Well from my own 50M/hash miner I deduced it was at least a few megabytes per hour, but I do have other processes going.

Just wondered if anyone had some actual stats, as my upstream is limited to 40-50Kbytes a second, I dont want my upstream to limit the amount of work I can process.

kind regards

You have PM. Enjoy the game!

Heh, that's nearly free.  Yes, that gives you an advantage over competitors for Bitcoin mining then.    Where is this?, ... that's really, really low!

With that low of an electric rate, you'ld probably be better off getting some used GPU hardware now and start mining now than waiting for an FPGA (in a purely financial sense).


It's not a surprise though to most speculators, so it may already be priced into the current exchange rate.

Additionally, it could be the event that many GPU miners are holding out for and when it occurs, they will dump their GPUs for bitcoins and spend their hoard of bitcoins on new hardware, whatever that hardware at the time happens to be (new FPGA design, or ASIC, or whatever).   That might put as much downward pressure on the price as the lower new supply (3,600 BTC fewer issued, per-day) would cause.

December 2012.  Like in 7 months.

Mining is competitive.  In a competition there are certain properties that will favor one competitor over another.    With Bitcoin mining, there are three main properties that matter:

 1.) How much does your electricity cost.  Right now the breakeven for GPU mining is about $0.20 per kWh.  With FPGA mining, the breakeven drops significantly but the upfront capital cost is nearly double.  (i.e., a $500 GPU with $0.15 per kWh electricity might pay for itself sooner than a $500 FPGA at $0.10 per kWh will).
 2.) Capital spent on FPGA mining is speculation regarding future unknowns.  It is an asset with little market value other than for mining.  So if there is a technological advancement with a big jump in efficiency (e.g., ASIC) that would cause difficulty to rise faster than the exchange rate and thus it would mean that you cannot mine profitably using an FPGA.  You would then have paid a lot of money for what ends up being an expensive book-end.  Is that capital still available even after being aware of the risk (or are there other places with better return or less risk than mining for it?)
 3.) Technical skills of the operator and capacity to learn and administer a mining operation.

I'd say go College first

I am limited by the maximum power available to use electrically and then dissipate thermally. This is also my main logistical limitation.

I updated the original post with what i have. Check it out!

with 12.1/SDK 2.5 my sapphire 5850 gets 395MH/s
930 core 180 mem 1.088v
fan 50% 60c

Here's a good starting point: I have two Sapphire 5850's@400MH/s each.They are running on 12.1 drivers with SDK 2.5 from the 11.11 drivers (SDK 2.5.793.1). I'm using cgminer with phatk kernel, vectors 2 and worksize 256; the cards are clocked at 970MHz core and 150MHz mems. I have auto-temp set at 70ºC (for "longevity"), the fan usually goes between 54-58% to achieve that.