Question re: client & hardware.

[dieboy]

I have two fairly simple questions.  I've taken the time to research this also, and have a fairly good understanding of how it all works. Lets keep these short and sweet:

1. My client on both my workstations have stopped taking in blocks both at 130538.
     Is this just the most they will take in before finishing the math, and downloading more blocks? I assume so since they both got stuck on the same block #.  (both machines are fairly similar but different, one is win7/64bit and one is ubuntu 10.10 64bit.

2. My hardware is:
     a. quad core w/gtx260.
     b. quadcore w/gtx460

Now I KNOW already that these are not the optimal specs by far, seeing as they are both nvidea based GPUs.

My question is approx how long will it take to crunch out a couple bitcoins? I'm not talking hundereds of them or anything. I'm just seeing if this is worth pursuing or changing over to an ATI card.

It reminds me of SETI !  except you get something back for processing their info!

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[kjj]

Join a pool.  You will likely never find a whole block by yourself, particularly not with that setup.

[dieboy]

Is there a read-me for pool joining? I had read a little on that and somewhat understand how it'd work but i don't know how to go about joining one.


Secondly I just found a radeon 9200 card sitting in my drawer, is that card supported?  And silly me i have an amd X2 machine sitting right behind me (retired client PC) thats not in use.

So I am debating putting that radeon 9200 card in, loading up some winxp or ubuntu on it and running that one also. Worth it?



Thanks for the advice, i appreciate the help.

[Gabi]

1)They stopped because 130538 was the number of the blocks in the blockchain when you posted! It downloaded all the blocks and well of course it stopped  

You can check the number of the blocks here

Now for example there are 130550 blocks. And every about ten minutes a new one is discovered and will add to the blockchain

2)Well a quadcore will make like 10Mhash/s and the video cards just a bit more, nvidia isn't good for mining. An ATI 5830 can easily mine 300Mhash and a 6950 even 400 mhash or more

So i strongly suggest you to mine in a pool. with your hardware at current difficulties... use this calcualtor http://www.alloscomp.com/bitcoin/calculator.php
Put the mhash you are doing and press Calculate!


Oh i see you replied while i was typing.

The 9200 is useless, you need a card that support OpenCL to mine, so you need a 4000 or more recent (5000 or 6000) card. The 9200 you have simply can't mine.

About pool mining download guiminer http://forum.bitcoin.org/?topic=3878.0 and well register in a pool and use it to mine

[dieboy]

excellent, I will do that. How on earth do you know so much and have 2 posts gabi


I will search around on craigslist for a cheap 4000x or 5000x series ati card and stuff it in that amd x2 machine.  That setup i'm guessing will smoke both the workstations combined i'm using atm.

Thanks for all the info, I think all my questions are answered throughly, I am downloading an will setup the guiminer in a few moments. I have registered with slushs pool for now, and will see how that goes.

[Gabi]

Because i'm partecipating in bitcoin for a while but never registered 

I suggest you to stick with the 5000 series, much better than the 4000. A 4870 for example make like 100mhash while a 5830 can go up to 300mhash and a 6950 up to 400

[dieboy]

Okay one last question and I'll be on my way.


Is there a pool based client for linux distros? That doesn't require head aches to make work correctly?

The GUI Miner works grand on my win7 box, but if I'm going to do a few bitcoin boxes, I prefer to put them on linux based machines.

[kjj]

You want linuxcoin.