I apologize if I seemed like I was coming across as someone from the WDC dev team... I definitely have no relation to their team. I had seen that link to the WDC forums this morning, either from a trollbox or a forum, I forget which, and was asking if we had already taken it into account, especially because it was saying that coinchoose was severely overstating values.

I have no intention of coming across as being someone from ANY dev team for ANY coin... I definitely do not know the inner workings of coins enough to be able to even consider trying to suggest improvements to a coin, much less program changes. So if for some reason you took my post as representing a member of the WDC dev team, I sincerely apologize.

I have an older system I use to mine, with 1x PCIe16x, and 2x PCIe 1x. The system has a 5 month old 720W PSU, Core2 Quad processor, and 8 GB RAM (I can go up to 16GB DDR2, but DDR2 right now is a little costly.)

I was mining fine (12.8 drivers) with two 7950s (one in the 16x, and one on a powered 1-16 extender), and decided, since I had the spare PSU capacity and spare PCIe port, to use a 1-1 extender I had on hand and also get a 16-16 extender, and another 7950. My thinking was three PCIe slots was good enough, and since each card only uses 200W, I still had enough for the system to run.

Ever since I installed the third card this evening, when I run CGminer, the graphics driver craps out and recovers, GPU0 goes permanently offline and doesn't recover, and GPUs 1 and 2 mine anywhere between 50-80 percent their capability.

Am I running into a RAM issue (since each card is a Gigabyte 7950 3GB, do I need to have 10+ GB RAM)? Or is it like someone else said, an overclocking issue?


{
"pools" : [
   {
      "url" : "http://pxc.allpoolz.com:8080",
      "user" : "user",
      "pass" : "x"
   },
   {
      "url" : "http://phoen01.phenixpool.com:9500",
      "user" : "user",
      "pass" : "x"
   },
{
      "url" : "http://btb.ltcoin.net:2222",
      "user" : "user",
      "pass" : "x"
   }


]
,
"intensity" : "20,20,20",
"vectors" : "1,1,1",
"worksize" : "256,256.256",
"kernel" : "scrypt,scrypt,scrypt",
"lookup-gap" : "0,0,0",
"thread-concurrency" : "21712,21712,21712",
"shaders" : "0,0,0",
"gpu-engine" : "0-1190,0-1190,0-1190",
"gpu-fan" : "0-85,0-85,0-85",
"gpu-memclock" : "1450,1450,1450",
"gpu-memdiff" : "0,0,0",
"gpu-powertune" : "0,0,0",
"gpu-vddc" : "1.206,1.206,1.206",
"temp-cutoff" : "95,95,95",
"temp-overheat" : "85,85,85",
"temp-target" : "75,75,75",
"api-port" : "4028",
"expiry" : "120",
"gpu-dyninterval" : "7",
"gpu-platform" : "0",
"gpu-threads" : "1",
"hotplug" : "5",
"log" : "1",
"no-pool-disable" : true,
"queue" : "1",
"scan-time" : "60",
"scrypt" : true,
"temp-hysteresis" : "3",
"shares" : "0",
"auto-fan" : true,
"auto-gpu" : true,
"kernel-path" : "/usr/local/bin"
}

In fact, one step further... he actively removed it sometime early on in the 2.x series.

The critical path item is the pricing of BTC/USD, and secondary, the trade of a given coin to BTC. The conversion of the latter usually hovers real close to the generation rate of the one compared to the generation rate of the other, eg all hardware being equal, how many bitcoins can be generated and how many Digicoins can be generated in the same exact time frame, and express that as a ratio. That's the median... you might see pricing shoot above it as investing is done, then drop back down toward the median, maybe slightly dipping below for a very brief time.

The more critical item is BTC/USD. This itself is what determines the pricing for just about everything else. And at this point, we have to thank the people who pay USD and buy BTC, as they are the ones who inject the cash into the economy. If BTC stays level at $120, then yes, slowly things will tend toward un-profitable, as the one CONST is block reward decreases, and the variable that figures in to change things is difficulty, driven by global hashrate. (The same was said when BTC was steady around 5 a couple years ago, and 30 a year ago.)

As before, you will see one of two major changes:
-BTC/USD stays stable, causing miners with less profitable equipment to drop offline, global hashrate to decrease, and difficulty to decrease. (In this case, GPUs that are from the x7xx of their line and earlier... but in the case of SHA256, also GPUs heading up into the high x9xx cards.)
-BTC/USD rises, causing purchase of more equipment, and more global hashrate, driving a difficulty increase.

