[ANN][TAG] TAGMining.Com is now the official pool of Tagcoin!

[Dabs]

May I ask what the job is? That you are going to quit? Make sure your 6 month forecast looks good (barring difficulty and price swings.)

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[johndec2]

I'm sure it's just a coincidence but, gee, we haven't had much luck since you updated.. 

[ny2cafuse]

May I ask what the job is? That you are going to quit? Make sure your 6 month forecast looks good (barring difficulty and price swings.)

I'm out anyway soon, as the family and I are looking to move back to NY from California.

I work as a network/computer technician for the local school district.  4+ years now, part-time since I started.  For the last 7 months, I've dealt with a crotchety, menopausal Filipino woman who has given me dirty looks and straight ignored my existence because I called her out in my bosses office one day for her shitty attitude.  So most of my day in the office is spent trying to avoid her so she doesn't give me an attitude, which is tough because she basically the second in command in the office.  On a daily basis, a few of the techs in the office come in late, spend 30 minutes in the break room having breakfast and drinking coffee, then spend a majority of the rest of their day playing computer games and telling people things can't be fixed or figured out because they can't be bothered to do anything.  And they have full-time positions with benefits.  Me and my partner, also part-time and my business partner I always mention, end up picking up their slack and leading the charge for new innovation in the office, while they badmouth our projects and look down on what we've done like it's nothing.  

I really loved this job for a long time, but any hope of it getting better has gotten further and further from reach.  It's the politics of working for a school district, and the lack of honor and integrity among the people in my office that make it down right unbearable some days.  Coming from the military made me appreciate working hard, being honorable, and above all else, having the integrity take care of your responsibilities like a man.

So pools, mining, and more pools and mining.  I've got maybe another month or two of work if our offer on the house goes through.  If my order for 10 GPUs comes through soon, and I can work on the laundry list of pools I want/need to make, I'll make more than what I make at work.  In fact, with just Tagmining and the ~5MH running right now, I make more than my monthly take-home... which is sad to say.  So I'd love to go in, and tell them off, and tell them that the cryptocoins I tried to tell them about almost a year ago, that they laughed off, now makes me more money then they make.  Oh, that would be priceless.

-Fuse

[ny2cafuse]

I'm sure it's just a coincidence but, gee, we haven't had much luck since you updated.. 

I know, mate... I've been watching the logs the whole time.  No errors though, and nothing out of the ordinary.  Cronjobs are running properly, and the DB looks good.

I don't want to start saying what it could be, because I really don't know.  But I really hope it's just an issue with luck, and not an issue with the update.

-Fuse

[Dabs]

For the last 7 months, I've dealt with a crotchety, menopausal Filipino woman

I can understand this part. You don't want to be in the bad end of a woman, particularly a menopausal Filipina (is she married? single? probably single, old maid, or I'm just stereotyping; I'm not racist because I'm a Filipino.) She's single and old and unhappy, so takes it out on anyone in her sights, unfortunately you happen to be within target range and line of sight.

Otherwise, most Filipina are nice and hospitable. They tend to lose that nice attitude when they migrate (like, to California). The ones here in the Philippines tend to remain friendly.

If you can find a way to "fix" your relationship with her, that would be a good idea, good for politics (I mean, your office.) Even if you will end up leaving them for a full time crypto-coin mining career.

~5MH running right now, I make more than my monthly take-home... which is sad to say.

Huh? On 150 difficulty, that's about a thousand dollars equivalent only. You got more hash power I'm sure, that you haven't put online yet. hehehe. (Don't believe that Dabs is CPU mining, although, that's exactly what I'm doing for now.)

[ny2cafuse]

Huh? On 150 difficulty, that's about a thousand dollars equivalent only. You got more hash power I'm sure, that you haven't put online yet. hehehe. (Don't believe that Dabs is CPU mining, although, that's exactly what I'm doing for now.)

Mate, between the 5MH and half of the fees/dontations each week, I make more than I take home at work.  It's really sad lol.

To answer your question... previously married, now with a long term partner.  We actually used to be great friends, but I when she went back to Cebu when the typhoon hit, I honestly pictured a house falling on her like the witch in the Wizard of OZ.

-Fuse

[vesperwillow]

@vesper, have you gotten the ASRock 970 Extreme4 to mine with 5 280X Toxics? (or 6 GPUs)? And did you use more than one PSU? That's the motherboard I plan to get for my dedicated mining rig.

If I do a 5 Toxic rig, using your computation, I would need 1850 watts. So I can get the following?

Seasonic X-750 750W 80PLUS Gold (Modular)
Seasonic X-1050 1050W 80Plus Gold Full Modular Power Supply

But I'm still missing 50 watts, maybe I should get the 850 and the 1050 instead.

I've got one running with 5 270X's, so I can confirm 5 slots will work just fine. You will have to use a jumper on one (or more) of the slots to make sure it senses the GPUs. I simply used a piece of cat5 cable, cut a 2" piece of copper from it.

I would go with the twin 1050's just to be safe.

