Thanks for the info on the active adaptor needed.

My mining rig currently has 1 x 6970 & 1 x 7970.   Unless I dummy plug the 6970 (no monitor attached), its disabled in Catalyst and of limited usefulness.

I'm adding 2 x 290x into the Win7 64 pc.   Like other surprised posters in this thread, I discovered that an analog (passive) dvi->vga adaptor with resisters (my diy dummy plug) does not fit the 290x (due to no analog output).

I'm just about to purchase 2 x active adaptors in the hope of my resistors working when stuck into the vga port.  Hopefully Catalyst will enable these gpus for full use within Catalyst.

I would imagine the posters in this thread who are happily mining without dummy plugs on their 290's are satisfied without having the 290's "enabled" in Catalyst.  My experience so far is that the 290x I tested behaved just like my 6970.   They are visible in Windows, but not enabled in Catalyst (listed as "disabled").

I've just sent an email to a lawyers firm in Copenhagen:  Brandt & Lauritzen --  asking them for their option on our legal options.

I have no idea whether we do have any legal options, I thought I'd ask the professionals!  I lost enough BTC to warrant some expenditure chasing compensation.   PM me if you want more details.

https://www.kraken.com

They're based in US, bank accounts in US, Germany, Korea (I think).

Apparently they're quite new, but seem to be doing a good job, they have a good reputation already.

:-)

I wonder if ghengis had any response to his letter to them?

I'm thinking of sounding out a Danish lawyer regarding dealing with this matter as a theft of "an asset with a publically recognised value", and holding BIPS accountable for the value they were storing, regardless of whether it was a business model for them.

I don't know the names of those involved in this theft, or how many of you there are.  Perhaps PM me if you're involved.  However I think ghengis has all these details.

Kraken,

I've used your site for buying some BTC & LTC recently via your German bank (SEPA).  The SEPA transfers got through very quickly thankyou!  Just like I hoped they would.

I've used a couple of exchanges since my time with mtgox was cut short due to their banking problems.
I was not impressed with LiteTree unfortunately, really immature buying interface, making me manually match my order to the existing offers (rather than automating the "market order" mechanism)  - really bizarre experience!

I WAS impressed with Kraken's buying interface, allowing me to place a market order specifying the amount of Euro to spend rather than the amount of coins to buy.

This is a tough market to be doing business in.  I wish Kraken the best of luck.  I know you guys are new comers to the exchange world, but you seem to have done a good job so far!   I will def continue being a customer as long as your site continues to excel.

Thankyou for your service so far!

Rupert
UK

As one of the Twitter posts said : it's strange that they release a statement today, unless they're mainly based in India.  There is no xmas there. 

My post here is just wondering if anyone apart from myself is unconvinced (ok there are a couple unconvinced posts already).

Alpha's post indicated software & firmware update...  I was under the impression that Asic chips had firmware that is not updateable?

I'm with you (and others) on this one.  I was wondering whether to buy an R9 290x or wait for one of these asics (two companies apparently wanting to offer these).   I'm not 100% convinced about the asics offers, and as someone recently said, the longer you stick around the Crypto world, the more careful you become.... too many things can/do go wrong in this "wild west" world!

Its time for me to see how well an R9 290x mines!

As someone was saying in a scrypt asic thread, "I thought scrypt was supposed to lock the asic guys out???".   If both SHA256 & Scrypt goes the asics way, that will be a sad day for the gpu guys!!   Not looking forward to that day.  I will probably buy into a small asic if they ever surface.

I would like to see some action taken by BIPS but I think it's highly unlikely unless lawyers & courts etc are involved. 

I probably lost the most BTC (through naively trusting them more than a local wallet at home.  I lost a lot more than 100 BTC, which is very embarrassing (& hugely expensive for me).   I invested when BTC was about $20.

I'm in favour of exploring the legal options, although because of the lack of a legal framework around BTC, even a legal approach may be completely pointless.  Of course I'm also in favour of trying other means for some sort of refund.

I did some research re my 6970.  There were 2 problems:  1)  gpu disabled in Catalyst (not connected to monitor)   2)  clock speeds were at 2d speeds (ie much slower than they should have been, a problem others are having with this card, hence forum posts etc).