If you use sites like coinchoose, dustcoin, or coinwarz, and are actively involved with switching your miners to the most profitable coin at the time (even if its only twice a day... like when you leave for work, and before you go to sleep), and actively and regularly converting those coins at the exchanges (BTC-E, vircurex, cryptsy) to BTC, it is still quite viable to pay down a GPU. If you put some of that BTC into a stock site like BTCT or bitfunder into a dividend paying stock, the initial paydown time will be delayed, but that money is still available to pull out (unlike pyramining), and is gaining some interest in the form of dividends. Now, if you're buying riser cables, a new Power supply, or a whole new system, it will obviously take longer, and yes, could theoretically take too long.

If you are morally opposed to mining any other coin, and insist on mining JUST Bitcoin and nothing else... then yes, GPU mining will probably not pay off in a sensible amount of time. GPUs give certain hashrates... And with the influx of Avalons, Avalon-chip miners, the slow influx of BFL, ASICMINER blades, and the eventual influx of KNC ASICs, the amount of hashes your card can put out compared to the huge rise in difficulty will be negligible. Unless the pricing of BTC/USD increases to match, then yes, GPU mining will be unprofitable. It would THEORETICALLY be possible to pay off that new GPU if you could even guarantee 1 penny per day off it after power costs, but that GPU is not going to live for 75 years.

Scrypt coins were made to address just this issue, the rise of ASICs and eventual obsolescence of GPUs in SHA256.

Well, there's a big difference in mining Worldcoin (which is currently at top of Coinchoose at 153 percent as of this post), and mining it under the same conditions but with that forum post taken into account, which means its actually 92 percent. In the one case, it makes sense to mine Worldcoin... in the other, its a gross misrepresentation to say something that's actually 92 percent profitable is 153 percent profitable.

(Not saying Sal is advocating one coin over another... just saying that if that's not taken into account in calculations, then coinchoose is really not showing the accurate facts and could be listing one coin at top that is more like #7 or 8 on the list in reality.) I know that _I_ would be pretty upset if I expected to make $10 for a job that was listed at 10 bucks, and when all was said and done, I got handed 6 bucks.

I don't think the "lol, let them find out the hard way" answer is really a productive one... thats what coinchoose is made for, so we are not each of us having to rediscover the wheel every 10 minutes minutes, having to manually go retrieve difficulties, pricing among multiple sites, and making our own matrixes. If we were all taking that same stance as you just took, digitalindustry, there would be no coinchoose.

http://worldcoinforum.org/topic/41-everyone-recieves-60-of-estimated-rewards/ - Has this been implemented?

General question: I have an i5 2550k, and an i7 3770. Both are profitable per calculators mining most of the gpu minable coins. I usually let them just run cpuminer, and mine on an LTC pool all the time, racking up a little here and there.

Being Yacoin is optomized for CPU mining and NO GPU mining, would I be better off mining a GPU coin with these CPUs... or is Yacoin more profitable all things being equal for these CPUs? There just aren't any calculators that would answer this one way or another.

If you're starting from scratch like I was a couple months ago, here's a roadmap I've been following:

-Utilize your current machine while you wait on orders. Your current machine can probably mine a little, sometimes.
-Choose which route you'll take, and how fast you want to start. Videocards... you can have them shipped with Amazon Prime and overnighted if you so desire. FPGAs, I can't seem to find anyone who is actively making them and shipping within 1 week from order. ASICs, again, no one seemed to be actively making one for a week order when I started... now there's Block Eruptor USB's, but they are minimum batch 100*2BTC=20 thousand bucks, or get in on a group buy and wait for them to be distributed.

I decided to go video cards, since I had a spare older machine hanging around collecting dust that had PCIe slots, and since at the time FPGAs were rare to find, and ASICs were still on horizon.

Mining Rig
----
-Make a spare miner machine. Tried mining with my active everyday desktop machine... and its not really the best option to make a profit when you're NOT mining more often that you ARE.
-Grab an old motherboard with a few PCIe slots. I had an older one hanging around, Core Quad processor, 1x PCIe 16x, 2x PCIe 1x. Its 5 or so years old.
-Buy as many video cards ASAP that you can to populate your 16x slots. My suggestion would also be to start with 7950s, but theres 17 different arguments about who/what to start with. If you want, place your order for the ones in the 1x slots, but know you're also going to wait a while for those to run as you'll have to wait for...
-Buy as many riser cables as you need, INCLUDING 16-16's. My board, one of the 1x slots was obscured by the fan shroud of my 16x card... couldn't use it until my 16-16 riser came along.

