only relevant text quoted below: 2. It's not worth it. The Amazon servers cost more than the bitcoin earnings. |
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I love the idea of 1160 volts on a GPU. GO man go! I'm sure that won't be a problem.
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Haha, man, very funny, I laughed from just reading the title. TheOnion for bitcoin  |
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sadly the electrical pricing in my area essentially prohibits any computing other than personal and for-profit. If bitcoin continues down its current path towards unprofitability I will have no recourse but to sell off my mining rigs in part, or in whole, and wash my hands of the whole affair. I was lucky enough to make some profit (even before selling off) and have some fun, so I won't go away with a sour taste in my mouth, but away I'd have to go nonetheless. If bitcoin dropped down to the $1 mark, I might even reinvest some of my mining rig money into buying bitcoins to hold and see where it takes me.
USD certainly doesn't look to be the bedrock of the world in the coming times, thank you very much S&P.
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I'm still hilariously amused by the people who claim that paying off a card in 4 months is a bad idea.
Look at wall street, people consider a 5% positive ROI in a year as doing *very well*. Imagine that buying a card new depreciates its resale value instantly by 30%, if you pay off the card in 4 months, that's a 70% ROI in 4 months. Admittedly it's riskier, but isn't that the name of the game? Don't like risk, go invest in blue chips (not that they're doing great these days).
I don't want to keep motivating people to raise up my difficulty while my price is dropping, but let's get some perspective here, really.
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I was behind for a long time, and lately I've caught up to myself (in that the payouts from pools I've been mining is nearly equal with the number of blocks I have found for the pools). So, I'm actually a little ambivalent these days, more so than I used to be. I'd say one advantage to pools is the ability to react to market volatility. Bitcoin prices surge to 1000 USD per coin? You better believe I'm going to be really happy about the 3BTC/day I get from pools, and really really unhappy if I mine for a few weeks and find nothing solo (and prices plummet back to $3 / coin).
If you're in it for the long haul, I'd say solo mine, you pay no fees, have no stale shares, and so should theoretically come out slightly ahead in the long run. If you're looking to cash out of the magical money fountain at any moment, I suggest pools.
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Ok, I see you're referring to http://dot-bit.org/tools/nextDifficulty.phpI, on the other hand, was going by http://bitcoincharts.com/markets/Which shows a projected increase. Does anyone know how two sites could have access to the same data and yet come to such drastically different conclusions? I agree that a lot could happen in the next week. For example, some people look at a prediction of stabilizing difficulty as a cue to go ahead and max out their NewEgg Preferred credit card.  As always you choose your windows most carefully, there was a difficulty drop right before may, so of course it's "no drop since say, may", which has been all of 3 months time, and not at all indicative of any kind of trending (the entire time has been fairly exceptional). In answer to your question however, the difference depends on the time period that the calculation is based upon. Sliding block window size, and all that jazz. A common sense look would yield simliar thoughts however, as bitcoin charts reports 5.32blocks/hr solved, which would be a basis for expecting a decrease, or at least a much lower increase. I expect the huge ass sell off price drop will lead to a slight decrease in difficulty myself though. Although I won my last bet on difficulty projections, I don't care to speculate just yet betting wise. |
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so you want me to use a MOBO with 2 PCIx slots?
I'd be more than happy to build you as many systems as you want for similar prices above. Of course, my fee for doing all this is not included in that price, and if you're too lazy to do it yourself, it's not gonna be cheap. |
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Wow. Literally every suggestion in here has been wrong. 900watts for 3x 5850s? lolz. Only run your PSU at 50%? Here's a real rule of thumb: Get a quality PSU and run it up to 100% of its rated continuous power output. Are you on drugs??? No, are you? Long long post. I don't really want to address every point. I already stated that one can go with a 750 if one feels the need to play it safe. What I said was that suggesting a 900 watt PSU was retarded. There is absolutely no way to draw anywhere near that level of power with 3x5850s, unless maybe you have a full time DICE cooling a super high level OC.
