Litecoin GPU mining on a Mac?

[maxpower]

Has anybody actually succeeded in mining LTC on a Mac using the GPU? I have an old Mac Pro sitting around that I'd like to use for mining, and it actually has a decent video card which works fine for Bitcoin mining. When I try to run cgminer with --scrypt, though, I get a bunch of errors and the GPU gets disabled. I found one thread here where someone claimed to have compiled cudaminer under OSX, but they never posted instructions.

Any success stories out there?

[BitshireHashaway]

When you say descent video card what do you mean? Unless your electricity is free, I wouldn't recommend it because you will probably not even cover electricity costs. Most mac book pros I know of are Nvidia, and even my current alienware laptop (few weeks old) which has a 2gb nvidia 650 (ahead of the top of the line mac book pros today) will make $0.20 max using btc mining. Litecoin even if it was twice as possible would make $0.40. Therefore, since your mining will most likely be slower, unless your electricity is free, you most likely won't even make your electricity back.

Also, mac book pros don't have the best cooling system, and the last thing you want is your computer on fire, or burning some vital component.

[airbornearie]

I have a hackintosh with two ATI 6870's in it.

I've installed cgminer and it runs fine (250 and 220 MH/s).

Here's how to install it: http://www.spaceman.ca/blog/?p=235

Edit: your mac has an Nvidia card; afaik nvidia cards are not as easy to use for mining as ATI cards are.

[theorem]

My Mac Pro has a Radeon HD 5770 and I'm able to use cgminer, but while I get ~160 MH/s mining BTC, mining LTC only gets me ~3 KH/s, which is the same I get when mining using a single core in the same computer. So it's not much of a success story :p

I don't remember doing anything specific to get it to run with scrypt, most of my troubles were getting cgminer to compile at all.
It was having trouble finding libcurl, so I had to download a libcurl.m4 and change some paths so that ./configure et al would find it.

Also, mac book pros don't have the best cooling system, and the last thing you want is your computer on fire, or burning some vital component.

It's a Mac Pro, not a MacBook Pro.

[lewisg]

I am trying very hard to mine using mac pro.

[MiniMinerXT]

I had no success using cgminer on Mac OSX mountain loin. Just FYI.

[americandesi]

Be careful when using Mac Pro / imac to mine BTC / LTC.
There have been number of reports of motherboard overheating due to lack of airflow.

Search on this forums or google it.

[the1silverwolf]

In a MAC Pro (Stand Alone Tower Unit, not the macbook pro laptop, or the iMac) you should be fine as far as air flow or overheating goes afaik.

iMac's & apple laptops are horrible at heat dissipation, I wouldn't use them for any kind of mining as you will burn them up.

Also, Nvidia cards are really horrid at mining, even a cheap ATI card would blow a very expensive Nvidia card out of the water Mining.

CUDA miner helps some, but it's still not even a contest.  That being said, if you already have an Nvidia card in your Mac Pro and want to mine with it you should be able to get it to do something.  I've read that there is a performance drop mining on OSX that has something to do with the opencl implementation.  Probably your best bet would be to use bootcamp to install windows 7 and mine from there.

All that being said, if you really want to mine on OSX, the following thread should help you :

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=166877.0

The following thread seems to indicate that it's possible to build cudaminer on OSX but I can't find a walkthrough for it.  Perhaps you could PM the OP who seems to have solved his own issue.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=181707.0

Alternatively, you may wish to email the developer of cudaminer.  You can find his email address here : https://github.com/cbuchner1/CudaMiner

[User_513]

Is it an Intel Mac Pro? If so why not run Linux or Windows on it? I've got a hackintosh with a 5770 in it that I boot into Windows when I want to mine with it that gives me a reliable 200k running cgminer 2.11.4 or greater.

[maxpower]

Thanks to all of you for the suggestions! The machine is a big tower Mac Pro (with 2 PCI-E slots!), and I do have an NVIDIA GTX285 in it. Maybe the fact that the GPU is NVIDIA is what's preventing me from mining LTC with cgminer, even though mining BTC works fine. I'm going to see what I can do with CUDA Miner, but based on this thread, I'm also going to look into getting an ATI card and/or setting up a Windows partition.

My only worry about mining in Windows on a Mac Pro is that I've heard that Windows can't manage the Mac's fans. Can anyone confirm or deny that? Right now, under OSX, I have the fans cranked way up with smcFanControl, and that's keeping the temperature manageable.

[theorem]

Is it an Intel Mac Pro? If so why not run Linux or Windows on it? I've got a hackintosh with a 5770 in it that I boot into Windows when I want to mine with it that gives me a reliable 200k running cgminer 2.11.4 or greater.

What results did you get while running cgminer in OSX?
I can't install another OS on mine, it's being used for other stuff |:

[the1silverwolf]

Thanks to all of you for the suggestions! The machine is a big tower Mac Pro (with 2 PCI-E slots!), and I do have an NVIDIA GTX285 in it. Maybe the fact that the GPU is NVIDIA is what's preventing me from mining LTC with cgminer, even though mining BTC works fine. I'm going to see what I can do with CUDA Miner, but based on this thread, I'm also going to look into getting an ATI card and/or setting up a Windows partition.

