So I have been very interested in finding out exactly how much extra power my rig draws while mining. I have a quad core AMD that I had originally been using as a Samba server for the family. Since this had 2 PCI-E slots open, I put in a pair of Sapphire Radeon 5850, a new power supply, installed Ubuntu 10.10 and set off to mining.

So I got an inductive ammeter and a special plug to measure the AMPS with my rig running. Here is what I got;

No load (Radeons not mining): 2.2 Amps or 242W
Half Load (1 Radeon mining): 3.5 Amps or 385W
Full Load (2 Radeons mining: 5.0 Amps or 550W

W=A*V

So basically if I have my math is correct my delta is 308W extra, as the thing would be running 24X7 anyhow.  With .15kWh for electricity, that's about 33.75 per month.


My extra hardware for mining included the 2 5850's, 1 power supply and 4 extra fans. Total is about $440. I am getting 340Mhash/sec with each card for a total of 680 Mhash/sec. I made my money back in about 2 ½ weeks.

My Radeons also run at about 70C - 72C while mining.

Here are some pictures of the measurements and my rig;

http://i1184.photobucket.com/albums/z327/Bruce_Lee2/1.jpg

http://i1184.photobucket.com/albums/z327/Bruce_Lee2/2.jpg

http://i1184.photobucket.com/albums/z327/Bruce_Lee2/3.jpg

Thanks for your response! That clears it up for me.

I have a pair of Sapphire Radeon 5850's in my rig running Ubuntu 10.10. When I pull the cards with aticonfig, this is what I see;

* 0. 04:00.0 ATI Radeon HD 5800 Series
  1. 02:00.0 ATI Radeon HD 5800 Series


I am wonderig if anyone knows what the 04:00.0 and the 02:00.0 mean? I am guessing that is my firmware on the cards. Can anyone confirm or deny?

The reason I suspect this is that my second card seems to run a bit slower that the first. I see the same Hashes per second in Phoneix, but the number of accepted hashes on the second card always trails behind. Eventually it can get a hundred or so behind after a few hours (starting them at the same time).

Also has anyone upgraded firmware on their cards?

Thanks in advance.

I got it. Thanks again for taking the time. A meager donation is coming your way. (don't have many yet....)

Ok, many thanks for your reply.


So in other words , when I see the 'not sending' I can think of that as hashes that didn't solve the block? When I see one that is accepted that means that I solved the block and thus will get the reward?

again, thanks for helping a newbe.

Ok, call me paranoid but I would like to ensure that this is expected behavior.

I am mining to my local bitcoin application running with the -server flag with the phoenix miner. I have verbose on as you will see from the output;

[08/05/2011 20:47:55] Result didn't meet full difficulty, not sending
[08/05/2011 20:48:07] Result didn't meet full difficulty, not sending
[08/05/2011 20:48:08] Server gave new work; passing to WorkQueue
[291.65 Mhash/sec] [0 Accepted] [0 Rejected] [RPC]

The 'Result didn't meet full difficulty, not sending' is making me nervous as I want to ensure that everything is actually working. I don't see the accepted raising as I do when I am connected to a pool and I don't to mine locally for weeks/months, only to find out that it wasnt working.

Does anyone else see this and if so, have you won a block?

thanks in advance.