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

[vesperwillow]

I should've been in bed 2 hours ago, but just got my test 270X rig working. This is as bad as my car hobbies.

I have 5 of the 270X gpu's running on my ASRock 970 Extreme4. What I spent 90 minutes on was trying to get it to recognize more than 4 cards. What was happening was PCIE slot 4 was ignoring anything plugged in. I checked this across other known-good ASRock's I had sitting around, I also swapped out risers/etc, and narrowed it down to a motherboard issue. Finally what solved it was I had to jumper / short the slot (as seen in THIS link here).

Once I did that, the motherboard recognized all 5 GPUs.

I don't have time to tune the cards, but so far the max wattage I've seen being pulled is around 980w, which equates to 175w each gpu plus system power. This is about 70 less than my other setups, and there's a good 50w more I can save with aftermarket cooling stuff.

As to hashrate, my powercolor is still overclocked at 492. The other cards I have set to run on stock clocks (eng/mem 0/0) at 24000 TC, and they're getting 437 or so. They were doing 467 but settled down. One exception is the GPU in the jumpered slot, it kept dying out after a few minutes. Not sure if it's a power issue or the fact the slot is jumpered, I'll figure that out tomorrow. I had to drop TC to 8192 along with intensity and powertuning, so it's running at 276 right now just to keep it alive.

Something tells me the visiontek cards aren't going to do as well as the powercolor, and the sapphire will do a smidge better than the visiontek. We'll see..

[1714840439]

1714840439

[24Kilo]

Vesper,

I was all over the 270 bandwagon... but not sure now... I finally got a good power meter and I have a set of Sapphire Dual-X's that are runnning 1.5Mh/s at 630W including 80W for the system... that is 275W per card... they are under-volted to 1.187... and I think I could get them as low as 1.160 and keep that hash-rate.

I have a set of ASUS 280X's pulling 640W from the wall at 1.465Mh/s running completely stock at 64C.

I need to work on my systems to reduce wattage... running a hard drive and etc... have to get BAMT running.

Linux and BAMT hate me... spent a few hours trying to get it work... no success... just not getting it.

EDIT - HURRAY!!!! I finally got BAMT running!!! I have a bald patch!!!

[johndec2]

Fuse. You really need to lean on Mark re the orphans.  The rash of orphans have slowed but we are still getting too many.. FMD, even I found one! A coin with 100+ diff shouldn't be copping so many.  

EDIT: Front end taking like 2 to 3 minutes to load a page, painfully slow + I'm finding hard to believe that with over 430MH/s we haven't found a block for over 2 1/2 hours.. 

[Dabs]

@vesperwillow, mind listing the complete specs of your 270 rig? And maybe I can buy those parts either locally or that guy in Taiwan. Mark just replied to me that he priced his rig incorrectly, hehe. (No wonder it looked like a good deal.) In any case, I offered to just buy the GPUs at the "correct" price if he's still inclined to sell them, since they aren't being used anyway.

[Frankthechicken]

@vesperwillow, what PSU(s) are you using?

I must sadly report that my newest LEPA 1600 is defective... one rail reads 10.7V and another reads 11.7V at idle now.  So, I will try to return it for a refund.  That just reaffirms the need for me to switch to multiple smaller PSUs with single rail I guess.

Re:mining, around 2:30AM eastern time my original miner hung in a funny way while mining on TAGMining.  I am not sure if it indicates anything other than a local issue, but will share.  It was still hashing at full power, updating hashrates, but not submitting anything and not getting new work from the pool.  Strangest thing I've seen in my short time at mining.

[ny2cafuse]

Alrighty, I'm awake.  Other than the slow load time while I was asleep, and the continuing orphan issue, we're going ok.  I'll be doing the jackpot soon, so hang tight for that.

As far as the front end loading slow... I'm not sure what's going on.  No issues on the provider's side.  The back end is working ok.  Vesper might be correct in that it's an attack, but my provider hasn't contacted me about a possible DDOS, and the charts look ok.  It may just be that 450MH+ is too much for our humble little server.  IDK... I'll watch it through the day and see what's going on.

-Fuse

[ny2cafuse]

FYI

I have disabled the user API functions temporarily.  Initial results are a 80% decrease in the database CPU usage.  I know a few of you count on the API, but I want to see what can be done to make things peppier.  I'll continue to monitor TOP on the server to see if anything changes.  If not, it's a staying off until TheSerapher makes changes to the API calls to the DB.  It's basically the same calls the live dashboard made.

