Bitcoin Forum

I did a google but results seem to imply you can only GPU mine on a linux machine. Don't get me wrong, I love linux but I don't have a linux machine available.

I have a Windows XP machine with an ATI Radeon HD 2600 Pro on it. Dunno if this card is any good either but it'll probably be better than trying to mine with the CPU.

So, any help would be appreciated.

Can't help with Windows, but there's a forum poster who's created a live CD for mining (http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4103.0). It looks like the ATI side of things is still a work in progress, however. You could boot from the live CD for mining, then reboot sans-CD for regular Windows use.

Are you certain that the HD 2600 Pro has OpenCL? A cursory Google suggested it might not (but all the threads I saw were Mac-focussed, so YMMV...)

http://www.newslobster.com/random/how-to-get-started-using-your-gpu-to-mine-for-bitcoins-on-windows

There's also a GUI (http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3878.0), which might simplify things.

Radeon 2600 doesn't support OpenCL AFAIK

Thanks for answers people. According to the caps viewer I've not got CUDA support unfortunately. Maybe time to consider investing in new quipment. If I do I will definitely consider the Live CD too.

CUDA is Nvidia only... ATI's cards support OpenCL only from the HD 4XXX series and later

Yup, no OpenCL either. :(

I'm trying GPU Caps Viewer, but it keeps closing with an error as soon as it starts. Anyone else had this problem or know what it might be?

You can perfectly mine on Windows machine (with a compatible video card, of course). At least if you got no more than 4 GPUs in one PC.

I've been mining on two different computers with windows 7 just fine.
Use Neereus's link.

Can someone please upload Stream SDK 2.2 somewhere like hotfile or rapidshare. The link on AMD's website to it is broken.

windows 7 32bit one here: http://www.downloadatoz.com/software-development_directory/ati-stream-sdk/downloading.html

(look for this image)

http://img.techpowerup.org/110308/Capture056329.jpg

I appreciate the effort but I'm using Windows 7 x64 which they don't seem to have. I sent a post to AMD to ask them to fix the link.

EDIT: Here's a link to the 64-bit version: http://www.downloadplex.com/Windows/Development/Other/ati-stream-sdk_276909.html (http://www.downloadplex.com/Windows/Development/Other/ati-stream-sdk_276909.html)

This is really aggravating... I got 2 BSOD's while installing Catalyst and it finally worked the third time. Now I'm trying to install Stream SDK another couple of BSOD's and now my computer doesn't boot. I get the "starting windows" with the balloons, then the fan on the video card spins up and the screen goes black.  ???

Looks like I'm going to have to install either Win7 x86 or Ubuntu 64-bit.  :-[

AMD's drivers have always been notoriously bad, boot into safe mode before installing.

Turns out if the DPI is set over 100 = instant BSOD. Once I reduced it to 100 Catalyst and Stream SDK installed fine. After it's installed, if I set it over 100 Windows will only boot in safe mode. And 100 is too small for me.  :-[

I always hear this, but my experiences have been pretty awesome. Only one bug and it was fixed the next driver release.

The drivers aren't bad - why people still say that is likely because the installer looked like crap. It still looks bad, and there are plenty of issues installing drivers for older ATi hardware, but current AMD videocards tend to work well...though there are sometimes still installer problems :(

People equate driver tweaking UI == driver

I installed with and use 150 % DPI

something must be conflicting

I always hear horror stories about people having to go through a long and pain-in-the-neck process just to get the drivers installed correctly, not to mention bugs such as the cursor corruption and having idle clocks so low the computer crashes. Not to mention the few times I've used computers with ATI cards there were huge problems with even simple things like video playback.

If none of this has happened to you then hey, congrats. Maybe those were just isolated incidents. I do think they put more effort into their cards than their software though.

2 days ago i got a Sapphire HD5770, 1GB. Downloaded latest Catalyst and Stream 2.1, installed both, reboot: that's all.
Everything is working: h264 acceleration, mining, gaming, multimonitor (the card is coupled with an nVidia 9400gt) without any issue at all.
Windows 7 x64 here.

What's your average hashrate? I've got the same setup, but with Stream 2.2, and I'm getting ~315 mhash/s (as opposed to ~300mhash/s with Stream 2.3)

EDIT: Mirror for Stream SDK 2.2 for Windows 7 x64: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=E7FU5U2E