OFFICIAL CGMINER mining software thread for linux/win/osx/mips/arm/r-pi 4.11.1

[TheHarbinger]

i strongly believe that BTC cgminer for GPU will be dead in a matter of weeks.
Thus, all the efforts now for cgminer development should be in the direction of LTC (scrypt)

be·lieve
[bih-leev], be·lieved, be·liev·ing.
verb (used without object)
1.
to have confidence in the truth, the existence, or the reliability of something, although without absolute proof that one is right in doing so.

I belive you are an asshat.

[1713445587]

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[Askit2]

I believed about 11 months ago GPU mining would die entirely because of FPGA's. I wasn't right. I was sure by now it would be old news.

CGMiner is what I use for my FPGA setup. Abandoning BTC entirely would be a loss for those that use CGMiners very advanced features to keep work piling up on their boxes like garbage in a round file. I don't think I will bet on GPU dying again. I may wait for it to happen this time.

PS everything seems great here. Working fast (WU dropped back to 11.9 but I had throttles so it was expected).
12133A
9R
0.00074178% Rejects on Stratum on Eclipse. That is amazing to me!

[-ck]

I've always thought FPGAs were a waste of money. Assuming ASICs come in the next 2 months, indeed hardly anyone would have made a return on investment with FPGAs yet they will find themselves with devices that have no other realistic useful purpose - AKA doorstops. I have never spent a cent on FPGAs, do not own one, and have only gotten involved with their development when no one else could find solutions to awkward problems with them. On the other hand, GPUs have only just fallen below profitability, yet if you factor in resale value for them, they still don't look so bad compared to FPGAs, but mining long term on them seems a waste now. I never once believed GPU mining would die in the face of FPGAs unless the status quo was somehow magically maintained for years which I never believed would happen.

However, ASICs are a totally different ball game. They basically will redefine what mining means with bitcoin, where there is no point mining with anything else if any profit is to be made. They will make GPUs, and even FPGAs, look totally useless to mine with. 1 year from now, absolutely no one will be mining BTC on anything but ASICs, except for newbies to bitcoin mining, who will ask the obvious questions about GPU mining, and still even CPU mining.

I will sorely miss the "anyone can use their spare hardware to mine with" aspect to bitcoin mining. I honestly believe that is more true to the ideal of bitcoin, where everyone running a node was contributing to its security. However, what spare hardware people had has changed dramatically recently anyway as PCs are dramatically on the decline and people move to more portable devices with less CPU/GPU power in the form of tablets and phones etc. Alas the algorithm lends itself really well to ASIC based mining, meaning everything else will be a complete waste of time. Now while cgminer will continue to work on alternate cryptocurrencies, I honestly think all the alternative cryptocurrencies will go nowhere. The only reason to mine them is to find something that can be profitable by converting it to BTC.

Down the track, cgminer will indeed be used mostly to mine with dedicated ASIC hardware to mine BTC. GPU mining for BTC will be as irrelevant then as CPU mining is today. I don't like the fact that the network will be secured with devices from 4 or 5 manufacturers making hardware that serves only one purpose - btc mining. While BTC mining previously was still only in the hands of intel, amd and nvidia, the fact is it was not on their radar at all. Bitcoin mining was a lucky aside they did, where AMD/ATI GPUs happened to do better than anyone else, and anyone with spare cycles on their hardware could choose to contribute and earn a little on the side.

Long term, cgminer will be the lowest overhead c software to drive ASICs to do bitcoin mining, with lots of code in it that is no longer relevant to BTC mining. What I really worry about, is that new hardware will continue to come out frequently enough that people end up on a cycle of investing in hardware that basically never pays itself off as slightly newer hardware and higher diffs keep coming out. Sure at some stage the limits of technology will be reached, but given the best tech at the moment is going to be 65nm ASICs when CPUs are 28nm devices, I can see the cycle going on for some time, and then even if btc mining ASICs end up in line with CPU manufacturers, they still continue to evolve over time. Dramatic profits from ASICs will likely only last a couple of weeks at most for a lucky few. The rest of you who paid for devices that don't even exist yet will not be making any magical profit no matter how big the hashrate appears. Your proportion of the total bitcoin hashrate will remain pitiful.

Sigh...

[Panda Mouse]

I've always thought FPGAs were a waste of money. Assuming ASICs come in the next 2 months, indeed hardly anyone would have made a return on investment with FPGAs yet they will find themselves with ...