-Fuse

[ny2cafuse]

5th Jackpot

Alrighty folks, here's the info:

There were 334 total rounds for the week.  To be eligible for this jackpot, you would have needed to submit shares to 75% of those rounds, equaling 250 rounds.  There were 24(woot) people who qualified for the jackpot.  This was out of 384() miners who mined on the pool this week.  The qualifying miners are as follows:

AFKMPEG
ahczbhht1989
anchous
Bodamn
clxy
emvasquez
flywin
ftc102
iralee3c
johndec
kolednik
kubur
manana
pepminer
Sergik
TagCoinDaddy
tiger
vantaggg
vesperwillow
wgs520  (previous week win - excluded)
wujizhu
xjf
xmwxw
zybqe177



This week's and last week's total fees and donations equal roughly 240TAG(AGAIN lol), about the same as last week.  So half of that, the total jackpot purse, is 120TAG.

This week's winners are as follows:

1st place -  AFKMPEG           60TAG  - TXID ba46f5a7eab3e0ce315a53a746b5cad69f6da87f0409c92645d06ed70cec8158
2nd place - vantaggg           36TAG  - TXID 2a8a5436774d80f8982ef3fcb4a790bf9d5ebb877a91743b483144022f393b63
3rd place -  emvasquez        24TAG  - TXID a9394c813243dfe3dce2b4e2b1db7d69fc319ecc260fd10918c20367ba103556


Payments will be sent shortly, and TXID numbers will be posted above.

Congratulations, miners!  Good luck to everyone next week!

-Fuse

[ny2cafuse]

Oh, I almost forgot to mention, welcome home, 24Kilo.  Good seeing you on the top 15 list, beating Vesper too lol.

Question for everyone in the US... does anyone know a source to buy Newegg gift cards with BTC?  As much as I hate them after their BS with cancelling my orders 3 times, they have stock in some gear I want to buy.

Second question... anyone have any experience with ordering items o Amazon that say something like "item ships in 2-5 weeks"?  Just wondering how accurate that measure is.

-Fuse

[vesperwillow]

Vesper,

I was all over the 270 bandwagon... but not sure now... I finally got a good power meter and I have a set of Sapphire Dual-X's that are runnning 1.5Mh/s at 630W including 80W for the system... that is 275W per card... they are under-volted to 1.187... and I think I could get them as low as 1.160 and keep that hash-rate.

With my 5 card test unit, I really like the power savings (almost 100w) over my other rigs, and it's providing 200-400kh more on average as well. With the Prolimatech aftermarket coolers, I bet the power savings would be another 20-60 watts. For the watt/hash, these are surprising results, but the variance is noticeable, and I'm not sure how "Stable" the system is yet. I've had it running like this for a few hours. Will know for sure when I wake up in the morning.

Of the 5 I have running right now, 2 of them at any given time are at 490-492, with 2 more varying 485-492, and one of them perpetually 480-485. Varies constantly. Power usage remains about the same, 975-985 watts, which puts it in the 175-180w range for each. When i go back downstairs to the test rack I'll glance at the meter again.

The Sapphire and Powercolor have been the most rock-solid stable on an individual basis, with the visiontek doing a great job speed-wise but with some slight variance. I'd order them again in a heartbeat though for the right price.

I think I'm just pushing the motherboard/riser combo to the limit. No cooling issues so far. I have USB risers coming this week, I'll see if that makes a difference. FWIW, all 5 are using the same gpu settings, I'll share below.

EDIT - HURRAY!!!! I finally got BAMT running!!! I have a bald patch!!!

Congrats! Hope it works well for you, let me know if I can help.

@vesperwillow, what PSU(s) are you using?

Depends on the rack and rig. I use a mix of Seasonic 850 Gold Plus and 850 Platinum, Corsair 1050HX & AX series, Thermaltake TPG-1050M. I've had no issues with these guys yet. Guess I've had good luck so far. I also have 1 Raidmax RX-1000AE which just died after 3 months of use. Lifetime warranty on it so I'll talk to them. I got it for $79 so I can't complain much.

@vesperwillow, mind listing the complete specs of your 270 rig? And maybe I can buy those parts either locally or that guy in Taiwan. Mark just replied to me that he priced his rig incorrectly, hehe. (No wonder it looked like a good deal.) In any case, I offered to just buy the GPUs at the "correct" price if he's still inclined to sell them, since they aren't being used anyway.