For your first couple months, if your outside world can afford it, mine as a hobby, and just record your extra electric costs, the cost that you sunk into your cards, and the cost you sunk into your hardware.

Mine some coin. Use dustcoin and coinchoose to determine which at the right time, unless you're morally opposed to Scrypt, and morally opposed to any other SHA256 than BTC. Actively trade it toward BTC at Vircurex/BTC-E/Cryptsy. Invest some to buy dividend producing securities at Bitfunder or BTCT. I'd probably suggest looking at one of the partial ASICminer stocks like TAT.asicminer, until you can afford a full asicminer stock. This will give you some additional income, but not necessarily as much as your card gives you. More importantly, its relatively constant income that you aren't paying any electricity or hardware cost to... I look at it as that my already sunk card investment is averaging a few more hashes each week, for the same electricity as I pay.... and moreso that when I get a week outage from a East Coast hurricane, that I'll still make some income.

I did this until I had a full Bitcoin into stocks, and am now saving up enough crypto to pay myself back for electric bills [I've been paying the increase out of pocket, but want the whole thing to be self sufficient over time]. My goal after that is to save some up for an actual BlockEruptor USB so that my average hash/W is better (compare 1100hash/400W, and add 300h/2.5w to make it 1400hash/402.5w.) Then, throw a little more into ASICminer shares, then start paying down my initial hardware investment.

Just my roadmap... Yours will be different.

So again I ask... you're proposing to repurpose those FPGAs (as opposed to selling them.... repurpose implies you are using them again for your own purposes.) What way, right now, is a profitable way to use those FPGAs that you have in hand for YOUR use? As you agreed, you can't use it for Scrypt. I tried asking the question here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=187772.msg1946610#msg1946610 ... and you can see what the answers were. In short, once that FPGA is not profitable in SHA256 mining anymore, it has no other purpose to YOU. (This is why I keep suggesting either a project to retrofit FPGAs to Scrypt, cannibalize them to make a new Scrypt FPGA, or develop a third mining algorithm that does not have the memory requirements of Scrypt, allowing FPGAs a cryptocoin life beyond SHA256 once ASICs fully trounce that.)

I would love to have the knowledge of how to make an add-on board for existing FPGAs, make it something like rather than computer-USB cable-FPGA, have computer-USBcable-memory module-FPGA, where the memory module has a USB in from computer, and a USB out to the FPGA. Or, take the FPGA's in, desolder the chips, pop them into a new board with memory, and send them back out.

But, when I try asking the question, a Hero Member gives me this: Let Josh answer your question: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UlWrmIqGs3Y&t=2m48s

This board is pretty hostile to anything other than BTC only, though...

Do tell... how exactly can you re-purpose the FPGA's? You already had them running SHA256, so you're looking to get away from that... can't repurpose them to Scrypt, I already tried asking a question to try to figure out what path we could go down to retrofit them for memory access Scrypt needs, and was given the "here's a quarter, buy a clue" video as my first response in the thread.

SHA256 and Scrypt are the two coin models. What other profitable usage do you have that you are suggesting to repurpose the FPGA for?

I may have... an FPGA is general purpose just as a GPU is, but doesn't have the memory access Scrypt needs. Without another cryptocoin general purpose use, the FPGAs of today will easily be displaced once availability of similar priced ASIC items are around. Where GPUs are right now only marginally profitable depending on the conditions and pricing in the market if you are fixated on BTC and morally opposed to considering mining anything else... that will be the location of FPGAs in a time in the future. The difference is that GPUs readily have somewhere else to go (gaming OR mining Scrypt), whereas FPGAs, once they are priced out of being profitable, can't translate as-is on to Scrypt for a second lifetime.

In my opinion, unless you are fixated ONLY on mining BTC or other SHA256 coins, an FPGA would be toward the bottom of the list as to retention of value, based on what is CURRENTLY the state of mining algorithms. It will certainly be displaced by an ASIC of any type for hash/energy/$, especially moreso for ASIC devices on a scale size (A BlockEruptor is fine, but you have to pay each time for the casing, the board, heatsink, , the data connector... a Jalapeno, you get more ASIC chips in a different footprint, but pay once for the case rather than about 18 of the same block eruptor cases... a Asicminer blade, continue along, you're paying for one case rather than dozens of jalapenos, etc.)