While I agree fully that there's no way for 3x5850 to draw up to 900W, saying it's retarded is not true. I guess the problem here is that we have very different definition of safe. Your definition of safe includes running a PSU at 100% load 24/7 and "paranoid safe" is just running at 80% load. For some of us, "safe" includes margins for thermal derate, degradation from deterioration over time and safety margins for load spikes. While 3% different in efficiency might seem insignificant, but when you're running high power 24/7, 3% will add up to a lot. In some places, that would pay for the difference between a 750W and a 900W in less than 12 months. That is the difference between running a PSU at 50% and at 80~100%. Suggesting that someone throw money away for no reason is not really good advice. If you've deployed literally thousands of systems, one would expect you to know that. Are you going to take responsibility for someone throwing money into the gutter? Stupid question.
You see the difference is that you are telling them to do something risky without any caveats, in a way that makes it sound like your recommendation is the only way. I take full responsibility for my comment because I lay out the lower and higher bound, stating why (general safety and optimal efficiency) and leave the decision of which way to go to the person. I didn't tell him "The rest of them are all idiots, just buy a 1200W, or a 1000W if you're a cheapskate!" Alright, fair enough. although the riskiness of what I am suggesting is still overblown a bit. I have both calculated and empirical data on the general usage of a normal mining rig utilizing what he requested. I gave specific examples of exact make and model PSUs that are well known to be overdesigned to ensure clean and stable power at and above their rated power levels. Even after a few years (the general time-frame where the largest amount of degradation occurs) of relatively intensive usage, the bare specs, and "safe" suggestion will be fine. Now admittedly I didn't layout the case where the OP runs a full water loop with chiller in reservoir and extreme overvolts to murder gpus as fast as humanly possible, but I expect that in that case they might mention something like that. If not, well, caveat emptor, I don't live to warn everyone of every contingency life might possibly envision. Two standard deviations is enough for me. although that is probably the best PSU calculator around, it is still flawed, and I wouldn't really use it to gauge my needs. I also disagree with your statement that gold rating will not pay off. Here is a simple example: Say you have 3 PSUs, one is Gold, one is Silver, one is Bronze. Since we're building a beefy system lets say that they're running at 50% load for a 850Watt PSU, or drawing 425Watts. The draw from the wall for each is -- Gold: 472.22Watts Silver: 482.95Watts (+10.73Watts from gold) Bronze: 500Watts (+27.78Watts from gold) Over the course of 1 year, running a 24/7 mining load, assuming 11¢/kWh that turns out to be $26.77 difference between gold and bronze. Higher loads yield even higher savings (double the load is a little more than double the savings). Unless you don't plan on using the PSU very long, or your power is very very cheap, or you find a very cheap bargain PSU, gold rated PSUs will pay for themselves in savings over a bronze rated one most often in mining. |
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Hmm, well I have a 6870 lying around that wouldn't even post with my 5850s. I guess I'll try it again, see what it can do for me, but my experience hasn't been good thus far. Good news if it does work though as I meant to return it but was too lazy and missed the return date  |
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Yup, looking like 10% on the nose. And instant difficulty is 8.5% higher already.
It is clear my ass has amazing predictive powers. I will have a plaster cast of it made, so that you all can order a replica to mount on a pedistal or over your fireplace instead of that gauche moose head.
But I must admit, the growth trend is a bit surprising even accounting for variance. While we win by price-is-right rules, looks like the next difficulty will be 10% higher although the payout per coin looks to continue trending lower. My ass says we won't see a slowdown in this trend until BTC hit $5-$6, it's still profitable to add existing video cards to the network.
Oh boy, this is not good. I just started mining a week ago. One card. *rolls eyes* Meh, a 10% ish difference after 2 weeks is not much difference for your size. Say you were making .3BTC a day before, now you are making .273 BTC. You missed the days of 50-75% difficulty increases. Those were bad times. But if it was worth it to you to mine on a single card at 1.7mil it's fine to mine at 1.9mil difficulty. |
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I was wondering if anyone has gotten two ATI cards to work without crossfire using a software solution and without Dummy plugs ?
Yes,I am using the Catalyst 11.7 and trying to get a Radeon 5770 and 6950 to work independently.