For the 270X test rig, it's pretty much the same as all of my others, usually the only difference is PSU. Here it is:

ASRock 970 EX4
2gb DDR ram (Kingston HyperX or Corsair XMMS, whichever is cheaper)
AMD Sempron 145
ADATA 3.0 8gb USB stick

PSU: Thermaltake TPG-1050M

1x PowerColor AXR9 270X 2gb
1x Sapphire Dual-X R9 270X 2gb
3x VisionTek R9 270X 2gb

Software: BAMT 1.2, Cgminer 3.7.2

GPU Settings:

"intensity" : "20,20,20,20,20",
"worksize" : "256",
"kernel" : "scrypt",
"thread-concurrency" : "24000,24000,24000,24000,24000",
"api-port" : "4028",
"expiry" : "120",
"gpu-engine" : "1145",
"gpu-memclock" : "1500",
"gpu-powertune" : "20,20,20,20,20,20",
"temp-overheat":"87",
"temp-target":"60",
"log" : "5",
"no-pool-disable" : true,
"queue" : "1",
"scan-time" : "60",
"scrypt" : true,
"shares" : "0",
"kernel-path" : "/usr/local/bin"

You could ignore the redundant intensity/powertune/tc settings, I just left that from when I was doing individual tuning.

Oh, I almost forgot to mention, welcome home, 24Kilo.  Good seeing you on the top 15 list, beating Vesper too lol.

Yes indeed! I saw the challenge he put out, I love it. Oh wait, what's this.. I'm ahead? Not for long I bet lol..

Question for everyone in the US... does anyone know a source to buy Newegg gift cards with BTC?  As much as I hate them after their BS with cancelling my orders 3 times, they have stock in some gear I want to buy.

Second question... anyone have any experience with ordering items o Amazon that say something like "item ships in 2-5 weeks"?  Just wondering how accurate that measure is.
-Fuse

No and No. There's stuff I'd love to buy from Newegg right now.. wish I knew a way to go BTC-> Newegg as well. LMK..

As to Amazon's, I talked to a lady the other day from amazon, she said when it shows that it means it's an item they don't often carry high stock on, so when you place your order, they will then order the item from the distributor. My gut feeling was to not even try since the distributor was probably bone dry. I could be wrong, but I just didn't want to tie money up.

As it is I have money tied up with a TOXIC order which is likely never to be fulfilled. At this point I just want to sell the card for a profit to buy more 270x's, but I'll probably just end up cancelling the order if it doesn't ship this week.

The good news is I think a fresh shipment of some cards may be on its way as the factory seemed to have gotten some more 270's in stock..

[vesperwillow]

Anyone have some good hash rates to share from R9 270 cards?

[johndec2]

Anyone have some good hash rates to share from R9 270 cards?

Funny you should mention that as I was just about to post about my experiences with the vanilla 270..  OK, I took one for the team today and bought a vanilla Sapphire Dual-x 270 which was $40 cheaper than the top shelf Sapphire 270x Vapor that I bought a week or so ago.

Now I can't get my 270X to run at 492kh/s reliably like vesper can, it craps out after a while at 1500 memory speed but I have got it running happily at 1130/1475 producing 487kh/s.  OK. Plugged the vanilla 270 in today and afterburner gave me default settings of 945/1400 which produced 405kh/s, so far so good.  Slowing pumped it up to the maximum that afterburner would allow which is 1050/1500 and got 454kh/s.

I'm sure that it will go a bit harder but even after downloading the latest afterburner beta, it would not let me go any further.  If you look here: http://www.hardware-360.com/sapphire-radeon-r9-270-dual-x-2gb-review/5/ someone has got past the limitation and I'd really like to know how.  

Any ideas?

EDIT1:  Found "extend official overclock limit" checkbox in afterburner settings.  I'll report back how I go.  
EDIT2: Going for broke! Cranked it up to 1145/1500. 10 minutes in, holding at 489kh/s.  I'll be surprised if it can hold that as it only has 1 x 6 pin power plug. Stay tuned for updates!
EDIT3: Just checked the computer so I could post a 1 hour update (was still cranking after 45 minutes).  Damm thing had rebooted.  Doubt it is due to the 270 card as it did it randomly earlier before I even installed the 270.  I think the 7950 in the same rig is playing up.  Pulling the 7950 and leaving just the 270 on that miner.
EDIT4: OK. Yanked the 7950 and rebooted with the 270 powering the display.  Crapped out within 1 minute so 1145/1500 must have been REAL close to the edge..  Reset to 1130/1500 and is chugging along at 469kh/s.  I'm guessing that if you throw a few of these at a miner they SHOULD be good for ~ 480+ less 10 for the one powering your display.
EDIT5: 2 hours later.  Card is still chugging along happily at 469 whilst powering the display.  Temp 66C, fan speed 50% on a hot summers night in OZ. Conclusion: Good for 470kh/s minimum and a bit more if it's not powering a display. Personally, I'll be buying the 270 over the 270x.  
EDIT6: Next morning and it's still cranking so 1130/1500 appears to be a stable minimum.

