No coins generated in 708 hours, normal?

[todu]

Hi there,

I found out about you through the Flattr community and thought I'd give it a try. I've been running your Windows application on my laptop (dualcore 1.3 GHz) for 708 hours now, with no coins generated. Is that to be expected or is something wrong?

[1713284404]

1713284404

[1713284404]

1713284404

[BitLex]

nothing wrong,
if you are generating on a CPU only, don't expect to get any coins within a year.

you can calculate an average time here,
just put in your khashes/s and you'll know how long it takes for your CPU to solve a block.

you can however join the mining-pool, to get at least a few coins, or cents a week or so.

[MoonShadow]

Actually, don't expect to generate coins on that system ever.  The total network has been growing at an incredible rate, and if it keeps up, the average time between individual generation will be well beyond a year long before that year is up.

[ShadowOfHarbringer]

Actually, don't expect to generate coins on that system ever.  The total network has been growing at an incredible rate, and if it keeps up, the average time between individual generation will be well beyond a year long before that year is up.

It is little discouraging but that is the truth.

[davout]

It's actually reassuring that free money isn't very easy to get

[Cdecker]

Sad but true, it's gotten incredibly hard to generate coins, which can be frustrating to new users. I think the Pooled mining effort is a really good idea :-)

[davout]

Oh come on, if you really want to generate get yourself a nice Radeon 5970, you still generate a block a day with that

[da2ce7]

Oh come on, if you really want to generate get yourself a nice Radeon 5970, you still generate a block a day with that

Ah you get around 0.52GHash/sec on one of those... so it already is over a day.

[davout]

Oh come on, if you really want to generate get yourself a nice Radeon 5970, you still generate a block a day with that

Ah you get around 0.52GHash/sec on one of those... so it already is over a day.

That's out of the box performance.
Overclock them with a twist of a commandline and you easily reach 600mh/s.
I reach 620mh/s at the price of having to stay around since it loses some stability (perfectly stable at 600mh/s)

Add 10mh/s from the i7 CPU and you can redo the math :p

Generated 2 blocks today, yay!

[Immanuel]

I know what I'm asking for this Christmas.

[ShadowOfHarbringer]

Oh come on, if you really want to generate get yourself a nice Radeon 5970, you still generate a block a day with that

Ah you get around 0.52GHash/sec on one of those... so it already is over a day.

That's out of the box performance.
Overclock them with a twist of a commandline and you easily reach 600mh/s.
I reach 620mh/s at the price of having to stay around since it loses some stability (perfectly stable at 600mh/s)

Add 10mh/s from the i7 CPU and you can redo the math :p

Generated 2 blocks today, yay!

Just watch your electricity bill. 5970 is a mighty bitch and consumes around 300-400 watts ?
Also, i think that the miner also uses one core, but i might be wrong since i only tried CUDA miner which uses 100% of GPU plus 100% of one of my 4 cores.

So yes, the electricity bill will hit you hard. Also, you need a new power supply, since usual power supply of usual Desktop PC will not be enough.

[BitLex]

Also, i think that the miner also uses one core, but i might be wrong since i only tried CUDA miner which uses 100% of GPU plus 100% of one of my 4 cores.

m0mchils OpenCL miner doesn't use much of your CPU at all, maybe up to 5%,
not sure about Diablo-D3s, but i guess it's somewhat close to that.
it's only the cuda-miner that runs that bad.

your right about the power-consumption though, 5970 is maxed at ~300W, would be a bit less when just mining.
someone on irc mentioned a HD5970 setup running on an Intel Atom at ~330W, not that much for ~600M,
my oc'd HD5850-system needs ~230W for ~300M (+50W/65M with HD5570).

[davout]

Just watch your electricity bill. 5970 is a mighty bitch and consumes around 300-400 watts ?
Also, i think that the miner also uses one core, but i might be wrong since i only tried CUDA miner which uses 100% of GPU plus 100% of one of my 4 cores.

So yes, the electricity bill will hit you hard. Also, you need a new power supply, since usual power supply of usual Desktop PC will not be enough.

ArtForz just did the math for you http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2196.0
It is very profitable. Even if you take my 700W power unit consumption as basis.

The miner uses both GPU cores, each one crunching at +300mh/s
There is a problem /w ATI SDK 2.2 that prevents from running on both, but 2.1 works perfectly

[todu]

Oh, mine is running for ~1400 khash/s, several orders of magnitude slower than your systems. I thought I could spare a laptop crunching some numbers since it doesn't draw a lot of electricity. But dedicating a power consuming gfx card for the crunching would lead to a noticeable cost. So I'm out for now and wish you good luck with your crunching. Perhaps I'll use your monetary system some time in the future though, even if not generating any new coins personally. Thanks for your explanations!