My only worry about mining in Windows on a Mac Pro is that I've heard that Windows can't manage the Mac's fans. Can anyone confirm or deny that? Right now, under OSX, I have the fans cranked way up with smcFanControl, and that's keeping the temperature manageable.

There are tools that you can use to control the fans on windows as well.  The following thread for example.

http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/58373-input-remapper-1004-release/

(It does other things, but they added fan control specifically for the mac pro, so you might want to give it a try.)

[maxpower]

Thanks to all of you for the suggestions! The machine is a big tower Mac Pro (with 2 PCI-E slots!), and I do have an NVIDIA GTX285 in it. Maybe the fact that the GPU is NVIDIA is what's preventing me from mining LTC with cgminer, even though mining BTC works fine. I'm going to see what I can do with CUDA Miner, but based on this thread, I'm also going to look into getting an ATI card and/or setting up a Windows partition.

My only worry about mining in Windows on a Mac Pro is that I've heard that Windows can't manage the Mac's fans. Can anyone confirm or deny that? Right now, under OSX, I have the fans cranked way up with smcFanControl, and that's keeping the temperature manageable.

There are tools that you can use to control the fans on windows as well.  The following thread for example.

http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/58373-input-remapper-1004-release/

(It does other things, but they added fan control specifically for the mac pro, so you might want to give it a try.)

Great find, thanks!

[maxpower]

I spent a little time on cudaminer on Mac OS X. I was able to get it to compile (and took notes!), and it's able to autotune my GTX285 (showing me a nice KHs in the process), but when it starts to mine, I get a segmentation fault.

After all that, I noticed that someone else filed an issue on Github for the same problem: https://github.com/cbuchner1/CudaMiner/issues/2 -- maybe that'll lead to a solution.

I'm also going to give reaper a try.

[TheSixthDependency]

I managed to get cgminer working on my iMac with a 5670 but the hash rate for LTC is over 100 times slower than BTC.

[maxpower]

I managed to get cgminer working on my iMac with a 5670 but the hash rate for LTC is over 100 times slower than BTC.

I think that's normal, right? If you look at the LTC mining hardware comparison, most cards have hash rates in KHs, but if you look at the BTC mining hardware comparison, the same cards have rates measured in MHs. I think that's just due to differences in the two algorithms.

[clicksmoney]

Seriously GUIminer (Scrypt alpha version) is the way to do it under XP/Vista/7 booted to directly with the option button on boot is the way to go. I can't explain why we're not getting good results under Lion or Mountain Lion but if your mining time is precious and you have 2 AMD card in you machine take the side cover off and use a large extraction fan above PCIE slots.

If you still need to be in OSX to do things I'd recommend building a cheap Linux/Win box. The heat stress on your Mac hardware isn't worth it - dead logic board equals major PIA.

[clicksmoney]

I managed to get cgminer working on my iMac with a 5670 but the hash rate for LTC is over 100 times slower than BTC.

I think that's normal, right? If you look at the LTC mining hardware comparison, most cards have hash rates in KHs, but if you look at the BTC mining hardware comparison, the same cards have rates measured in MHs. I think that's just due to differences in the two algorithms.

I have a 15-20 performance hit from LTC/FTC under OSX on the exact same hardware even losing system memory to a 32 bit Windows Version. It's not just SHA vs Scrypt hashing.

[the1silverwolf]

I managed to get cgminer working on my iMac with a 5670 but the hash rate for LTC is over 100 times slower than BTC.

I think that's normal, right? If you look at the LTC mining hardware comparison, most cards have hash rates in KHs, but if you look at the BTC mining hardware comparison, the same cards have rates measured in MHs. I think that's just due to differences in the two algorithms.

I have a 15-20 performance hit from LTC/FTC under OSX on the exact same hardware even losing system memory to a 32 bit Windows Version. It's not just SHA vs Scrypt hashing.

I believe I mentioned something about a performance hit using opencl on mac vs windows or linux.  I found the thread:

Q: Can I mine with cgminer on a MAC?
A: cgminer will compile on OSX, but the performance of GPU mining is
compromised due to the opencl implementation on OSX, there is no temperature
or fanspeed monitoring, and the cooling design of most MACs, despite having
powerful GPUs, will usually not cope with constant usage leading to a high
risk of thermal damage. It is highly recommended not to mine on a MAC unless
it is to a USB device.

From Here : https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=28402.0

[maxpower]

Seriously GUIminer (Scrypt alpha version) is the way to do it under XP/Vista/7 booted to directly with the option button on boot is the way to go. I can't explain why we're not getting good results under Lion or Mountain Lion but if your mining time is precious and you have 2 AMD card in you machine take the side cover off and use a large extraction fan above PCIE slots.

If you still need to be in OSX to do things I'd recommend building a cheap Linux/Win box. The heat stress on your Mac hardware isn't worth it - dead logic board equals major PIA.

Yeah, I think I'm ready to admit at this point that mining under OSX just isn't there yet. The Mac Pro isn't a bad machine for a starter Windows mining rig, though. :-) I'm going to try that out.