Bitcoin Forum

does either give an improvement?

if so which one is better and by how much?

In my experience, Linux, 5-10% faster.

I agree with Cent,

Linux all the way for me.. 5-10 % more.

do you say this using the cards in a stock fashion or are you tweaking the crap out of them?
OC and what not.

are you using software that is slightly more efficient? i do not mean the OS (linux).

what i find odd is that i often hear people talk about their cards, tweaking, and software
being used.. and when they mention their mh/s which is higher then most.. it is more then
likely ran on windows 7.

just look at the hardware chart for the popular 5830s. seems the top mh/s are all windows.
what is the deal? linux users have a tougher time tweaking without windows around? or do they
keep secrets ;-)

If you are on linux, you need to flash your cards under windows and then run it on linux. For the same conditions for the card linux is faster than windows.

i just wonder if the windows users have an easier and quicker time of tweaking their cards to get the most
out of them.. while linux users have to jump through so many hoops. therefore they get good use out of them
but do not bother attempt to get the max possible due to taking too much time for each situation/card.. if you follow me.
there are always exceptions. certain folks that take the time to do it right but for most people i bet that is not the case.


now do not get me wrong. i work for an isp. i cannot stand windows for any type of server role. freebsd > linux > windows
is how i roll. but when it comes to workstations/gaming rigs i got nothing against windows and i am having a hard time
convincing myself that unbuntu 11.04 will be a better choice then win 7 x64. Especially if I end up wasting time goofing
around with it when I can have windows up and running in a fraction of the time. If that extra 5-10% costs me hours/days
to get going with... that is hours/days that windows could have been chugging along.

i want to use linux.. but i have a feeling i can do just as well with windows now days.

Windows has the largest market share so you're always going to see more posts by people using it. Along with that, a lot of these posts are from guys who have gaming rigs that they mine with in their off time, so they obviously require windows (in most cases). As obvious by recent threads, some of the new miners are lucky to even get mining running under windows and some don't even grasp basic Windows usage (CPU affinity, for instance) so them running Linux is out of the question entirely.

In my case, I'm willing to jump through the hoops. For one, I can more easily check on my miners more quickly by sshing in to them, having the processes screened, and be able to switch between the different processes to see how they are doing.  Secondly, by using ssh, RSA key authentication, remote execution, and shell scripts that perform mining operations (change pools, clock settings etc) I can now issue single commands on my "master" miner, and have it control the slave miners and make them switch pools, etc. I can do all this from an ssh client on my android phone from anywhere I have connectivity. Lastly, there's the few extra Mhash I get from the performance increase, which to me is just a bonus.

At the end of the day, do what works best for you and you probably won't see a huge difference over time. I'm a Linux geek, prefer command line to gui, don't want the bandwidth overhead of administering miners over VNC, don't want o administer miners individually, and have the ability to monitor and administer all miners from a single console, typically my iPad or Evo unless I'm at work in front of a workstation all day.

My $0.02 bitcents, anyway!

cent

What you say makes sense, but its probably true for people just using their linux desktops to generate bitcoins. If someone buys a dedicated rig and puts 3 or 4 expensive ATI cards in there, he/she is probably going to spend the time to set them appropiately specially since its a one time effort and then you just enjoy the extra-performance "forever". It would be silly not to.

Linux is NOT faster.  But it's more stable for sure.   I just put 3 machines on linux that were running window 7 64 bit pro.   In fact I can't even overclock my 5850s. (tried RBE etc.)

However it may be faster using hashkill miner.  But as it's not open source I'm not using it.  

That being said I love linux.  Being able to SSH into with ease into the systems is 100% better then logmein or VPNs etc.  It's also FAR more stable.   Flashing cards that you edit for OC is pretty easy with a simple MS DOS flash boot.  But you will need windows to edit using RBE.

EDIT: I also want to point out I was seeing 100% CPU cycles in windows and it dropped to 12-15% in linux. A HUGE BONUS.  This is with a 2.7 dual core amd.

I prefer Windows due to ease of rollout, and probably because I am a Windows Admin by training and a Mac user by choice. GUI's are my bread and butter.

I haven't seen the high CPU usage issue others have reported, so I believe that may be a misconfiguration issue?

It's all about preference. If you are more familiar with windows, stick with it, no reason to frustrate yourself unless you are just looking to learn some.

Personally, if you are curious and have a spare machine, try it out. It is always nice to learn a new skill, or at least a point of view.

You made good points.

I think the best way is to to know all the advantages and disadvantages of both windows and linux and exploit them for the right thing.

I use windows to find the best OC I can get then I flash it.

Then I use linux to get extra mhashes out of it plus some extra stuff such as "screen" and custom stuff.

Took me a bit of time to get it all working initially but now I can build a machine easily with the right procedures quickly.

Wait a second? You are saying you can tweak the cards and then flash the tweaks in the firmware so you don't have to mess with setting them again?

Thats what I do.

aticonfig has some issues such as not being able to lower the ram freq to 300 which I do for heating issues.  Also increasing the clock doesn't work too well on linux as I found out.

So I use this http://www.techpowerup.com/rbe/

This isn't some big secret.

Make sure you backup your original bios first using gpu-z.  Change the bios to the exact perfect squeeze you can get.  Then flash it (I use ati winflash)

The only thing you can't do in linux is to increase your voltage on windows with tools like sapphire trixx.  But I learn that upping voltage increase too much heat anyway.  I usually build 3 card rigs.  I try to keep it high 70C to low 80C

Switching to linux after all the work is just cool with all the cool stuff you can do with linux.  Not to mention I love linux. ;)

But I don't hate on windows as it has its uses ;)

Another reason to go with Linux regardless of mh/s is remote administration of your miners via SSH. It's so damn simple.

Serious.  I had to reboot one of my systems from work but didn't know the external IP.   I used logmein to my main windows computer and then did SSH to linux.   So damn easy!  Once I grab a linux program to stablize external IP I can putty straight to the externals.

Oh, don't forget you also don't need any dummy plugs.  I got about 8 extra now.

Ah yeah I didn't even think of not having to use dummy plugs. Another great reason.

It _is_ opensource and the SVN repository is located on sourceforge. I do not commit any change though until I am OK with the current situation. The SVN contains sort of baselines of the current code I am OK with.

How about that:

1) I promise I would commit every single change to the sourceforge SVN. Even a single new comment line.
2) I charge you modest ammount of BTC for answering any question related to build configuration and compilation.

You see, my spare time is rather limited and it is going to be even more limited if I have to answer questions about building a code I still consider experimental. Debugging build issues and solving people's build problems takes up my time I can use for improving the software. I am giving you a compiled binary and spare you from installing the right prerequisites and do the necessary things for a successful build. Some of the prerequisites are not even present in the distro's repositories, so (for example on Slackware) you'd have to build them from source.

Then again it all boils down to the following: since you value opensource that much and need transparent, real-time access to the code. On the other hand (eh) I am the only one working on that project and my time is too limited to resolve problems of users that want to build experimental code. Are you willing to pay for that support? I'd think no.