+1

Panda Mouse

[Askit2]

Not saying anyone is wrong. My experience based on 1 BFL single delivered on May 7th actually paid for an upgrade already. Plus about another 240$. The timeline for me has thus far sucked. I am in front of my expected earnings by a great deal but I hoped for better. I expect that it will continue to suck because of the ability to make new generations by shrinking die size. Still as long as I am not marginal before a die shrink I could likely use my older hardware for a while albeit losing more profits to power bills. By older I don't mean the single. It will likely be so underpowered in a week tops that my unit would make little to no money. Even in that week it wouldn't make any real money. What I ment is that though I dislike the potential for many many new generation products I do like that essentially anything with a USB port and an internet connection can be a piece of the BTC infrastructure.

Sure the GPU's could make you money depending on what you had and if you could upgrade them. I use a cheap Acer net top setup with an nVidia Ion card and and Atom CPU. No part of that is good for mining. I could buy hardware and get to where I was hashrate wise but my FPGA did only cost me 600 and change. New PS, MB, RAM, and 2-4 video cards would have likely cost me about as much but used far more power for the same hashrate. I didn't see GPU's in this case as any less dedicated hardware since I would only buy them for bitcoin mining.

My setup is around 110W for my DVR to mine making me money. My next setup will likely be even better power wise for a while. Then again the difficulty will also keep going up making you buy more hardware of accept less money per time unit.

[The00Dustin]

Maybe we should save the "bitcoin is dead, long live the bitcoin" talk for when bitcoin is dead.  (OK, no one is talking about bitcoin being dead, but I'm seeing an awful lot of doom and gloom posts that may very well primarily come from the fact that the reward just halved even though it should obviously take time for "markets" to adjust).  It seems like I read a long time ago that bitcoin was designed with the expectancy that only large entities would be mining and most others would be using it as a currency.  That may not be correct as far as design is concerned, but if it was expected a year or two ago (when I read whatever I read), the only people this change will shed from the community are those who mine solely to sell and reap rewards (pity it won't shed scammers).  In such a scenario, as they fail to reap rewards and stop buying new hardware, the conversion should stabilize, and the primary purpose of bitcoin should continue to thrive for those who truly support it.

[ewibit]

I've always thought ......

thank you ckolivas
a very good summary for me 

[Luke-Jr]

i strongly believe that BTC cgminer for GPU will be dead in a matter of weeks.
Thus, all the efforts now for cgminer development should be in the direction of LTC (scrypt)

be·lieve
[bih-leev], be·lieved, be·liev·ing.
verb (used without object)
1.
to have confidence in the truth, the existence, or the reliability of something, although without absolute proof that one is right in doing so.

Your dictionary is wrong. Belief does not imply either evidence or lack thereof.

[Meatball]

What I really worry about, is that new hardware will continue to come out frequently enough that people end up on a cycle of investing in hardware that basically never pays itself off as slightly newer hardware and higher diffs keep coming out. Sure at some stage the limits of technology will be reached, but given the best tech at the moment is going to be 65nm ASICs when CPUs are 28nm devices, I can see the cycle going on for some time, and then even if btc mining ASICs end up in line with CPU manufacturers, they still continue to evolve over time. Dramatic profits from ASICs will likely only last a couple of weeks at most for a lucky few. The rest of you who paid for devices that don't even exist yet will not be making any magical profit no matter how big the hashrate appears. Your proportion of the total bitcoin hashrate will remain pitiful.

Sigh...

There's definitely some merit to this, but remember, the exact same thing happens with Video Cards, every 9-12 months the new GPU cards hit the market and are more efficient at mining.  Of course video cards are much less expensive than the current round of ASIC's and can be resold.

[mdude77]

What I really worry about, is that new hardware will continue to come out frequently enough that people end up on a cycle of investing in hardware that basically never pays itself off as slightly newer hardware and higher diffs keep coming out. Sure at some stage the limits of technology will be reached, but given the best tech at the moment is going to be 65nm ASICs when CPUs are 28nm devices, I can see the cycle going on for some time, and then even if btc mining ASICs end up in line with CPU manufacturers, they still continue to evolve over time. Dramatic profits from ASICs will likely only last a couple of weeks at most for a lucky few. The rest of you who paid for devices that don't even exist yet will not be making any magical profit no matter how big the hashrate appears. Your proportion of the total bitcoin hashrate will remain pitiful.

Sigh...

There's definitely some merit to this, but remember, the exact same thing happens with Video Cards, every 9-12 months the new GPU cards hit the market and are more efficient at mining.  Of course video cards are much less expensive than the current round of ASIC's and can be resold.

Not *that* much more expensive.  A 7990 will run you real close to what a 74GH/s bASIC will.

