I don't really understand why everybody is bashing ixcoin. They are very clear of their intent - generate all coins faster, but keep the rest intact. I think this is absolutely excellent - we have a single difference that we can study. And possibly a final argument in the "inflation-deflation" debate. I want the ixcoin project to catch on so that we see it reach maturity in 2015. It will be interesting.

And no, I don't think competition is bad. As long as there are users of both currencies, there will be exchanges and people will have choices. Choices are never bad.

Whether the guy who started ixcoin has a lot of coins stashed, whether he plans to cash in and screw the users, I don't know. It's also irrelevant, IMHO. In the end, people will use (or not) ixcoin because it is useful to them, not based on someone else's proffits.

First run report:

* Diapolo's 08-04: 338.9
* phatk-2.1: 340.9
* phatk-2.2: 341.3

Board is a 5830 Xtreme from Sapphire, GPU at 1050, RAM at 325, phoenix options:

-k phatkmod-0804 VECTORS2 BFI_INT FASTLOOP=false AGGRESSION=14 WORKSIZE=256
-k phatk-2.1 VECTORS BFI_INT FASTLOOP=false AGGRESSION=14 WORKSIZE=256
-k phatk-2.2 VECTORS BFI_INT FASTLOOP=false AGGRESSION=14 WORKSIZE=256

I'll leave it overnight to see if any problems (hardware errors, etc), but it looks good! Thank you for your work! (and waiting for Diapolo's reply on your kernel ).

@deepceleron

As long as the board doesn't crash or overheat, I think you just need to find out if the increase in hashrate is significantly more than the increase in hardware errors. For my board, on Diapolo's 08-04 version I get 0,2% hardware errors (out of the accepted shares, maybe time referenced would be better) at 1040 Mhz. At 1050, it's 0,21%, so a variance that can be as well network conditions or measurement errors (if time was involved). But, the hashrate increases by 0,95%. So my reasonment is that I gain about 1% performance while losing 0,01% because of more hardware errors.

I only tested 2.1 on 1050 and for a shorter time, but hardware errors seem to be in the same range as in Diapolo's kernel, so I will most likely leave the frequency alone and do comparative testing on the kernels only.

It says otherwise in the first post

As promised, I'm back with some more testing. For cgminer, I used the data reported by the interface. For phoenix, I redirected out put to a log file and calculated the time since the "connected to server" message and last "accepted" log for the sampling period and used that to determine the accepted shares/minute indicator.

And all this complicated math and monitoring gave me these conclusions:

* [expected] at the same GPU frequency, cgminer and phatk-0711 hashrates are about the same.

* [expected] as frequency increases, hardware errors increase at a greater rate in cgminer, than for phatk-0711.

* [UNexpected] increases in hardware errors don't affect hashrate increase by frequency increase. I would have expected that bumping the frequency in cgminer would bring me *less* hashrate increase than phath-0711. Rationale was that more hardware errors would "eat" from hashrate. But there's no visible effect, so bumping the frequency seems to be prefferable, and hardware errors can be ignored (well, unless the board melts ).

* [expected] also, more hardware errors won't lead to more rejects. Rejects are more related to communication problems with the pool than local conditions. That's why I ignored them in all my calculations.

* [UNexpected] even for 10.000 accepted shares samples, hashrate/hardware errors/frequency has less than expected impact on accepted shares/minute. Variance is high and depends a lot on network conditions. It's impossible to assess that running the card at +5% frequency/hashrate will increase your accepted shares by 5%. Might even decrease it

Soooo.... yeah. Not exactly what I expected, but not unhappy either. It just means that one can run almost any kernel at any frequency and will get about the same results (more influenced by network conditions and pool luck rather than hardware settings of kernel optimisations). Some will prefer to keep it cool (the board, I mean) using a lower frequency and consuming less power, others will tweak the last ALU op and last Mhz our of the board. Just because they can. You know where I stand

On an even happier note, the latest phatk mod by @Diapolo, 08-04, brings back the hardware errors to 07-11 levels, so my original problem will go away when this kernel will be ported to cgminer.

I am happy to report these results for my 5830 running on SDK 2.4, fglrx-driver 1:11-6-2 (Debian unstable ~3 weeks snapshot), phoenix 1.50 and options "VECTORS VECTORS2 BFI_INT FASTLOOP=false AGGRESSION=14 WORKSIZE=256":

* 07-11 @ 1040 Mhz - 334 Mhash
* 08-04 @ 1040 Mhz - 335,7 Mhash

* 07-11 @ 1050 Mhz - 337,3 Mhash
* 08-04 @ 1050 Mhz - 338,9 Mhash

07-17 was untested because of lots of hardware errors. The even more happy news for me is that 08-14 brought the number of hardware erors at about the same level as 07-11 (~0.2% of the accepted shares).

Thank you again for your work and I'm looking forward to having this kernel ported to cgminer!

@yeti, amdoverdrivectl will NOT go over a certain hardcoded limit in some cards. My example: Sapphire 5830 Xtreme. The high level profile was set to 800 Mhz for the GPU, but there was a overdrive limit of 900. I could NOT set the GPU frequency over 900 with either amdoverdrivectl or aticontrol. I had to edit the BIOS to increase the limit to 1100 Mhz, so I could run the card's GPU at 1040 Mhz.

I thought about that too, after yesterday I mined +25% more than usual. Turned out that the pool got lucky (deepbit, now at 5+ thash). I already found out the best cgminer settings, so I will run it for a couple of days. I'll tell you what I found out in a few days.