I did have a dummy dvi plug attached to this card, but it was in the wrong dvi slot.  I changed dvi slot, and suddenly the 6970 was enabled in Catalyst (that was easy!).
Once card was enabled in Catalyst, all I had to do was specify clock speeds, and gpuz confirmed that the card was running at the Catalyst clock speeds.

Now the card is consuming more wattage:  250watts, which is still lower than cards with a stock cooler.

With the Arctic Extreme III cooler installed, I've checked the gpuz temps, and all are very low. Screen shots :

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5qUFCCYd3cTN3dlajVmb0c3YmM/edit?usp=sharing

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5qUFCCYd3cTdTIyX2wwRGktYlU/edit?usp=sharing

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5qUFCCYd3cTTHk5SmZTbDZiWEk/edit?usp=sharing

So, my journey getting this card working properly is nearly finished, just a little tweaking with overdrive to come.

The Arctic Extreme comes with heatsinks for the VRMs etc, I guess that would take care of them?  Certainly upgraded treatment than when the stock cooler was installed.

I've taken some screenshots with some info on the 6970.  You're welcome to comment.


https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5qUFCCYd3cTaWZXeG9hSjA1VXc/edit?usp=sharing

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5qUFCCYd3cTV0c2Y21RUzlCTFE/edit?usp=sharing

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5qUFCCYd3cTVHpGNi1CSDhOQXM/edit?usp=sharing
(I don't know what relevance the 6970 being disabled in CCC is, it still seems to work...)

I currently have 1 x 6970 & 1 x 7970 in my mining rig.  I'm mining terracoin & litecoin, not bitcoin.

I want to add a 2nd 7970 gpu for helping me mine litecoin.  I was looking at the power requirements for adding this 3rd gpu, since my psu is an Antec Quattro 1000w, and all existing 12v rails have been used.  I was thinking of splitting the 12v rails for each rail to feed both pcie connections (although I've read that this is supposed to be a bad idea).

OK, so I found out what my existing 12v rails are rated at 18amp each.  I began to realise that whatever I did to power my gpus, it all depended on  1)  what power usage my gpus require   2)  how many amps the 12v rails can handle.

The amperage specs on my psu are here:
http://www.overclock3d.net/reviews/power_supply/antec_truepower_quattro_1000w_atx_psu/1

However it occurred to me that I needed to know how many watts my gpus were using.  Several internet listings of various gpu watt usage differed, so I decided to put a watt meter on my PCs power cable, and check the watt usage etc.

What I found really interested me.   My 6970 gpu has Arctic's Extreme III cooler on it.  My 7970 still has its stock cooler (single fan on back of case (which apparently means its a reference design?)).    I mine terracoin with my 6970, Litecoin with the 7970.   I first noted the watts used without any gpu mining (peaking about 120 watts).   Then I mined using each of the gpus in turn.  6970 really surprised me.  When mining using cgminer, the watts only increased by 20 watts!!??   When I mined using the 7970 only, watts increased by approx 260 watts (less than I expected).   I decided to test the 6970 further, and loaded the PC after uninstalling the 6970 (riser disconnected, pcie power cables disconnected).   The PC usage watts (without any mining) was about 100 watts, meaning that the 6970 was potentially only using only 40 watts!!  (still surprising).   

This exercise taught me that the fans on these gpus really eat a lot of juice!  The stock fans seem to eat far more juice than the aftermarket fans (certainly the one I'm using!).   I need to change the fan on the other gpu (and on any new gpu).   This also taught me that IF the gpus are using so little juice, I CAN probably split the 12v rails and easily stay within the amp rating of the rails (which is cool).   

If upgrading the coolers reduce the watt usage so much, I guess one would be able to have much better usage/mileage out of the PSUs!

thanks for clarification regarding numbering system.

I'm guess pcs  running different series cards is a compromise, but still works.

I always thought it was best to run the same series cards in 1 pc.

thanks for the feedback guys,  let's see how I get on

I'm having a Radeon 6970 which was RMA'd back to company for fixing returned to me "upgraded"/swapped to an R7970.   

I have an existing R6970, so my mining rig will have 1 x 6970 & 1 x 7970 soon.

