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I have added a much easier way of donating to this. I have added a donation mode to DiabloMiner, download the most recent binary and use the -b flag.
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thogar threw in 1 btc.
Current total: 20.0101976.
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Spiccioli just threw in a BTC. Thanks man.
Current total: 19.0101976.
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On my 5850@960 on 11.12, under 2.1 I get 400, 2.4/2.5 I get 387, under 2.6 using the same settings as 2.1 and 2.4/2.5 I get 357, and under adjusted settings for 2.6 I get 365.
So THG is getting substantial better results than you, since its clear they are not using the old SDK 2.1. That might be because of the drivers and SDK they used are better for mining than the available (and terrible) 11.12/2.6, but the point still stands. Their results are entirely reasonable and a fair point of comparison. If anything it shows the 7970 is a bigger dud than you might think looking at the chart, because you can use older drivers to boost 5870 performance, you probably cant use them for the 7970. 7970 requires at least 11.12 and at least SDK 2.6. It looks like they used 11.11 + SDK 2.5 or similar for these tests (maybe pre-release 11.12 + 2.6?). Also, I'm pretty sure 2.6-fail is a bug and nowhere near the intended behavior, so I'm going to assume their 375 is really supposed to be 380, and their 392 on the 6970 is supposed to be 397. This would mean, completely unoptimized, the 7970 is 420. Which, really, isn't all that horrendous. 1.68 mhash/watt vs 6970s' 1.58 mhash/watt vs 5870s' 2.02 mhash/watt (or vs 2.09 on SDK 2.1). And thats unoptimized, I'm really thinking 7970s at stock can push 500 mhash which pushes us back up to 2 mhash/watt which brings us back to the glory age of 58xx cards. The problem with 58xx is *we can't buy them anymore*. Used cards off Ebay is iffy at best, and even the $599 price of a 7970 isn't all that much when you realize 5870 and 6970s were in the same ballpark ($499 and up). If I don't get enough donations for a 7970, I can always buy a 7950, and if I can't get that, I can always wait for the inevitable price drop to drop it down even more. 50 btc at today's prices is still $200. 7950s may eventually drop to that, but I'm not sure if everyone wants to wait that long for support. The donation serves purely as a "does the community want this or not" thing. |
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What damns them is a stock 5870 can get 394 mhash/sec, theirs wasn't even close.
Neither is mine, nor any 5870 Ive seen here when adjusted for overclock: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mining_hardware_comparisonTo be clear, stock speed of a 5870 is 850 MHz. You can get slightly higher speed than what THG got out of a 5870, but it will require, among other things downgrading drivers and OpenCL. They seem to have used something newer even than 11.12 . Experimenting with older drivers on an older card to provide a comparison point for a new card is not something you can reasonably expect them to do. Its also not reasonable to expect the 7970 will gain more speed than a 5870 using older drivers (it probably doesnt even work), or when using a better miner than what they used (Im guessing they used GUIminer) As such their numbers are completely reasonable for an apples to apples comparison. There might be room for improvement for either card, but its just not likely that it will change the basic equation. I use SDK 2.1, which is what is recommended to use on 5xxx hardware. If you want strict oranges to oranges numbers, 2.6 is really really bad on 5xxx. On my 5850@960 on 11.12, under 2.1 I get 400, 2.4/2.5 I get 387, under 2.6 using the same settings as 2.1 and 2.4/2.5 I get 357, and under adjusted settings for 2.6 I get 365. As usual, YMMV. |
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no no no
not overclocking the "shit out of them"
Im talking clocks at 950/180 - with 440mhash no big deal at all. the 5870 is a superior mining card to the 7000 series we have seen so far
the fact of the matter is AMD is NOT designing their cards with mining in mind and thats a fact we just have to accept.
a 7000 series mining farm will NEVER be profitable unless of course you get free electricity or some other bizarre circumstance
Or I find an absurdly easy optimization that puts 600-700 mhash/sec on stock settings. |
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I'm not sure when "toms hardware" became an authority on bitcoin mining but the fact is a 5870 gets 440 mhash easily, consumes much less wattage than a 7970 and cost about $150
I just don't see the plausibility in anyone making any kind of major mining operation based on these cards , there's absolutely no profitability and if we use the direction AMD has taken with their drivers as any kind of indicator they are certainly not making an effort to purposely gear their cards towards mining.