At the moment, for a purely widescale market of the entire world of miners and mundanes alike, a GPGPU (video card) has a better resale over its first couple years of life than any device. I could sell my brother my Radeon 7950 in one-two years for 50-75 percent the price, and he could use it. Say I had a ZTEX Spartan6 (bitcoinfpga.com) bought in Feb 2012, $414, 190 MH/s, 8.5W, and decided to sell it for about 75 percent... 300 bucks is about same as a BlockErupter.

So, you have the choice between it, a BlockEruptor, or a Radeon 7950, same price. One produced 190MH/s at 8.5W, One produces 300 MH/S at 2.5W. one produces 550 MH/S at 200W. You asked me "Can I use it for anything other than SHA256 mining?" For all practical answers, for options other than the Radeon 7950, the answer is no. For most of the world, miners and mundanes alike, we have no use for an FPGA as-is if you rule out mining. The one item that has the resell value is the video card... and to a miner, there is no way they would choose the $300 190 MH/S 8.5W device over the readily available $300 300 MH/S 2.5W device, especially given the ability to put more in a smaller physical footprint.

I tried asking the question on here, trying to creatively think, of if you could retrofit an FPGA with memory to make it viable for Scrypt mining, giving it extra life... and was given the BFL Josh "quarter buy a clue" video link. At the moment, with the open availability of BlockEruptors... there just isn't any reason to buy an FPGA at a loss against the BlockEruptor pricing. (I'm not even starting to list pricing of the Avalon chip buys, the Avalon batches, and the BFL preorders, because those for all intents and purposes aren't available for immediate mining RIGHT NOW to the general public.)

Now, if someone comes up with a third algorithm... something that isn't memory intensive like Scrypt, but isn't SHA-256 based that ASICs can't compete in... then FPGAs will end up having a better resell value and will be on top of the heap until an ASIC can be developed and brought to market for that (which is tending to be about 12-18 months turnaround, it seems.)

My price point... would be to pop the same figure that Avalon used to price their preorders:

The amount of money that one of these items would create in 3 months.

Using Bitcoinx.com/profit (from today, 31-May-2013 at 8PM EDT), that's $196.70... for a BRAND NEW one.
With the fact that its used, I'd probably insist on paying 50-75 percent for it. You'll probably run into an argument that takes into account its rarity and that its hard to get, and trying to charge MORE than a brand new one. (If you do run into this, counter with the pricing, you can see here on forums, on Asicminer Block Eruptors that mine 300'ish at a lesser power usage, and use that as a price point.)

With an ASICminer BE running 2.4BTC for 300, I'd make my maximum price 2.4+1.2, or 3.6BTC.

I wouldn't suggest making duplicate posts... just creates headaches when trying to merge posts. But yes, in the future, if you are posting an ad for something for sale, the marketplace place forum, and a proper subsection, is the proper place to put it... even if it is a piece of hardware.

But thank you for sharing your products with us... I'll keep it in mind next time I need something like this.

ERP

Not sure best forum to put this... more of an information request, more of a software-ish question...

I have a machine at home I use as an vmWare vSphere (ESXi) 5.1 server. Core i7 3770, 32GB RAM... all running on desktop (gaming) grade hardware. I run a full Windows domain on this, have about 10 different VMs running on it for various functions (ranging from domain controllers to torrent clients to Exchange server to NZB indexer and others.) I _REALLY_ want to maximize my density per machine if at all possible/

-As to video, I know I can't pass through a 7950 virtualized to a VM and then try to mine with that. Trust me, I've tried... and its a shame, as I'm sacrificing some very nice looking PCIe 16x and 1x ports for that. (Only way would be to run OpenZen, and then run ESXi under that, as well as a mining VM under OpenZen... not really good option performance wise.)
-So, my current model of thinking is "virtualized USB". I know this works... done it with printers on a VMware workstation, and pretty sure you can pass through USB-attached devices under ESX. My question is, how well is this as an option for mining devices (FPGA/ASIC)? I have a couple BFL devices on order, due to ship sometime in the year 2525. If I grabbed a couple ASICminer block eruptors (which theoretically you could get in a couple weeks), could I pass them through to a VM running CGminer/BFGminer? How about FPGA's?