It seems like a good deal to me, however remember seeing in the cgminer "GPU Readme" (extract below) that a different version of AMD SDK is recommended for R79xx cards.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Q: Which AMD SDK is the best for cgminer?
A: At the moment, versions 2.4 and 2.5 work the best for R5xxx and R6xxx GPUS.
SDK 2.6 or 2.7 works best for R7xxx. SDK 2.8 is known to have many problems.
If you are need to use the 2.6+ SDK or R7xxx or later
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Is this going to complicate matters for me?  Do I need to run (is it even possible to run) two versions of SDK?

I have Catalyst 12.8 installed.

However looking at the version number for the SDK on the custom install for Catalyst 12.8 shows SDK version 10.0.938.2, so I'm a little confused by the version numbers in the cgminer docs & AMD Catalyst.

Thanks for any feedback.

Rhubear.

Thought I'd update thread seeing there are at least two replies (tnx to those replying).

After the first reply, I tried soldering the loose wire onto the terminal on the pcb that I thought it belonged. 
Riser didn't work any better.

In the meantime I had emailed Cablesaurus, and they advised that If there was a cable loose, it was probably damaged in transit, and they offered me a replacement product or a refund.  I have accepted their offer of replacement product.

In the meantime, I saw a UK based post from someone doing risers in the UK.  I've ordered a couple of the UK risers.

So if all goes well, at some point I'll have 3 new risers, and can either find a fix for this old one or trash it.  I'm more likely to trash it. 

Thanks for the replies to this thread anyway!

I bought this riser from Cablesaurus a while ago.  Recently tried using it without any success.

My experience when plugging riser into a 1x slot & connecting molex to it:

cgminer didn't see the gpu.  I have 1 other gpu directly on the MB/pcie16.  cgminer saw the other gpu only.
Win7 device manager saw only an unidentified co-processor which I assume is this gpu.

( https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B5qUFCCYd3cTM2J5MHk4bVVMQUE/edit?usp=sharing )

Picture here shows a loose ribbon wire NOT soldered onto the 16x pcb.   Is this correct, or does it need soldering onto the vacant pin shown on the end of the pcb?

Also, I'm aware of a discussion regarding shorting pin A1 to pin B17 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?PHPSESSID=eghhg39gm2e8rp67p52qba3sj7&topic=36061.0).
I'm not clear from the thread whether this shorting is done by default at factory, or whether it needs to be done for SOME motherboards by miners, or whether it needs to be done for ALL motherboards by miners?

Thanks for guidance / clarification!

Rupert

it appears some of my assumptions were not correct.  I assumed difficulty would be rising exponentially one way.  Your graphs posted indicate that difficulty & price are directly linked, and are not linear or exponential, but rising & falling.

If I assume price is related to difficulty, why does difficulty rise & fall?  The more I try to learn about BTC, the more complicated it is!   I'm not trying to understand all of it, just enough to decide my own involvement!  LOL

Block mining payouts of 11 BTC will only be acceptable if 1) its profitable using the hardware required  and 2)  Its cheaper to mine BTC than to buy it.

Both of these depend on the fiat currency value of BTC at that time (or the barter value!); a completely unknown quantity.

If the 50BTC  per block payout is not maintained next year, I personally suspect mining except for the hardcore miners will collapse.  Miners will have to be able to produce multiple GHashes to be profitable (prob already so).   In the meantime I'll be buying my BTC I think, and possibly doing a little FPGA mining only if its cheaper than buying from the exchanges.

With these assumptions, I reckon next year will be crunch time for BTC!

Thanks.  Yeah, I don't remember reading that before.  Certainly not understanding it previously.

So I take it the idea/hope is to maintain an approx payout of 50BTC per block indefinitely, made up of BTC earned & fees gathered from community transactions.
So the less raw BTC that is earned per block, the more fees needs to be payed out to miners to maintain their current level of payout per MH.

I may be really behind the curve here, but I haven't been aware of any transaction fees in my few BTC transfers yet.  I seem to remember that the wiki piece does mention the fees is optional currently.  If I'm right here, then transaction fees will become much  more important later on, minimum fees applying etc.

OK so you're saying that miners will be paid "fees" to topup the decrease in BTC earnings?

Where do I find documentation regarding these plans, or is this just an idea so far?  I've seen nothing on the internet to explain this to me.