M

[TheHarbinger]

i strongly believe that BTC cgminer for GPU will be dead in a matter of weeks.
Thus, all the efforts now for cgminer development should be in the direction of LTC (scrypt)

be·lieve
[bih-leev], be·lieved, be·liev·ing.
verb (used without object)
1.
to have confidence in the truth, the existence, or the reliability of something, although without absolute proof that one is right in doing so.

Your dictionary is wrong. Belief does not imply either evidence or lack thereof.

One of the oldest, most established, most respected, and wide spread dictionaries of all time for the English language is wrong because Luke Jr. doesn't agree with it.  If anyone needed proof that Luke Jr. was nothing but a self-centered, egotistical, deluded, douchbag I think that pretty much sums it up.

[crazyates]

What I really worry about, is that new hardware will continue to come out frequently enough that people end up on a cycle of investing in hardware that basically never pays itself off as slightly newer hardware and higher diffs keep coming out. Sure at some stage the limits of technology will be reached, but given the best tech at the moment is going to be 65nm ASICs when CPUs are 28nm devices, I can see the cycle going on for some time, and then even if btc mining ASICs end up in line with CPU manufacturers, they still continue to evolve over time. Dramatic profits from ASICs will likely only last a couple of weeks at most for a lucky few. The rest of you who paid for devices that don't even exist yet will not be making any magical profit no matter how big the hashrate appears. Your proportion of the total bitcoin hashrate will remain pitiful.

Sigh...

There's definitely some merit to this, but remember, the exact same thing happens with Video Cards, every 9-12 months the new GPU cards hit the market and are more efficient at mining.  Of course video cards are much less expensive than the current round of ASIC's and can be resold.

Not *that* much more expensive.  A 7990 will run you real close to what a 74GH/s bASIC will.

M

Show me a single person who bought a 7990 for mining purposes.

@Meatball - While new video cards came out every 9-12 months, not all of them were *that* much better at mining. The 5xxx cards were great, and the 6xxx cards were only a minor improvement, if that. The 7xxx cards brought higher speed and lower power, but not enough to make the 5xxx useless or unprofitable in any way. I'm hoping ASICs will be similar to this: 2nd and 3rd gen ASICs might be faster and/or use less power, but the 1st gen will still be profitable for quite a while.

[mdude77]

What I really worry about, is that new hardware will continue to come out frequently enough that people end up on a cycle of investing in hardware that basically never pays itself off as slightly newer hardware and higher diffs keep coming out. Sure at some stage the limits of technology will be reached, but given the best tech at the moment is going to be 65nm ASICs when CPUs are 28nm devices, I can see the cycle going on for some time, and then even if btc mining ASICs end up in line with CPU manufacturers, they still continue to evolve over time. Dramatic profits from ASICs will likely only last a couple of weeks at most for a lucky few. The rest of you who paid for devices that don't even exist yet will not be making any magical profit no matter how big the hashrate appears. Your proportion of the total bitcoin hashrate will remain pitiful.

Sigh...

There's definitely some merit to this, but remember, the exact same thing happens with Video Cards, every 9-12 months the new GPU cards hit the market and are more efficient at mining.  Of course video cards are much less expensive than the current round of ASIC's and can be resold.

Not *that* much more expensive.  A 7990 will run you real close to what a 74GH/s bASIC will.

M

Show me a single person who bought a 7990 for mining purposes.

I didn't say anyone was doing it.  I was simply responding to the "video cards are much less expensive" quote.  I could also say a 7970 will be equivalent of a 37GH/s bASIC.

M

[crazyates]

There's definitely some merit to this, but remember, the exact same thing happens with Video Cards, every 9-12 months the new GPU cards hit the market and are more efficient at mining.  Of course video cards are much less expensive than the current round of ASIC's and can be resold.

Not *that* much more expensive.  A 7990 will run you real close to what a 74GH/s bASIC will.

M

Show me a single person who bought a 7990 for mining purposes.

I didn't say anyone was doing it.  I was simply responding to the "video cards are much less expensive" quote.  I could also say a 7970 will be equivalent of a 37GH/s bASIC.

M

Ah ok. My bad.

[wind]

crazyates
i used and 12.8 drivers with 2.7 SDK and 11.11 with 2.5 SDK - no result((
will try 12.4 with 2.7 SDK tomorrow.....
with other drivers except 11.6 my comp reboots((

Well IIRC, scrypt requires 2.6 or newer, so 2.5 is out. 12.8 with the included ocl runtime should be your best bet. Idk then. 

All done!
So the issue was in APP SDK and DRIVER
On my XP only APP SDK 2.7+Catalyst 11.6 was succesful
All other combinations was not working
but cgminer gave me only 140 khash but reaper 410 on my 6950
it's all i could squeeze out of cgminer....((
reaper was better.. don't know why...