[Dabs]

The full time miner and mining op career seems like a good choice then. Good luck mate! But increase your hash power. If any of your rigs fail, at least you have another one working while you fix it. Because if you quit your job, then your only income would be from mining.

I've got one running with 5 270X's, so I can confirm 5 slots will work just fine. You will have to use a jumper on one (or more) of the slots to make sure it senses the GPUs. I simply used a piece of cat5 cable, cut a 2" piece of copper from it.

I would go with the twin 1050's just to be safe.

Okay thanks. I'll crunch some numbers again. Those 270X's look interesting too. (Can you post your numbers though? Or is it buried in here somewhere? hash rate, wattage, sapphires 270x toxics?) I can see some 270X's here, but not 270 (without the X).

The Sapphire R9-270 Dual-X OC 2GB DDR5 Boost, is half the price of a 280X Toxic. But two of them will probably do more than 1 280X Toxic at lower power, at the expense of a slot. So the computation, for long term, would be price of complete rigs, like a bunch of 280X versus a bunch of 270X, inclusive of motherboards, ram, cpus, and risers.

[vesperwillow]

If you look through the past 10 pages you should find some info. I'm using 270X right now, haven't tried 270 yet although I'm about to purchase 5 MSI 270's.

[Dabs]

If you look through the past 10 pages you should find some info. I'm using 270X right now, haven't tried 270 yet although I'm about to purchase 5 MSI 270's.

Ok, did that, found your posts. hehe.. Allow me to show you this chart:

N   H   W   SW   TW   WPH
1   492   175   75   250   0.508130081
2   984   350   75   425   0.431910569
3   1476   525   75   600   0.406504065
4   1968   700   75   775   0.393800813
5   2460   875   75   950   0.386178862

What that means is number of 270X, hashrate, watts of the GPUs, watts of the system (55w at idle, I think you said 75w is a good buffer), total watts, and watts per hash (lower means better.) I still have to plug in the cost of the cards.

So one rig of 5 270X can do 2460 KH/S, to achieve similar results with 280X I would only need 3 Toxics at 800 KH/S. But 3 280X Toxics will eat up 1150 Watts on the same motherboard.

However, 5 270X Dual-X will only cost me 1050 USD, while 3 280X Toxics will cost me 1200 USD.

What I'm not sure of is, if I get 5 or 6 of the 280X, will the savings in rigs (motherboard, cpu, ram, psu, risers) beat the 270X.

If I can get 6 280X Toxics to work at 800 kh/s each, I should get 4800 kh/s total, 2200 total watts, and cost me 2400 USD just for the GPUs.

What I need to do now is price the rig and corresponding power supplies needed.

[Dabs]

And here are my calculations:

1. Rig 1 = 270X * 5, total cost = 1500 USD approx.
2. Rig 2 = 280X * 3, total cost = 1700 USD approx.
3. Rig 3 = 280X * 5, total cost = 2500 USD approx.

They all take the same amount of time to break even given the power consumption and hash rate, except #2 costs more (only 3 GPUs are used.)

Here is how Rig 1 looks like itemised:

Code:

psu     Sea 1050w              220
mb      asrock 970 extreme4    110
cpu     amd sempron 145         40
powered risers x 5             100
ram     Kingston 2GB            30
GPUs    270x dual x 5         1000
                              1500

I forgot about the USB flash drive, but they're cheap enough around here, around 10 USD for 8 GB.

Just because it's a thousand dollars less, it's quieter, cooler, and less power hungry (need only 1 PSU), I think I'll go with the 270X rig. Both 1 and 3 are so close, I think it will only make a difference if I have more than a dozen of them.

*edit1* the 270X are cheaper to run, and it makes a small difference because my power costs 0.35 USD per kilowatt hour. 2 270X rigs are cheaper than 1 280X rig.

*edit2* the 270X rigs are cheaper watts per hash, but more expensive hash per dollar. I'm trying to calculate which is better.
*edit3* I mixed up, I meant more hash per dollar so it's cheaper. And then less watts per hash. So, it seems the 270X rigs are better.
*edit4* I'm missing something, I'm trying to figure out which is more efficient, ugh. But it doesn't matter, since it's cheaper to buy, and cheaper to run. What's the formula for efficiency? I'm done trying to compute for now, I'm calling up the store to see if they have stock of the stuff.

[24Kilo]

Dabs,

You are being overly-optimist in thinking that you can match Vesper's 492Kh/s... Vesper is a genius at this stuff... I would calculate my numbers on 450Kh/s which is what John is reporting with his cards... then hope to better...

Just my 2TAG...

[johndec2]

Dabs.  I've had a 270x running non stop for a week at 461kh/s and that is with quite mild settings whilst also powering the monitor when necessary.  I could easily squeeze another 10-20kh/s out of it but frankly I've been too busy to screw around with it.  When you're fine tuning you have to be around 24/7 to reset/readjust the timings when it drops out.  

I know you are going to ask   so it's running at I 20, TC 12404, 1100/1460.  Consider these numbers a baseline.  It will also run on TC 24000 but you only gain about 1kh/s so I stick with 12404 which is what the bin file threw up when I ran cgminer without any preconfigured parameters.