I just got my rig working without dummy plugs or crossfire.. Using Trixx 4.0.2.. in Settings make sure 'Synchronize cards in Multi-GPU Config' is NOT checked and the configure each card individually. 3x Sapphire 5850 Xtreme with Catalyst 1.7 on Win7 x64 pretty sure you cant mix 6xxx and 5xxx cards |
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From what I've been told, wholesale (essentially what this suggestion is) is barely below what many stores charge. Add in the inefficiencies of personal shipping and whatnot, and you may not really come out ahead.
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It's a measurement over the entire time period, not an instantaneous reading at the last block. Stopping just before the changeover would accomplish nothing. I would hope that they would have designed the algorithm better than that.  I'm unsure why deepbit is reporting a different difficulty then. The same one dot-bit s difficulty page shows. Bitcoins havin some troubles already? |
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I don't know if this would work or not... It would make the difficulty change after the adjustment lower.
Very doubtful. Not sure how the system works, but it'll likely take into account the total time it took between the last scheduled difficulty and the new difficulty change and change difficulty accordingly. I'm pretty sure it wouldn't adjust difficulty based on the last few blocks, or that would be hugely exploitable. In related news, only 3 block to go before new difficulty! edit: 2 blocks to go edit: 1 block! edit: New difficulty out, from 1690895.8030524 to 1888786.7053531 which is a jump of 11.7% Are we watching the same blockchain? The ones I'm looking at say 33 blocks to go. edit: Hmm, I guess these sites are having problems. Deepbit and dot-bit show something else. Weird. They say 1890362 |
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Wow. Literally every suggestion in here has been wrong. 900watts for 3x 5850s? lolz. Only run your PSU at 50%? Nobody in this thread suggested "only run your PSU at 50%". Here's a real rule of thumb: Get a quality PSU and run it up to 100% of its rated continuous power output.
You're going to take responsibility if somebody's quality PSU blows in a few weeks and maybe take out a component or two? Giving the max isn't the same as giving responsible advice. We told the OP the various factors, outline the min/max scenarios so that he can make his decision how fine he wants to cut it or how safe he'd prefer to play it. Giving an unqualified "get a quality psu and run it up to 100% rated" isn't responsible. You're overlooking factors like thermal derating and manufacturing variance. I heard a really good anecdote once -- Buying a cheap PSU is like buying a cheap condom. Seems fine until you have a blow out.
For a mining rig, a quality gold rated PSU will literally pay for itself over say, a decent bronze rated psu, if running 24/7.
I've become a bit of a fanboy of the seasonic X series, though they're not as cheap as they once were. You will likely be fine with an x650, though if you're super super paranoid you can go with say an AX750, such quality it is (and basically the same unit as the X750 with some minor alterations). Also sweet but too expensive is the NZXT Hale90, but looks awesome. Lower quality but still respectable units are the OCZ ZX series, Thermaltake ToughPower, FSP Aurum series, Enermax Pro87+ series, Lepa GXXX series. Not as good units but if you can find a bargain they'll generally be good enough. I'm currently running 2x5870s and 1x5850 on my seasonic X650 right now, as I recall it pulls something like 580Watts from the wall, full load overclocked. That's roughly 500Watts to the system, don't listen to anyone that tells you a 5850 is going to pull 200Watts from the PSU.
What you pull is only applicable to your rig. We don't know how exactly he's going to run it, how overclocked, how much overvolting. Again, it's a question of irresponsible and responsible advice. Using your condom example it's like saying "I can reuse the same condom a few times and never caught anything so just do that". Sure the same condom would probably last a couple of fucks, but who's going to be responsible if somebody follows that advice, get a break and get a STD? A quality powersupply labelled "XXX Watts" can deliver XXX Watts to the system. Which means it can pull XXX + XXX*efficiency watts from the wall, and deliver it all day long 24/7. Now if you cheap out and get some no name cheapo-brand 10000 watt PSU, you might get enough watts, you might not, it might blow and with no OCP destroy your whole rig, or it might not, no one knows. I prefer to play it safe myself.
