Bitcoin Forum

Hey

I stumbled upon a site where someone was talking about bitcoin, how to get started and what's so cool about it etc. I ended up reading lots of it and decided hey why the hell not.
So this morning I've been reading, but there is so much to read it is absolutely overwhelming for the most part.

Downloaded GUIMiner, registered in a pool and started mining. I mine at about 3.0 Mhash/s, which I understand is absolutely worthless after reading on the forums. The only Device I am allowed to choose in GUIMiner is [1] my CPU (AMD Athlon(tm) II X4 640. There is a (0) Barts, but no idea what that one does.
Should I just give up on mining unless I want to buy hardware for it? I was thinking I could mine because I never shut my computer off because I use it for other things at night.

Any extra flags I should be using with my CPU? I have a Gigabyte HD Radeon 6850, but like I said I cannot see it in the Device tab.


Would it be possible to use both my CPU and GPU overnight? Would I need two separate workers?
If I shutdown as many applications as possible on my machine overnight, will my workers work harder? If I were to give GUIMiner more access to my hardware resources would they mine faster?

Thanks for any replies, I would have bothered people in IRC but it's completely empty.

A 6850 would produce a decent MHash rate, but i have no idea why you're not seeing it in the device tab of GuiMiner. 

If you're going to throw money down the mining hole, you should be looking at ASICs. GPU mining is not profitable any more, so do some research into the couple of ASIC vendors. Avalon has (apparently) started shipping very limited quantities of something, and Butterfly Labs is (supposedly) set to start shipping the week of the feb 17th. You can get into a Butterfly Labs device for under $200, less than a high end mining-capable GPU like a 7970. If you order a Butterfly Labs device now, however, you likely won't see your shipment until April, due to the # of preorders.

Probably wrong drivers installed, or missing SDK (http://developer.amd.com/tools/heterogeneous-computing/amd-accelerated-parallel-processing-app-sdk/downloads/).

I tried using the device (0) Barts and it yields 175 Mhash/s, would this correlate to what my 6850 would yield? Maybe it's just mislabeled (somehow?).

Downloading the SDK to see if that might be it.

Edit: Still can not find my graphics card unless the Barts device is it. But I cannot be sure and I would like to be, any ideas?

175MH/s seems ok, you might be able to squeeze out a bit more by overclocking the GPU,
the wiki (https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mining_hardware_comparison) lists results from 170MH/s up to 300MH/s,
but you should keep an eye on the temperature if you do.

Alright, thanks.

Now just to figure out why it says Barts...

Because it is its name?  ::) Seriously, you should know what you have!

I certainly never named it Barts!
Checked in Everest to see the temperature but it is nowhere to be found, although I did find out it was named Barts. Never liked the Catalyst Control Center because I can't be sure if I got the drivers installed correctly or not. I just get the CCC and then I assume everything is fine. Anyone familiar with ati while I'm here?
I would like to see the temperature.

Just open up the CCC, click on AMD Overdrive and there's your temperature and clock-settings.

It is the name of your GPU. Yes, Barts.

Everything is working perfectly. Your driver are fine, no problem. You are mining with your GPU. Yes, 175 is fine for a 6850.

Will you become rich? No, GPU mining is dead, either get an ASIC or well, it is more or less wasted time...