I don't have 2 identical cards at the moment, I would like to do the tests in parallel to exclude pool luck and other random factors. But I hope to borrow another 5830 soon, and I'll come back with better tests.

@Graet, if you will have the patience to (re)read what I wrote and what other users wrote in the phatk modified thread, you will understand that I did thought that the card was too overclocked and I already excluded it.

1. default phatk from phoenix-1.5.0 and all modified phatk kernels up to 07-11 do not produce hardware errors.
2. modified phatk from 07-17 does, as does the version shipped with cgminer-1.4.1 (and 1.4.0).
3. no miner based on poclbm produced hardware errors. I usually test up until 1000 accepted shares and I tested, if I remember correctly, 3 poclbm versions.

With that and what I wrote before, I came to the conclusion that there's a regression on phatk. A developer would usually be interested in such a report, and @ckolivas encouraged testing and bug reporting (please read the original cgminer thread).

Whether @ckolivas or @Diapolo will consider my report relevand and will want to dig in, remains to be seen. Worst case, they will ignore me and I will use phoenix with the phatk version that is best for my setup. However, I don't think that it's "a bit much to realistically ask of a guy that is doing an awesome job coding and supporting cgminer, as well as raising a family and having a full time job". I assume that since he is doing this and is asking for feedback, he has the time to do it and is interested in said feedback.

Oh, and FYI, porting phatk 07-11 to cgminer will not require any recompilation, just patching a text file. I would do it myself, and I already tried, but I don't understand the code that well so I failed.

As it's already been said, 70 deg. is no biggie. If you have any doubts, buy a 12x12 or 15x15 cm fan and place if above the cards (or to the "back"of the cards, blowing towards the ports, if you can't mount the fan as I said). I am running my 5830 at 1040 Mhz core and the temperature is 60 degrees C. I am using a 15x15 cm fan placed between the card and the hard drive bay.

Posting in newbies, because I can't post in the original cgminer thread at http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=28402.440

I am running cgminer 1.4.1 (the binary already compiled by @ckolivas) on a Sapphire HD 5830 Xtreme, overclocked at 1040 Mhz (RAM at 325). I see a lot of hardware errors in the stats (HW), as much as 10-15 per 100 accepted shares. Kernel is phatk, the number of HW errors does not depend on the other settings used (-g -I -w -v).

After some testing, I came to the conclusion that the problem is with the phatk implemetation shipped with cgminer-1.4.1 (same thing with 1.4.0). My tests:

1. I assumed that my board it "too overclocked", brought it down to 1000 Mhz, ran it for a few hours, there is no significant drop in HW errors. I excluded overclocking. Update: redid the tests, hardware errors do disappear, but at much lower frequencies. The rate of in-/decrease is very steep.

2. Varied -g, -I, -w and -v parameters, no change in HW errors. I excluded configuration problems.

3. I also came to the same conclusion using phoenix with the modified phatk from here: http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=25135.0 . As I commented in post #158 ( http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=25135.msg383782#msg383782 ), the phatk version from 07-17 produces a lot of hardware errors, but version 07-11 does not. Other users have the same problem.

So it appears to me that the phatk version used in cgminer 1.4.1 is based on or has the same bug as the modified phatk from 07-17.

Now for the questions:

1. Did anyone else notice the same issue with cgminer+phatk?

2. If @ckolivas and/or @Diapolo are reading, would it be possible to port phatk 07-11 to cgminer-1.4.1 so we can confirm my conclusion?

10q and great miner, btw

@anonona3, I know you don't want to hear this, but here goes: you will not have much success with the hardware you have. Even if you do push the card to the max and get it to 30 MH (which is highest on the wiki hardware comparison table), you will only generate 0,5 BTC/month. Excluding power cuts, pool downtime, connectivity problems, reduced hashrate if you want to use your computer for something else. And also assuming that difficulty will not go up - which it will. I don't know how much you pay for electricity, but you can safely asume that you will pay more than you will gain by mining. The mining calculator says that at the current difficulty and exchange rate you will make 7.6 USD/month. A better bet is 5/month and a realistic one is 3/month.

So my advice is, if you really want to mine, to get a ATI card you can afford, that can push more than 200 MH and build a dedicated mining rig. Don't lie to yourself and do the proper calculations: electricity/cooling, time invested in tuning the software and hardware setup. Otherwise you'll mine at a loss and that's no fun.

Or, if you just want some bitcoins to play with this cool new econosystem, there are other ways to get some: buy them at a exchange or sell products and services. Selling "real" products is, from what I can see, the least developed part of the bitcoin econosystem, so that would be a great place to start. You'll get BTC which you can then spend on other stuff - for example on hardware to build a powerful mining rig.

Well, I hope I don't get banned for this, since this is my 2nd post . I wrote a blog post 2 weeks ago about it, you can read it at:

http://blog.mybox.ro/2011/07/14/overclocking-the-radeon-hd-5830-for-fun-and-profit/

In a nutshell, you will download the BIOS from your card, edit it with a BIOS editor and burn it back to the card. It's fairly easy and the only risk that I see is having a power cut while flashing (use a UPS). I was able to push my card to 1060 Mhz (the factory default was 800 and the hardcoded limit 900). Works very stable at 1040 for more than 3 weeks.

Hope it helps!

I also rolled back to 07-11, 07-17 was giving me "Kernel error: Unusual behavior from OpenCL. Hardware problem?" just like @navigator had. Board is Sapphire 5830 Xtreme, GPU @1040, RAM @350, 334 MH/s with 07-11. 07-07 was also stable and getting 331 MH/s.