I dont think it will ever work in XP. I could be wrong, but I think in XP you can only use 2 videocards if they are identical. In Windows 7 (and linux) you can use several entirely different cards, you can even mix nvidia and ati cards, something I know doesnt work in XP.

If this is a dedicated mining rig, Id suggest installing ubuntu (and specifically, ubuntu 11.04 and not the latest  11.10, as 11.10 installs newer ATI drivers that suffer from the 100% cpu usage bug). If you need any help setting it up  with ubuntu, just ask, its not as difficult as one thinks but if you are new to linux you will likely need some guidance setting up the amd app sdk if nothing else.

You mean you are going in to hibernation

But why compare to a peak that was nothing but a speculative bubble? Compare it to 12 months ago and it still looks good Particularly if you take into account the increased numbers of coins since then.

I really dont understand why people think this is somehow dramatic for bitcoin.  Let it go back to $1 or $0.1, so what? it doesnt matter (unless you happen to hold BTCs you bought at $15 thinking youd get rich). $0.1 is as much a speculative value as $10 or $100. At this point, none of them are "correct", and all that really matters is if it gets used more widely, and that is not dependent on its value.

Join what? Another mad round of speculating frenzy? maybe not anytime soon. Good.
Use bitcoin as a way to transfer funds? Why not, who the hell cares how much a bitcoin is worth for that? It doesnt matter if one sends 0.1BTC or 10000BTC. All that matters is that the price is relatively stable, doubling in value in a month is just as harmful for that as halving in a month. Its absolute value is utterly unimportant.

BTW, the notion that $1 per BTC is somehow low is laughable if you look at only a year ago.

Kind of my point. If intel, with all their might and even with the help of the OSS community cant make half baked linux drivers (not sure why you exclude sandy bridge btw, as thats a complete trainwreck on linux) for their relatively simple hardware, I wouldnt hold my breath for the OSS community to outengineer nVidia in this regard, particularly not without full unrestricted access to all the specs, and having those specs years before release of hardware like internal driver teams of AMD and nvidia have.

Now I do agree over the past years, AMD have made remarkable progress, particularly for windows gaming drivers, but the gap with nvidia is still huge on linux (and with nvidia's new focus on tegra and linux based android, I dont expect AMD to close that gap anytime soon).

Anyway, for me its incredibly simple; for bitcoin mining obviously there is only choice. For windows gaming, either is good, with AMD generally having a price/$ advantage. For Linux and most professional apps, nVidia is the obvious choice.

Difficulty will drop whether they are rational or not. Hashrate is already down to ~8000GH, almost half what it was in august:
http://bitcoin.sipa.be/speed-lin.png

But the above poster is right, there is a delay. It takes time for miners to realize the price drop is not short lived and decide to pull the plug and possibly sell their equipment, and after that it still takes time for the network to adjust the difficulty.  The opposite will be true if or when bitcoin value starts rising again.

I think this is all great though. A correction like this was sorely needed.

No they havent. They have released partial specs for older cards so the community has been able to build usable drivers. Not great drivers, but usable. Well, if you dont game that is.


Ive heard nothing of AMD (or nvidia) planning to open up their proprietary drivers. Even so, much as I am a OSS fan, creating good 3D video drivers is no easy task and requires in depth knowledge of the underlying hardware. I wouldnt expect miracles from opensource here. Just look at intel GPU drivers; they are opensource, and have been for ages, but they still utterly and completely suck. Lets not mention VIA Chrome drivers.  Love m or hate m, nVidia is head and shoulders above the competition when it comes to Linux drivers.

I hope price drops to $1 or below. The resulting difficulty will make solo mining feasible again. Then its only a matter of waiting for bitcoin to gain more widespread acceptance as a payment method. That may or may not happen, but it was never dependent up on its exchange rate. Anyone thinking a $2 or $1 is somehow problematic dont understand the first thing about bitcoin.

Definitely. If you have free electricity and good warranty.
Otherwise, probably not.

Where are you sending from, france, belgium? How much to send a card to belgium? Any references?

Quite on the contrary. If they shut down, people will search for ways to spend their bitcoins, you know, trade and buy stuff with them,  and I suspect it would spur a real bitcoin economy. Imagine miners would no longer be able to cash their bitcoins for dollars, I think that would do wonders for bitcoin.

Clearly, yes, chances of killing a card will go up considerably if you stress them 24/7, particularly if you overclock them and dont provide ample cooling.
Its simple really, running a card causes electromigration. Think of it as erosion inside the chip. Electromigration is worsened by:
 heat and voltage (and very much so!).

Its like running your car flat out. Its designed to run flat out, and it shouldnt break just because you do it, but chances of it breaking down do go up considerably if you do it 24/7. But its still only a chance. Was it saab that ran their cars for 200.000 Km flatout on a circuit some years ago as a publicity stunt? Dont remember.

Anyway, for some more anecdotal evidence, mining with old 8800GT, 2x5850 and a 4770. One of the 5850s died after a month.

Would be difficult to give you a quote on that, I could give you one for other direction though. But no matter, it was the 5870 I was interested in, and its sold so...

Clearly bitminter is producing fake blocks. 14 lucky blocks in a row now. DrHaribo, will you marry me ?

With a nice increase in hash rate and a lowering of difficulty, it stands to reason we'd find more blocks, but this is an incredible lucky streak nonetheless! 12 blocks and only one (barely) above 60% CDF

Do you ship internationally (Belgium) ?

Actually, it may take more cooling. Smaller die with same power dissipation equals higher thermal density. So you may need beefier cooling to keep the card from melting. Thats assuming power consumption would remain equal, something I doubt.

Just for the record, nVidia also has the 100% CPU bug. At least it has on my old ubuntu rig thats temporarily running a 8800GT. 100% load.

If you want, I can make you fake dynamic ones. Just let me know which design (slim one or "big" one like mine below) and what numbers you want on them

https://bitminter.com is working smooth as ever.