[24Kilo]

John,

Thanks for the information. I still have yet to spec my last miner... and I am not sure what it will be... 2x280X, 3x270X, or 3x270... I currently have a set of Sapphire Dual-X 280X's running 760Kh/s each at 1.187V... pulling 640W at the wall with 80W system load... so 580W for the cards... that is roughly 2.375Kh/s per watt... which is right on par with the 2.73Kh/s that vesper is getting with his 270X's.

Sapphire Dual-X are the most trouble free cards I have run... they just hash... hard with no fuss or muss... I use Sapphire TriXX to regulate voltage... start cgminer... get it up to speed... exit TriXX... and gain another 20Kh/s per card... once TriXX fixes the voltage... the cards will hold that voltage even after you exit TriXX.

If I can get the system load reduced further by turning stuff off in the BIOS... that will make them even more efficient.

The ASUS cards are going to equal or beat the Sapphires... just have yet to tweak them.

So decisions... decisions...

[johndec2]

Deleted.  See my previous post for updates.

[Dabs]

Interesting. I'll go make a comparative study on them. So a 5 slot motherboard is also cheaper than the 6 one from ASRock.

What brand do you recommend for the 270? The guy in Taiwan has them all priced within 5 USD of each other.

[24Kilo]

Alert - TAG.cryptopool.IT - Alert

Use this pool at your own risk... the last found block was 27540... the pool is reporting this block as needing 153 confirms... I have not been able to reach admin, LeftToeCut, for several days... this will be my last dealings with this pool... I no longer support or mine at this pool... I would recommend all miners at this pool to contact admin through Tagyak, his user ID is Ingvar, to try and motivate the admin to respond.

The admin was due to be home from hospital by the 10th of January... I have not had any response from the admin since the 9th.

I believe the admin is an honest person and will honor his obligations... I could be wrong and if so it has cost me dearly... please do you own due diligence.

[vesperwillow]

Interesting. I'll go make a comparative study on them. So a 5 slot motherboard is also cheaper than the 6 one from ASRock.

What brand do you recommend for the 270? The guy in Taiwan has them all priced within 5 USD of each other.

I don't have one I would absolutely say blows the others away. PowerColor AXR9 and Sapphire both are doing a bangup job, and it looks like the VisionTek's are as well.  The cooling design of the Sapphire and PowerColor appears superior to the Visiontek's (the copper piping), but all of them are doing fine right now. Picture:



0 - Sapphire Dual-X
1,3,4 - Visiontek
2 - PowerColor

Physically the layout is: 2,0,4,3,1

I would buy them all again. I had a chance to get some more today for MSRP but couldn't convert the BTC->AMZ in time.

[vesperwillow]

Update, #4 finally took a dump and got marked dead, after about 50 hours of hashing. Give or take, I can't remember exactly. Restarted it and so far so good. No HW errors when it died, just died.

It's back to hashing happy. It seems to remain lower than the others for output. Might lower its overclock if it happens again.

[ny2cafuse]

3 times now, I've put cards in my cart on amazon, and by the time I check the cart total, they're out of stock.  Damn it, people... let me buy all the GPUs!

I know, I know... one-click-buy.  I'm an old fashioned kind of guy.  I like tallying up big orders, and ordering everything all together.  I've still got about 40 empty amazon boxes in the living room waiting to be broken down for recycling from Xmas.  If I can reduce the number of boxes that come in, the wife will be happy lol.

-Fuse

[johndec2]

Fuse.  Have you considered the non "x" version of the 270.  See my post earlier on this page.  It should be easier to get than it's "x" rated brother.    I've had one running for 24 hours happily at 469-473 kh/s (expect for an hour or so when the bride unplugged it to using the power point to vacuum the room - I kid you not... Came home and wondered why the miner was down... Sheesh!

As I said in the earlier post, I think they are good for ~ 480kh/s if not also powering a display. In fact, I'll yank the 270x out of the other miner and put them together and report back with a back to back test.