Its a thought... I've got plenty of capacity available on my other machines, just wanted to see if this was a possible option in the future as well. Nothing in hand, and won't have anything in hand for a while, so this is more of a thought exercise than anything.

If you are going to go the route of forcefully removing funds from user's accounts (which I would highly suggest against), make sure it is well published and that there is very transparent listing of what the amount is for each individual (even if its just a private lookup), and that there is plenty of forewarning.

Take the example of NoTroll.in, where the admin decided, due to a software bug, to go around and just remove funds from user's accounts with no warning, then publishing the reasoning afterwards. This led to a very serious backlash against the admin AND his service, and ultimately led to user's abandoning it in droves to the point that it shut down. This is definitely not the kind of thing you want happening to yourself, earning such a major blackspot on your record, by forcefully going around and removing funds.

The proper response is probably a hybrid of options offered here: When the problem is ultimately discovered as to source, whether user error or software error, both sides decide on an option in which TAT.ASICMINER is resolved. One of a couple options will probably present themselves.

Option A: TAT.ASICMINER puts dividends on hold for next week, as was suggested. (And make sure the reasoning for this is well announced ahead of time)
Option B: TAT and Burnside opt to collaborate to refund TAT.ASICMINER the funds (13.84 BTC) that were accidentally disbursed. This is a prime example of why an insurance of some sort needs to exist, to provide for errors such as this. If an insurance does not exist, then probably a withholding of profit or mandatory payment from one or both parties involved, in which each party puts in some money to refund the issue, perhaps even in a scheduled payment plan.
Option C: Combine Option B and also request voluntary payback of dividend. Record payback.

(I personally would suggest an announcement that Option A has been chosen, with the reasoning clearly stated. Another possibility would be, rather than flat out putting the dividend on hold, to pay out at a reduced rate... ie pay at 50 percent normal dividend for 2 weeks, or 75 percent dividend for one month. This is not the most ideal solution, as due to increased shares week over week, holding back 50 percent each of two weeks would probably come out to even more than the original overpayment was... But it is an option.)

Again, I would VERY HIGHLY suggest against a one-sided clawback of funds, as that is not a very good image for publicity.

A lot of cards (for example, Gigabyte HD7950) come with a 2xMolex->PCIe6 and a 2xMolex->PCIe8 adapter, in case your PSU doesn't have the proper cabling. In that case, you can string your PSU 4 PCIe8 to each of those video cards, then split up your separate molex arms and run them with the PCIe6 adapters.... 4 cards, 2 molex needed for each to supply a PCIe6.... Most PSUs have 6 or 8 molex connectors.

Well, seeing as:
-Market Price of BTB/BTC on BTER (https://bter.com/trade/btb_btc) is 0.13150
-Market Price of BTB/BTC on Cryptsy (https://www.cryptsy.com/markets/view/26) is 0.12
-On the very forum that is at the bottom of your signature (http://www.bitbars.net/bitbar-forum/?mingleforumaction=viewforum&f=2.0), the most recent posts in the exchange subforum (2 weeks ago) were selling 20BTB/6BTC, 12BTB/10BTC, 12BTB/7.5BTC
-The most recent posts in the MarketPlace section of THIS site (bitcointalk.org) with a search result for "WTS BTB" are listing prices such as 35/7.65.

(BTC-E, Vircurex, MCXNow, and Gox do not actively list BTB/BTC pairs.)

These very same facts, showing "short term", are pointing at a <1.0 price of BTC/BTB... not a 20/1 or 100/1 price as you allege.

If you have some facts to the contrary, facts that can be backed up by links and not just your own statements, feel free to post them... otherwise, your "factual" statements about short term value carry as much weight as my saying Hitler is alive on the moon, surviving on the green cheese the moon is made of, and is in a secret base along with Elvis and Kim Jong Il. As ButterFlyLabs Josh has said once: "Here's a quarter... go buy a clue."

As I have said before... If you truly believe that the market pricing should be the amount you are stating it is, I fully encourage you to go out and put your money where your mouth is, buy and sell until market pricing is where you believe it should be. I understand that your thinking is based around how much harder it is to mine 1 BTB compared to 1 BTC, but market values are rarely set by solely comparing difficulty to difficulty.

How many Bitcoins in a Bitbar?

No, the real question is more like
"How many many Bitbars in a Bitcoin?"

At current market rate, its 20 Bitbars in a Bitcoin... just the opposite of your initial post.

If you are the market and make the cost... feel free to place the buy orders and pay the appropriate pricing to drive up the price.