signed up to coinotron.com and built my new workers. account.r6950a account.r6950b account.r6570 account.r5570 I tried EasyLTC Nice looking application, but no matter what I tried, it never worked for me. (sorry) I tried CGminer The one with the script that helps out, or manually cgminer --scrypt -o coinotron.com:3334 -u account.r6950a -p password --shaders 1408 --intensity 13 --worksize 128 -g 1 different variations of the code... Nada... same issue. (I also didn't find where to manually specify what GPU to use.) Finally I got it working with GUIMiner-scrypt alpha Version V0.02 by TacoTme Here are my settings: Host: coinotron.com Port: 3334 username: account.r6950a Password: password Device: 0-0 Cayman Extra Flags: (I put none) Thread concurrency: 8000 Worksize: 256 Vectors: 1 GPU Threads: 1 Intensity: 18 User Stratum: Yes I opened the software once for every card with the different username and device. The r6570 has slightly lower intensity. 6950a @ 900Mhz = 437Khash 6950b @ 940Mhz = 457Khash 6570 @ 725Mhz = 99Khash 5570@ 680Mhz = 77Khash but crashes the computer within 10 seconds... so not running anymore. That is the issue I am trying to figure out... It worked flawlessly when all cards hashed bitcoins. If I run it alone, it works. If I run it with 2 other cards it works. If all 4 cards run, the PC crashes and I have to reboot it. I tried having it mine bitcoins alone while the other 3 cards mine litecoins, still crashes. I tried different intensities, still crashes, lower clock, still crashes. Could it be ram related ? even if my ram usage is less than 2 gigs ? (according to windows) Could I play with Thread concurrency ? Lower it for the 6570 and 5570 ? I am open to suggestions, but all in all, as the hash rate is respectable, I have no issue letting the card sleep, till I pull it and throw it in another machine. Thank you for your time and the great source of information. Here is my ultra Guetto miner http://i965.photobucket.com/albums/ae132/daniel_coolit/20130326_182604_zps38dd5c22.jpg http://i965.photobucket.com/albums/ae132/daniel_coolit/20130326_182433_zps7f689807.jpg Title: Re: Bitcoin / Litecoin Mining Experience + Small issue Post by: Ilikeham on April 08, 2013, 11:42:35 PM with four cards running you are drawing too much power off the PCIe bus and the card crashing is the one that is most sensitive to that... which happens to be one without external power.
4x cards are capable of pulling 300W off the PCIe bus alone, more than you are delivering via the connector to the motherboard. Considering you have two cards that do not rely on PCIe cables but get all their power from the bus, it's too much and something is going to crash. if you want a fourth card in that computer attach it via a powered riser. Title: Re: Bitcoin / Litecoin Mining Experience + Small issue Post by: ummas on April 09, 2013, 12:09:55 AM Give it somme more power. connect 2 GPU (6570+5570) into small 350W power suppply and check if it helps.
I hope that You know haw to do it. Mining BTC drains a bit less power than mining LTC. 700W is not enough - fast count: 6950-200W, 6570-120W?, 5570-100W? MOBO+CPU - 100W Title: Re: Bitcoin / Litecoin Mining Experience + Small issue Post by: CoolIT on April 09, 2013, 12:33:08 AM Thanks for the help.
I was hoping my issue would not be hardware, but it makes a lot of sense. It's also the first machine I have put so many vga cards on the board. I know my PSU is very borderline, specially named "AcePower" but then again, I have been using and selling this brand for a multiple years and have pushed them to the limit, have not seen one fail yet. I will pull the card out and put it on another computer. I got a core2 with a dual PCIE slot collecting dust + another radeon 6570. Those cards are nothing special but I might as well put them to good use. Thanks for the quick replies :) Update may2013 The 5570 is still sleeping in the above machine, ill pull it out someday... don't need it for now. My other Core2 with sli motherboard received 2 radeon 6870's hashing away for litecoins for 312 and 306 Khash All in all I am happy to reliably gpu hash at 1650Khash for Litecoins, producing about 3 a day. |