Diablod3 is certainly a well known early adopter and programmer but personally I would much rather donate to a project like a miner that can squeeze more mash out of an fpga board
To me It's almost like investing in oil rigs when there are some kick ass electric cars out there.
I agree with Toms Hardware not being an authority, however, they used stock cards. What damns them is a stock 5870 can get 394 mhash/sec, theirs wasn't even close. They did not perform a useful test, and they didn't even say which miner with which settings. Also, FPGAs do not seem to be entirely worth it. There is a high buy in cost and a very low resale value. Unless your power is extremely expensive, I don't see the point of owning one unless you're going to buy a 100 or more of them at a time. Most people who mine own a single GPU, and this sits in their desktop and they sometimes game. This is where the vast majority of hash power comes from, and DiabloMiner serves people like that. |
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And I don't know about you, but I don't have $500 in cash laying around. I doubt most people do.
You may be right about most people, but I do. But before I give it up I'd be looking to get a reasonable return on my "invested" capital. I also understand that my capital could "magically" disappear. That's the risk. Once the code is developed I don't want the card, it wouldn't do me any good. I'd like my capital and a fair return back so I can move on to the next investment. I don't have enough cash on hand to be an angel investor. Why don't I want the card after the development is complete? It's because I don't have the hardware and cheap enough power to run a GPU mining rig with a high enough hash rate that can pay for itself in some reasonable amount of time given the current difficulty and payout. Given my base this does not benefit me directly. I'm too late to the Bitcoin mining scene to earn a reasonable return. This work is going to benefit the community of miners who already have extensive, and hopefully profitable, GPU mining operations and who are looking to upgrade to improve their hash rate enough to offset the costs of buying the new GPU and the power consumption. In fact those are the people I'd be approaching first. Scope all the pools and see which miners have the highest hash rates and see if they are willing to fund you. - Zed Woohoo, my first post as a freed noob. The thing is, there is, what, about a thousand GPU miners who just own a single GPU and alternate between mining and gaming? If even just every other one of them donated just 1 btc to this, I wouldn't have to worry about development costs ever again. One person doesn't need to fund this, a hundred could. 150 btc is a lot to one person, but its not much to a thousand people. |
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Rasengan added 10 btc to the effort. Thanks man.
Current total: 18.0101976.
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Update: Added two often requested features: return to primary pool every 100 minutes when using multipool, and added a feature to automatically donate, use -b.
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Since I'm out of n00b jail, I'll make my first free man post since my return to this place.
I cannot believe the attitude here.
It's absolutely disturbing.
There's going to be god damn flying 12 monkeys up in the streets in 12 months with food riots and you people are bitching about helping out someone whose work benefits everybody?
Don't give me that investor bullshit. Lead a path to his door? Where do you see these magic droves of customers coming from? If you haven't been paying attention 9/11, the bank failouts, the Breivik shit, and the prospect of either a war banger or a nasty war banger as president, these tragedies of the past, present, and future have sucked the optimism out of most people. We are all mostly burnt out and could use a little spontaneous vitality.
Holy fucking shit.
Just for that I'm donating the .00017760 someone sent me once to DiabloD3. Sorry man, I hardly have any, but I thought I'd pay you the same compliment someone once paid me under my previous account (I no longer have access to that email) a long time ago.
Also, for anyone here still fantasizing about the economy and telling people to get jobs: Are you hiring? If not stop projecting your forced optimism from your own insecurity on someone else.
Also, cocks.
Thanks a lot. Its the thought that matters. Total is now: 7.0101976 |
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Update: Moved two adds to host code from kernel, made it faster.
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DiabloD3, what are those settings -w 64 -v 36 compared to cgminer options? I tried -v 4 -w 64.. much slower.
