How are you planning on achieving 1.5 Ghash/sec with an $800 budget?

5870's are $250 apiece at the moment and each only get around 350 Mh/s and are one of the most cost efficient GPUs at the moment. Even 3 of them would not get 1.5 Ghas / sec and that's not including the substantial cost of the rest of the equipment that goes with a computer.

Looks promising. A pretty decent hash speed to start with. Can't wait to see where the community takes this.

Ok, I took the motherboard out of the case. Booting it up on the insulated material it came in. With one graphics card plugged in, and one stick of RAM. Nothing else.

When I boot, instead of 3 long beeps, I now get 1 long beep, and 2 short beeps.

MSI website says this means "A video error has occurred and the BIOS cannot intialize the video screen to display any additional information "

What are my options now?

ugh.... 3.5 hours, and no blocks 

Luck is cursing is for solving the previous one in 4 seconds 

You may have some defective hardware, then. I'm guessing the MoBo doesn't have an LED POST readout on it?

I'd try reseating the RAM, only putting one stick in, and trying different RAM slots, then reseating the CPU, then replugging all the power supply connections, and then I'd send it back if it still isn't working -- worst part is you don't know what's failing unless you can get a POST code. Rarely, MoBo manufacturers include a speaker which will beep out an error code. If you have a case, sometimes they have the speaker built into case with a wire coming out which goes into the speaker pins for a code.

Have you tried it?

Challenge:

Give me a search phrase that can answer this question without browsing beyond the 3rd page of results.

This may mark me as a total newbie but...
How are people setting their memory clocks? CCC won't let me set mine lower than 450MHz. Running dual 4870's.

I just got one of those this week. Mine's running like a champ so far.

Its a msi 890fxa-gd79

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130274

yeah, there was a little rubber blocker thing, but i took it off. oops. the manual itself says 8 pin though, and shows all 8 pins, so idk

I have the 8 pin connector plugged into the motherboard. I have two PCI-e cables from PSU to graphics card. I've been trying to boot with only one card the whole time.

If the majority of bitcoins are treated as a sort of speculators tool then yeah their value won't have much of a solid base. So I personally agree with people that say that bitcoin needs to grow in economic use. This whole mining thing is blown way out of proportion. I have this uneasy feeling that mining will still be an ongoing central focus for most people until all 21 million coins are minted. I worry that a large majority of newbies are going to treat bitcoin as a cashcow (mine some coins and then dump them as quickly as possible). Heck, hoarding would be better than mining and then dumping them quickly into fiat. Even better would be to buy services and goods or offer their own services and good for them.

I do not agree with not telling people about mining though. I don't think it's a good idea to conspire to keep new bitcoin users in the dark about this aspect of the bitcoin system. It would be pretty damn hard to keep them from finding out about mining anyways. The economic incentive is there so it's hard to blame them for wanting to exploit the potential for profit.

Dare I go so far as to say that we're going to have a "mining bubble" which is going to drive up price and so on and so forth. Eventually the mining bubble will pop as the non-professional miners will get kicked out of the market by the increasing difficulty. So in the end everything will or should work out just fine

@ speeder, I agree with you, there are a LOT of miners out there that don't give a shit about the security of the bitcoin network and they aren't planning to do this for the long term. They just want to squeeze as much fiat money out of this bitcoin thing for what it's worth. I'd have more faith in the early adopters than in say some teenager with his fancy pants radeon that his mommy bought him for Christmas. It's those that have a lot to lose and a lot to gain from bitcoin's success that you can count on to be there for the system when it needs them.

Heck I'll mine at a loss if necessary! I don't give a crap about an extra $20 a month in electricity. I want bitcoin to succeed in giving a large portion of humanity freedom and control over their OWN money. On the flip side I understand that I'm probably in the minority and that not a lot of people share my ideological motivations.

C'est la vie, n'est pas?

I'm not sure I understand the instructions. Are you suggesting that the person announces their balance here, then moves it to 5 other addresses so that they can post links to Bitcoin Block Explorer as evidence?

Apart from the fact that few people would go to that much trouble, there is the downside that by consolidating your coins you link their histories together. Not everyone will want this.

Atlas, why don't you show your own wealth? If no-one else shows theirs, you will be permanently ranked Richest Bitcoiner #1.

The US will NEVER ban Bitcoin. The US might pass some legislation that appears to ban Bitcoin, but in actuality it will not be banned, ever. It is an impossibility. However they CAN and might ban the purchase of bitcoins using USD or the purchase of USD using bitcoins.

Hmm, that site lots good- barely anything for sale on it though, which makes me think it's unlikely I'd ever sell anything.
Can you vouch for its legitimacy?
Also, they charge an insertion fee- which, seeing as I have no bitcoins, I wouldn't even be able to pay!

Any other tips?