It's XXX / efficiency watts from the wall, not XXX + XXX * efficiency. OCP doesn't stop a PSU failure from taking out components, it depends on the actual failure mode. Having deployed literally thousands of systems with quality PSU from various manufacturer including Seasonic in one of my previous jobs, I can tell you it's 100% that a good PSU with all the protection mechanism can avoid collateral damage. Just like not every cheapo PSU will cause component damage if it pops. I'm not saying he can't try to run 3x5850 on a 650W, it's definitely theoretically possible. But just don't make it sound like it's a guaranteed sure no problem configuration. Long long post. I don't really want to address every point. I already stated that one can go with a 750 if one feels the need to play it safe. What I said was that suggesting a 900 watt PSU was retarded. There is absolutely no way to draw anywhere near that level of power with 3x5850s, unless maybe you have a full time DICE cooling a super high level OC. Suggesting that someone throw money away for no reason is not really good advice. If you've deployed literally thousands of systems, one would expect you to know that. Are you going to take responsibility for someone throwing money into the gutter? Stupid question. Anyway, for the OP: The Corsair HX850 is a decent PSU, but it is a rather older platform. Someone overpriced for the quality of the unit. I would recommend http://www.amazon.co.uk/Corsair-CMPSU-750AXUK-Professional-Power-Supply/dp/B003QP417E/ref=sr_1_1?s=computers&ie=UTF8&qid=1312195693&sr=1-1 over the HX850 hugely. Not only is it cheaper, and more than you will ever need powerwise, it is one of the highest quality units you can buy and Gold Rated (I believe it tested something like 89% efficient at full load). Again, don't listen to the naysayers, a 5870 uses far more power than a a 5850, I've run overclocked as hard as the cards would allow 4x5870s on a Hale90 850Watt PSU, with room to spare (Wall draw was 901Watts overclocked, even assuming an 87% efficiency that's 783Watts). |
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Really it seems simple to me, if you don't have a high enough hash rate to reasonably expect to generate a block before the next difficulty increase (you can look at the mining calculators to see your odds based on your hash rate), then you will lose solo mining, because if you don't mine a block before that difficulty increase your odds of generating a block will go down, and got nothing at that lower difficulty. If however you have a high enough hash rate that you can reasonably expect to generate a block before the difficulty increase then you can save yourself the fees, etc. of a pool and comfortably mine solo, as the odds would be the same (you would just have to put up with the variance but over a period of a couple of weeks you would likely come out ahead solo in this case). Am I right or am I missing something?
More or less a reasonable concept. I wish that googlebot were still around, would be interesting to see if he still felt the same way about a month later on his idea about economics of solo mining at ~1.75million difficulty on lower hash rate. |
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Don't make me have to moderate this thread.
 Perhaps you should try and keep up with the statements I made in my short and concise post. I said next target is quite easy to do without any modelling of any kind. I said that the trick is making a model that can forecast farther down the road, and used your forecast as an example of how difficult it can be (Your median was about 70% off actual, and even your lower bound was wrong with a huge error bar).
I applaud your work on creating a method of prediction, but until you stop patting yourself on the back for being right with the easy stuff, I suspect you will have trouble with the hard stuff. An 8% increase still seems much more likely than a > 15% increase. So we'll see, you are predicting a roughly 17% increase for your next median I believe? Let us see who does better, just for fun, no wagers necessary.
Your mathematical model says 17.5% for median, I will say 8.5% based solely on my own observation and "gut feeling". Let us see who does better for the next retarget. I know you argue against hard target exactitude, but that is not the point of this game, merely to show the ease of next retarget checking. And I haven't even really been paying that much attention lately tbqh.
EDIT: 1834633 to be more clear.