What hardware, driver, and SDK? I tested this on 11.12 and SDK 2.6, normal options apply to everyone else. windows x64, 3 x raden hd 6990, drivers 11.12 with I think SDK 2.6 Much slower than -v 2 -w 256 on that same combination? -v 4 -w 64 is about 50mh slower each GPU, the same with -v 2 -w 256. I just wanted to know the settings with cgminer compared to your miner using -v 36. What is -v 36 anyway? P.S. the best result is with -v 2 -w 128 so far -v 4 on cgminer seems to be the same thing as -v 36 on mine. |
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DiabloD3, what are those settings -w 64 -v 36 compared to cgminer options? I tried -v 4 -w 64.. much slower.
What hardware, driver, and SDK? I tested this on 11.12 and SDK 2.6, normal options apply to everyone else. windows x64, 3 x raden hd 6990, drivers 11.12 with I think SDK 2.6 Much slower than -v 2 -w 256 on that same combination? |
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DiabloD3, what are those settings -w 64 -v 36 compared to cgminer options? I tried -v 4 -w 64.. much slower.
What hardware, driver, and SDK? I tested this on 11.12 and SDK 2.6, normal options apply to everyone else. |
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Did some performance testing:
Catalyst 11.12 on Radeon 5850 at 960/320
-v 2 -w 256 -f 1
SDK 2.1: 400
SDK 2.4: 387
SDK 2.5: 387
SDK 2.6: 358
-v 2 -w 256 -f 1 -a
SDK 2.1: 400
SDK 2.4: 387
SDK 2.5: 387
SDK 2.6: 357
So. SDK 2.6 performance is pretty low and also phatk-like arrays no longer work against the driver with the most optimum settings. Lets try everything else.
-w 256
-v 1: 306
-v 2: 357
-v 3: 325
-v 4: 341
-v 5: 225
-v 6: 212
-v 18: 318
-v 19: 301
-v 20: 211
-v 21: 210
-v 36: 238
-v 40: 214
-w 64
-v 1: 306
-v 2: 349
-v 3: 340
-v 4: 348
-v 5: 303
-v 6: 257
-v 18: 313
-v 19: 305
-v 20: 297
-v 21: 297
-v 36: 365
-v 40: 214
-w 128
-v 2: 355
-v 4: 344
-v 36: 326
-w 192
-v 2: 351
-v 4: 297
-v 36: 323
With or without -a, the best seems to be -w 64 -v 36 for SDK 2.6. Weird. Still a fair bit slower than 2.1 and 2.4/2.5 though.
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You are asking for donations why not ask for investors? (i.e. step #1 in the quote you quoted).
Because that makes no sense. I believe I personally have invested a lot of time and energy into Bitcoin, and people serve to make a lot of money if GCN turns out to be the next ultimate mining arch after 5xxx+SDK 2.1. There are people out there who make 150btc a day and use DiabloMiner, yet I have not heard a peep from them. I don't get why I am getting so much resistance on this. People have requested optimized GCN support, and I obviously cannot provide this without having a GCN myself, nor can I afford one out of pocket. If people want this support, they will donate towards it. For them, this IS an investment. |
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It honestly astonishes me that he only received about $30 in bitcoins for developing the diablominer. Hell, I personally sent like $20 worth of btc to the guiminer developer. People are ungrateful. No people need an incentive. Many in the OpenSource community fail to understand that. Bounties are effective tool. Giving something away for free and expecting retroactive compensation is not. The bounty project I (and others) started to add RPC support to cgminer paid out over 125 Bitcoins for a relatively (compared to say a complete miner) simple addition. Maybe Diablo should look at it as a business proposal rather than charity. 1) Raise funds to purchase 7970. 2) Calculate time value of coding optimizations for 7970 3) Start a bounty funds to collect funds in exchange for optimized 7970 code. 4) When bounty is paid distribute funds to himself and those who fronted the capital. 5) Release code Bounties are not, and never have been, a viable way of FOSS donations. People constantly renege on bounty promises, and often had no intention of paying up to begin with. And I don't know about you, but I don't have $500 in cash laying around. I doubt most people do. |
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Donation current count: 7.01002 out of 150
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