Not sure, it wouldnt detect the bumps most of the time. We kept smashing our phones together until out knuckles hurt, but only like one in 5 time it would work. Kinda defeats the purpose.

Yep, it is overwhelming. And thats one thing holding it back IMHO. For any non cryptographer, its not something you can get your head around in 5 minutes.

Maybe you will find this helpful though:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/18GP6spob897vPVtceTHjTaO6-SZfpOvnDDUfXHdKfJc/edit?hl=en_US

It doesnt go deep in to technical details, but explains what you need to know. Particulary if you want to get involved in mining or trading, Id recommend reading it first.

In most countries accessing the site wouldnt be illegal. Purchasing and owning what you typically buy there,  probably is tho.

I found bump a neat idea, but in my experience it doesnt work that well.

Is he getting any beeps? He may need to connect a speaker to hear them.
Other wild guess.. he forgot to connect both 6/8 pin PCI-E connectors.

Im kinda of intrigued by this concept. But also curious; what do you demand from loaner takers? I mean, if I apply for a loan, make up a fancy story of a business Id like to start, and I run off with the bitcoins, do you have any recourse?

Im gonna say it one more time: disable voltage monitoring in Afterburner and make you are not running any other monitoring app like GPU-Z, Everest or whatever. Sudden temperature spikes like that hint you are accidentally overvolting, just running afterburner can cause overvolting. It did on my 5850, randomly my core voltage would spike to 1.65v,  its a known issue, at least for Cypress based cards but it sounds like it could be an issue with 5770s too.

No experience, but just thinking out loud; if you'd install a ground water well and put a sizeable container with water (and/or long PVC pipes going back and forth to act as makeshift heat exchanger )  in the datacenter and constantly pump water through the containers, it should remove quite a bit of heat at relatively low cost. Basically cooling the room with ground water.  Where I live ground water has a constant 15C temperature, but I think its the same everywhere. Drilling water wells is surprisingly cheap. Water containers can be found cheap. PVC piping costs next to nothing.  A power efficient pump with sufficient flow will cost you a bit, but the savings compared to AC Im sure would make it worth it.

Oh, and should you have a pool.. use the warm water to heat your pool. You could swim all winter

EVen if you are not going to overvolt and overclock it, just running it at full load 24/7 is abusing it.

Gaming GPUs arent designed for that. They are designed for gaming performance, and due to the very competitive nature of the market, generally specced really close to their limits (much more so than CPUs for instance, which will generally take far higher overvolting and overclocking abuses). Compromises are made to keep noise and cost down, but the load bitcoin mining puts on them is far bigger than any game. WIth an aftermarket cooler, my 5850's VRMs will not go above 60-65C in any game Ive tried, but will go to 90C while mining. And gamers rarely play 24/7/365, nor do they often  cram 3 or 4 such hot cards in a single case.

Thats not to say they will fail because of it, but odds are definitely higher than for a single card thats used for gaming a few hours per day. There is a reason professional FireGL or tesla cards cost so much more, even though they use basically the same chips. Those are designed (and binned and priced)  to run 24/7/365.

But you are going to abuse it.
For that price tho, you should still take it

Now you guys make wonder, assuming you have a bitcoin business,  if you could deduct losses of your bitcoin holdings as currency exchange costs

Thx. Yeah I thought it was wrong when I typed it, but planned on looking it up later and kinda forgot. Ill correct it.


There is many small things I could probably google as well. But ok, for starters, a pretty basic one; when I receive payments in the bitcoin client, I dont have an address of the sender. why not? Thats not something inherent to the protocol is it?

Yes. I have a 5850 and with the current bitminter beta I get noticeably (~10 MH) better hashrates than with phoenix, and marginally (~3 MH?) higher hashrates than with diablo. Im getting about 335-340 MH @840 MHz, using ubuntu.

In GPU-z its called VCC Phase I think. But not all cards support it. If yours doesnt, that would have me worried:

I use an aftermarket cooler on my 5850. I use the standard base plate to keep the ram and VRMs cool. With the stock cooler, even at 100%, I had much higher GPU temps and comparable (but still slightly higher) VRM temps than what I have now.

At stock voltage and stock speed my VRMs go to ~75C, while my GPU itself is no hotter than 45C. Overclocked to 900 MHz (from 725) and still at stock voltage,  VRMs are closer to 90C, GPU temp is still only 50C.  90C seems too high for me, even if they are supposedly rated for 120C,  so I undervolt and clock my card at 850.

THose of you overclocking and particularly overvolting  should really worry about those VRMs I think. Its not difficult to keep the GPU cool, but  I wouldnt be surprised if you were hitting way above 100C on the VRMs. I read somewhere on this forum you can buy IR thermometer for a $10, Id consider doing just that if your card doesnt support VRM monitoring.

DeathAndTaxes analysis was spot on. Unless I misunderstood you, your claims that mining is more profitable than what he says is based on a fallacy that earning BTC is somehow better than earning $. Mining generates bitcoins or cash if you sell them, or a ratio of them, but not both. Any profits from an increase in BTC value applies equally to BTC you mine or buy with cash.

Now I agree mining is  better than not mining as its currently still (marginally) profitable for most. But only because it generates more $ than it costs;  not because it generates bitcoins, $ can generate those too. The day electricity costs are higher than revenue from mining, you should turn your rig off. And possibly buy bitcoins if you think they will increase in value, but not mine them.

Nope. Either you pay off the rig, or you accumulate bitcoins, not both. Again you ignore that the money you spend on electricity (and hardware) could be spent buying bitcoins.

What temperatures are you guys getting on the VRMs? I have no problems keeping the GPU, a 5850, cool (below 50C, using accelero twin turbo cooler) and it will overclock almost arbitrarily even when undervolting atm, but not without VRM temps heading towards 90C and thats more than Im comfortable with.

Calculating ROI by speculating on future BTC value is fallacious.  If you want to speculate, you can just buy BTCs with dollars. The same dollars you need to buy hardware and electricity cost, so they compete.

For some reason bitminter wouldnt launch on my machine, neither from the desktop nor the website (not the release nor the beta). Not sure if this is a problem with bitminter, but deleting my java cache solved it. Thought id mention it. For ubuntu users, its ~/.icedtea/cache

Yeah, there is no big difference between them. Some cards might be factory overclocked, giving you a small guaranteed overclock, but how high these cards go is more dependent on your luck than on the brand. The only thing Id pay close attention to is the cooling solution (unless you plan on an aftermarket cooler anyway) and perhaps warranty.