[johndec2]

Anyone who is holding DOGE.. There is a massive pump on at the moment. It has nearly doubled in price in the last 6 hours.  Damm, damm, damm, I haven't updated my doge wallet for a few days and it is taking forever.. to sync.  Knowing my luck, my doge will hit cryptsy just in time for the dump.    I mined about 3.5 million of them when it first appeared, still have about 1 million left.  Serious money if I can catch the wave.

[Dabs]

Anything above 400 kh/s is good, considering its half the power consumption and half the price. I will take this as a challenge. I don't see how I can't get similar numbers with identical motherboards and GPUs.

john, you don't need to wait for a sync to send your own coins.

[ny2cafuse]

Dabs, look at the non X version of the 270s.  Same performance at ~450kh, and about $20-$40 on average.  Still waiting on my 10 non-X cards to come in, but everything I'm reading points me to this.  Even the non-x 280s and 290s give similar results to the X version.  I suppose there is some frame rate increases in gaming or something silly, but mining is mining on all these cards.

-Fuse

[Dabs]

I get that, but the store where I'm buying don't have the non-X versions. (They have a 290.)

I've started by getting veggie crates. 2 cost me 230 PHP or about 2.50 USD each crate. The wife approves, as long as she gets some coins to do her shopping.

If I'm missing something from the list above, let me know. Btw, BAMT got an update to 1.3 using sgminer, on the litecointalk forums.

[Dabs]

Another thing, for you Fuse, don't quit until you're making 2x to 3x on mining, what you take home from your job. I'll explain tomorrow if you don't see why. Just a suggestion.

[vesperwillow]

Asus 270X TOP

Finally getting around to working on these Asus 270X cards. Darn things won't hash over 380 out of the box. I saw that by applying the new BIOS they would work better. The new BIOS is on the ASUS support page, I believe it's dated 10 Dec 2013 or thereabouts at the time of this writing. It's an .EXE file which should force-flash 270, 270X and 270 TOP cards from ASUS.

Popped it in the BAMT rig.. sure enough, started hashing faster. Going to tune these and provide some results.

Updates:

The ASUS model seems to be responding to my previous settings as all the others did, once I reflashed it. It's maintaining 492/493 without a hitch. However, it's a bit tricky. Some work this way, and others die shortly after. Seems like a combination of the GPU being sensitive to spikes in temperature, and the memory.

Test System: (same as always)

* ASRock 970 EX4, Sempron 145, 2GB HyperX
* Thermaltake TPG-1050M
* BAMT 1.2
* Cgminer 3.7.2
* USB Risers

With TC: 24000, Powertune: 20, here's what I'm getting:

Engine / Memory / Intensity / KHash
1120 / 1500 / 18 / 450kh
1120 / 1500 / 20 / 483kh
1145 / 1500 / 20 / 492kh

Power usage is the same as others, 170-175w per GPU.

However I've noticed that sometimes the cards simply can't take these settings for long, and will die out. Here's some more reliable settings, with more settings to follow:

Engine / Memory / Intensity / Powertune / Hashrate
1080 / 1400 / 17 / 18 / 400kh
1050 / 1400 / 17 / 18 / 425kh
1050 / 1400/ 18 / 20 / 437kh
1050 / 1400 / 20 / 18 / 452kh

(last updated 2014-10-26 0035)

With that being said, I would definitely recommend these for mining. I got mine for $180/ea via Amazon. There's a few left right now. For the price they're not bad, considering you have to update the BIOS (which isn't a pain, but is annoying). I still like "care free and guaranteed", but these are great.

One of the NEATEST things about this card versus the other 270X cards: The TOP cooler is awesome. It's the quietest OEM cooler I've run across with the 270X series, its' noise level is close to my Prolimatech's. It also does a bangup job at keeping the cards cool, not quite as well as the Prolimatech, but for a stock cooler, this is truly amazing. If you want essentially silent performance from a mining rig without swapping GPU coolers, this is the card to get. If I could, I would swap my other 270's for this card.

The ONLY drawback is you HAVE to force-flash the BIOS of each GPU to reach appropriate speeds.

ASUS R9270X-DC2T-2GD5 Summary:

* 492+ KH speeds achieved BUT 452-470 is a more likely stable speed: faster clock is not always better
* 175w Power Usage
* Somewhat quieter Cooling than other setups
* Longer PCB design than other 270's (same length as 280 models)
* PCIE Power Ports face up with the clip facing the backside (very nice), other 270's face rearward with clip facing the cooler (makes it hard to grasp)

Quirks:

* GPU ignores commanded fan speed after a short period, and takes over
* Appears to be an internal thermal shutdown, somewhere in the upper 80's (at least on my cards)
* They don't like intensity set beyond 18, without getting weird

Comments/feedback welcome.

[ny2cafuse]

Good stuff Vesper.  I'm going to send you a PM when I get back from dinner... I got an idea for you.


FYI... big time fork.  We are ahead of the rest of the pools, so stick to it and mine.  DIFFICULTY IS 10 RIGHT NOW!

I'll be back in a little bit.

-Fuse