[kwukduck]

Oh, mine is running for ~1400 khash/s, several orders of magnitude slower than your systems. I thought I could spare a laptop crunching some numbers since it doesn't draw a lot of electricity. But dedicating a power consuming gfx card for the crunching would lead to a noticeable cost. So I'm out for now and wish you good luck with your crunching. Perhaps I'll use your monetary system some time in the future though, even if not generating any new coins personally. Thanks for your explanations!

The idea of bitcoin is not to generate money and get rich... if you want to use bitcoins you can just buy them, like you buy currency on paypal or any other online system

[ShadowOfHarbringer]

Oh, mine is running for ~1400 khash/s, several orders of magnitude slower than your systems. I thought I could spare a laptop crunching some numbers since it doesn't draw a lot of electricity. But dedicating a power consuming gfx card for the crunching would lead to a noticeable cost. So I'm out for now and wish you good luck with your crunching. Perhaps I'll use your monetary system some time in the future though, even if not generating any new coins personally. Thanks for your explanations!

The idea of bitcoin is not to generate money and get rich... if you want to use bitcoins you can just buy them, like you buy currency on paypal or any other online system

....or you can simply use bitcoin for money transfers worldwide.

[FreddyFender]

Has anyone tried a N580GTX with CLMiner? Fermi was supposed to be the cat of Nvidia. Let me know.

[davout]

It is not free to generate a bitcoin.

Of course not.

One of the main deterring qualities to this entire concept is the notion that someone who as in on it during early stages had low difficulty and massed crazy multiples of coins every day.

You're telling a new adopter that they generate the currency "probably never" yet they should just convert currencies to use bitcoin.
Meanwhile someone else didn't have to convert anything to be sitting on a pile of bitcoins for a relatively tiny fraction of expense.

I'm excited about the transactional ramifications of this theory, less so about the currency itself when considering the massive wealth generated by those aware of this early on.

The same is valid for gold mining, early birds got to mine big amounts easily.
Putting coins into circulation doesn't have to be "fair".

Except you're essentially buying them from someone who has generated money and gotten rich. Looking at threads of people paying 10,000 for pizzas which is now worth 200, and claims of "generating thousands a day" are more than disheartening when you're looking at years to be able to buy that same pizza for essentially massive multiples of the cost.

People who are still massively generating invested money into hardware and man-hours into converting the CPU miner to a GPU miner, you should be thankful to these people that they shared the GPU mining code for free.

I've looked into this and the conversion rates and profiteering are laughable? What am I missing, as converting currency seems to involve massive losses.

Conversion fees are market-regulated and are bound to go down.

[Timo Y]

Ok, here is my controversial opinion on this:

Casual Bitcoin users should not be encouraged to do any mining at all.

They are wasting their time.

Leave the mining to the experts.

Mining is an essential aspect of Bitcoin. That does not mean it's the most useful or even  interesting aspect  for the majority of users.  

Newcomers always seem to get fixated on the (relatively minor) mining aspect, and this distracts from what Bitcoin is really about, an exchange tool. I feel that if all this effort, time, and passion that so many newcomers devote to mining, was devoted to improving the exchangeability of Bitcoin instead, this project would be a lot more successful by now.



If I want to acquire 1g of gold, there are several ways I could go about this.

1) I could head to the mountains with a gold pan and wade in the river all day every day, and after half a year of panning I would find a nugget (if I am lucky).

2) I could join a collective of 100 panners and head to the mountains for just a weekend. Then whoever is lucky enough to find a nugget agrees to divide it equally amoung the other 99 panners.

3) I could do what I am good at, be it programming or hairdressing, for a few hours, earn some money and then invest in a professional mining company that sends its heavy machinery capable of extracting thousands of nuggets per day.

4) I could buy the gold from someone who already owns some.


Anyone who did 1) IRL would be considered nuts, unless it's purely a hobby that they genuinely enjoy. But that is a good analogy of what you are doing when you attempt to mine Bitcoins with a CPU.

Option 2) would be considered slighly less nuts IRL, yet still highly inefficient and silly to say the least. But that is essentially what a pooled mining effort is.

Option 3) is smarter but still too cumbersome for a casual gold user because it requires detailed industry knowledge and investing experience, and because you have to wait until you get your gold.

Option 4) is by far the most sensible choice for the majority of people.

Want some Bitcoins? Trade them! That's what Bitcoins are for.

[ribuck]

Option 2) might be the most fun though.