[-ck]

What I really worry about, is that new hardware will continue to come out frequently enough that people end up on a cycle of investing in hardware that basically never pays itself off as slightly newer hardware and higher diffs keep coming out. Sure at some stage the limits of technology will be reached, but given the best tech at the moment is going to be 65nm ASICs when CPUs are 28nm devices, I can see the cycle going on for some time, and then even if btc mining ASICs end up in line with CPU manufacturers, they still continue to evolve over time. Dramatic profits from ASICs will likely only last a couple of weeks at most for a lucky few. The rest of you who paid for devices that don't even exist yet will not be making any magical profit no matter how big the hashrate appears. Your proportion of the total bitcoin hashrate will remain pitiful.

Sigh...

There's definitely some merit to this, but remember, the exact same thing happens with Video Cards, every 9-12 months the new GPU cards hit the market and are more efficient at mining.  Of course video cards are much less expensive than the current round of ASIC's and can be resold.

The resale and multipurpose nature of them is what makes the equation so different though. My 7970s are selling for more than half of what I bought them for. Though I had to invest the money in the first place, there is still that extra return on selling them at the end, provided you don't try to keep them forever.

[kano]

What I really worry about, is that new hardware will continue to come out frequently enough that people end up on a cycle of investing in hardware that basically never pays itself off as slightly newer hardware and higher diffs keep coming out. Sure at some stage the limits of technology will be reached, but given the best tech at the moment is going to be 65nm ASICs when CPUs are 28nm devices, I can see the cycle going on for some time, and then even if btc mining ASICs end up in line with CPU manufacturers, they still continue to evolve over time. Dramatic profits from ASICs will likely only last a couple of weeks at most for a lucky few. The rest of you who paid for devices that don't even exist yet will not be making any magical profit no matter how big the hashrate appears. Your proportion of the total bitcoin hashrate will remain pitiful.

Sigh...

There's definitely some merit to this, but remember, the exact same thing happens with Video Cards, every 9-12 months the new GPU cards hit the market and are more efficient at mining.  Of course video cards are much less expensive than the current round of ASIC's and can be resold.

Well the 7xxx were less than double the 6xxx

But the 6xxx were roughly about the same as the 5xxx weren't they?

... and if GPU's were still mining away when 8xxx's came out, I'd not be surprised if there wasn't anything like a 2x gain from 7xxx to 8xxx

As ckolivas mentioned, GPU BTC mining is not the target of the companies that produce the products
If it was, then the next GPU's would beat the ASICs ...

[meowmeowbrowncow]

What I really worry about, is that new hardware will continue to come out frequently enough that people end up on a cycle of investing in hardware that basically never pays itself off as slightly newer hardware and higher diffs keep coming out. Sure at some stage the limits of technology will be reached, but given the best tech at the moment is going to be 65nm ASICs when CPUs are 28nm devices, I can see the cycle going on for some time, and then even if btc mining ASICs end up in line with CPU manufacturers, they still continue to evolve over time. Dramatic profits from ASICs will likely only last a couple of weeks at most for a lucky few. The rest of you who paid for devices that don't even exist yet will not be making any magical profit no matter how big the hashrate appears. Your proportion of the total bitcoin hashrate will remain pitiful.

Sigh...

There's definitely some merit to this, but remember, the exact same thing happens with Video Cards, every 9-12 months the new GPU cards hit the market and are more efficient at mining.  Of course video cards are much less expensive than the current round of ASIC's and can be resold.

The resale and multipurpose nature of them is what makes the equation so different though. My 7970s are selling for more than half of what I bought them for. Though I had to invest the money in the first place, there is still that extra return on selling them at the end, provided you don't try to keep them forever.

There is definitely a dark side to ASIC.  Mainly this will depend on the business practices of the vendors in how willing they are to milk the market while depreciation is ever present.

Even with power consumption GPU was a relatively safe bet.


It's unfortunate that ASIC wasn't taken on in a community effort.  ASIC's could have been marketed using a cost plus model instead of price point being indexed against price/difficulty.

The price/difficulty business model will suck (us dry).

[kano]

CGMiner attempting undesired conection to IP in Germany on every primary pool fail. Dare to "explain" it a bit?

It's a hack I put in there that sees your specific pool usernames and steals your coins ...

[crazyates]

CGMiner attempting undesired conection to IP in Germany on every primary pool fail. Dare to "explain" it a bit?

It's a hack I put in there that sees your specific pool usernames and steals your coins ...

ZOMG!