It is much harder to go out two re-targets or more. But it is something I am still working on despite any back patting. I get it. For block 139104 you are calling 1834633, I am calling 1986157. We will see who is closer. Care to go out to block 141120? It's getting close to the next change. Looks like any one who guessed 8-10% was extremely close and your prediction was way off Yay!  I'll regret another hit to my income, but it's always fun to win a bet Come onnn difficulty, daddy needs a new pair of radeons! |
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Wow. Literally every suggestion in here has been wrong. 900watts for 3x 5850s? lolz. Only run your PSU at 50%? Here's a real rule of thumb: Get a quality PSU and run it up to 100% of its rated continuous power output. I heard a really good anecdote once -- Buying a cheap PSU is like buying a cheap condom. Seems fine until you have a blow out. For a mining rig, a quality gold rated PSU will literally pay for itself over say, a decent bronze rated psu, if running 24/7. I've become a bit of a fanboy of the seasonic X series, though they're not as cheap as they once were. You will likely be fine with an x650, though if you're super super paranoid you can go with say an AX750, such quality it is (and basically the same unit as the X750 with some minor alterations). Also sweet but too expensive is the NZXT Hale90, but looks awesome. Lower quality but still respectable units are the OCZ ZX series, Thermaltake ToughPower, FSP Aurum series, Enermax Pro87+ series, Lepa GXXX series. Not as good units but if you can find a bargain they'll generally be good enough. I'm currently running 2x5870s and 1x5850 on my seasonic X650 right now, as I recall it pulls something like 580Watts from the wall, full load overclocked. That's roughly 500Watts to the system, don't listen to anyone that tells you a 5850 is going to pull 200Watts from the PSU. A quality powersupply labelled "XXX Watts" can deliver XXX Watts to the system. Which means it can pull XXX + XXX*efficiency watts from the wall, and deliver it all day long 24/7. Now if you cheap out and get some no name cheapo-brand 10000 watt PSU, you might get enough watts, you might not, it might blow and with no OCP destroy your whole rig, or it might not, no one knows. I prefer to play it safe myself. EDIT: P.S. Corsair makes some very good units, but the GS series is basically their lowest quality, crappest piles of nonsense. Not recommended. |
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You've still not addressed my question, you say that I've entered an agreement with business partners when I mine on a pool. But no one has made clear the parameters of that supposed agreement (other than what is laiad out in proportional payment structure)? When am I allowed to back out? When can I switch? Once I enter into this so called agreement am I bound to it forever? Can I never change my mind? You miss the entire point of implied agreements. We don't want to spend twenty minutes negotiating to buy a candy bar, and that level of precise detail is not needed. All that is necessary is that you interact with others in good faith and deal with them fairly. That is the implied agreement. The problem with "implied agreements" is that there is no clear basis to them. Your side of the agreement is not the same as mine unless we explicitly state it as so. If I can switch pools after 24 hours, why not 12, or 6, or as often as I want? Where is the line, how are you defining it? The line is between acting in good faith and acting in bad faith. If you want to change pools because you don't like the pool, want to try another pool, or something like that, you entered and exited the pool in good faith. There's no problem. If you left the pool because you want to shift a disproportionate share of the work to the other miners, only to re-enter it when you claim a disproportionate share of the profit, that's bad faith. That's abusing the system to get a share greater than your fair share at the expense of your fellow miners. Just because something increases your personal gain and is complicated does not make it inherently unethical. Of course not. It's when you deal with others in bad faith and deal with them unfairly that you are acting unethically. Everything you do in bitcoin to enhance your stake diminshes someone elses. No. That's not true. Hopping isn't stopping anyone else from doing anything, it is not some secret ploy, does not rely on deception or coercion or any other inherently unethical practice. Entering a profit-making cooperative with others when times are good, taking a disproportionate share of the profit earned by the work of others, only to desert the cooperative as soon as hard work is necessary to make more profit, with the intent of re-joining the cooperative as soon as the hard work is done in time to get another disproportionate share of the profit is an inherently unethical practice. Candy bar is an awful example. There is no implied contract, there is an explicitly defined contract. You pay me XXX dollars for YYY candy bars (in the united states). You don't like that agreement then you don't get them. Price is stated, non-negotiable, you agree or you move on. In fact, that is how almost all things in life are, explicit, not implicit. Maybe the agreement isn't written formally "You must take $$$ out of your wallet and put it in my hand" but that's not at all relevant or related to the conversation. There is no statement of any kind as to any actions on my part other than submitting a share and the reward I will receive for doing so. Additionally you guys are arguing an invalid point. You are not gaining "more than your fair share", in fact you are taking precisely the share assigned to you by propositional payout. That's why people argue against prop payout. While on a global level you may get a higher return due to playing the odds, you are not "stealing" anything that would not have been taken otherwise were you sitting around that pool anyway. No. That's not true Yes it is actually. That's what zero-sum means. While you may not like "fair weather friends" that doesn't make them "unethical". Makes them unlikable. Meni's argument is the closest one to being plausible, as to taking advantage of the unknowledgable. However the information is freely available, people are trying to make it known as best they can. The other arguments are just crybaby talk really. |
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