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

[vesperwillow]

Still didn't have a chance to do anything yesterday, didn't get home till almost midnight, stayed up till 0030 putting together the framework for one of the new rigs.

I did let one of the MSI 270's do a gentle burn-in test overnight, running it at 483kh with no issues whatsoever.

I officially proclaim this to be my #1 choice of 270's so far, above the 270X even, mainly because of the TwinFrozr cooling, and the stability of the card. While overclocked all night, you can barely even hear the fans running. So from the standpoint of a stock card which is quiet with the fans at 100%, this is a keeper.

I'll actually have time today to do tuning and power tests, but here's what I have mine running at (so if you have a 270, try these settings):

TC: Unknown (whatever BAMT default is, I forgot to change it this time)
Intensity & Power: 20
Engine: 1120
Memory: 1500
This results in 483kh on BAMT 1.3 with sgminer. This is my first time testing BAMT 1.3 and sgminer. I dunno how much I like it, mainly because the splash screen is dogecoin, and I don't really trust anything with dogecoin on it ... lol

Full review to follow tonight when I bring all of the hashpower online.

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[ny2cafuse]

So TigerDirect now accepts Bitcoin, and they've "partnered with AMD" to deliver "equipment for mining".  Anyone want to speculate on how long it takes before TigerDirect has the exclusive release on AMD mining specific graphics cards?

I love how this is announced though and Bitcoin tanks.  Maybe TigerDirect bought a shit-ton of bitcoin, dumped to drive the price down, just so they can earn more bitcoin on the sale and wait for the price to go back up.  It's what I would do.

-Fuse

[vesperwillow]

So TigerDirect now accepts Bitcoin, and they've "partnered with AMD" to deliver "equipment for mining".  Anyone want to speculate on how long it takes before TigerDirect has the exclusive release on AMD mining specific graphics cards?

I love how this is announced though and Bitcoin tanks.  Maybe TigerDirect bought a shit-ton of bitcoin, dumped to drive the price down, just so they can earn more bitcoin on the sale and wait for the price to go back up.  It's what I would do.

-Fuse

Haha, I was waiting for that announcement for awhile! I've told several people on here, and through various threads, that I had certain knowledge AMD was working on partnerships for an entire Bitcoin/Altcoin-specific line. Distributors as well as hardware.

People were like "lawlz you so stupid whatever". I said.. you  just wait. They have the resources to be #1 in the world for this stuff. People said "bah, they wont be interested".

Well, now the trickle of water begins to descend down the front of the dam!

I don't have knowledge of timelines, but I can say you will see scrypt-specific asic products coming from AMD at some point, as well as "scrypt-tuned" GPU cards. The R9 lineup always seemed to be hinting to me at this, especially with how certain settings unlocked far more scrypt potential in the cards than they would with GPU-based purposes. I think i've mentioned that in a few spots here and there.

Side note, it's good to see age-old tigerdirect getting involved. They're on the break of death, they need revitalization. I made my first online purchase with them back in like 2000, for netgear 24 port switches.

This is one of many reasons 2014 will be another coin-value leap for our world..

[vesperwillow]

TAG-related, I'm looking forward to the first week of Feb, hoping the value increases. $1,027 electric bill to be paid, and TAG is what's going to do it. Lol.

[Dabs]

Fuse, could you watch my stats for awhile. I'm testing something. (I got a Dual Miner, and I think it's the real thing.) I'm going to sleep and let this thing run.

[ny2cafuse]

Fuse, could you watch my stats for awhile. I'm testing something. (I got a Dual Miner, and I think it's the real thing.) I'm going to sleep and let this thing run.

Which stats mate?  Just hash rate and share rate?

[24Kilo]

Update...

03:00 here in Sydney...

I put two more miners online today...

Corsair RM850 PSU
ASRock 970 Extreme 4 MB
AMD Sempron 145 CPU
Patroit DDR3 1333 2GB RAM
WD 320GB Mobile HDD

one miner has 3X270 and one miner has 3X270X - all ASUS cards.

I am still making no progress with BAMT... somehow it just elludes me... so I installed Windows 7 and cgminer 3.7.2... and the best I can get 340Kh/s to 350Kh/s out of any of my cards... tried every trick in the book... I would call out Vesper on his claims... but I know he simply so far ahead of me that I will never catch up... pretty bummed out... could have put 3 - 2x280X rigs online for the price of these 270 rigs.

On a brighter note... my rig running a pair of ASUS 280x is running stable at 800KH/s plus pulling 700W from the wall... with a bigger PSU... I think I could hit 850Kh/s.

I have no idea what I am doing wrong... but not one single one of my cards will run even close to TC24000... most will not even run 11000... tried 1 thread... various lookup gaps... no setting except specifying the TC... no go.

Bought a handful of new 8GB 3.0USB sticks... so have another go at BAMT... just to tired and cranky to sleep or keep hammering away at this.

I am about ready to pay for a ticket to fly Vesper over.

[ny2cafuse]

Update...

03:00 here is Sydney...

I put two more miners online today...

Corsair RM850 PSU
ASRock 970 Extreme 4 MB
AMD Sempron 145 CPU
Patroit DDR3 1333 2GB RAM
WD 320GB Mobile HDD

one miner has 3X270 and one miner has 3X270X - all ASUS cards.

I am still making no progress with BAMT... somehow it just elludes me... so I installed Windows 7 and cgminer 3.7.2... and the best I can get 340Kh/s to 350Kh/s out of any of my cards... tried every trick in the book... I would call out Vesper on his claims... but I know he simply so far ahead of me that I will never catch up... pretty bummed out... could have put 3 - 2x280X rigs online for the price of these 270 rigs.

On a brighter note... my rig running a pair of ASUS 280x is running stable at 800KH/s plus pulling 700W from the wall... with a bigger PSU... I think I could hit 850Kh/s.

I have no idea what I am doing wrong... but not one single one of my cards will run even close to TC24000... most will not even run 11000... tried 1 thread... various lookup gaps... no setting except specifying the TC... no go.

Bought a handful of new 8GB 3.0USB sticks... so have another go at BAMT... just to tired and cranky to sleep or keep hammering away at this.

I am about ready to pay for a ticket to fly Vesper over.

24Kilo,  Don't fret, mate.  It took me forever to find the sweet spot on my 270Xs.  Go back a few pages and you'll see.  They were finicky as all hell.  I was sub-400 for like an hour of tweaking, then all of a sudden I changed something and they hit 450kh.  Worst case scenario, I'll buy them from you at 50% of MSRP 

[24Kilo]

24Kilo,  Don't fret, mate.  It took me forever to find the sweet spot on my 270Xs.  Go back a few pages and you'll see.  They were finicky as all hell.  I was sub-400 for like an hour of tweaking, then all of a sudden I changed something and they hit 450kh.  Worst case scenario, I'll buy them from you at 50% of MSRP 

Can't seem to find that page... right now if you were local... I would give them to you!!!

[ny2cafuse]

24Kilo,  Don't fret, mate.  It took me forever to find the sweet spot on my 270Xs.  Go back a few pages and you'll see.  They were finicky as all hell.  I was sub-400 for like an hour of tweaking, then all of a sudden I changed something and they hit 450kh.  Worst case scenario, I'll buy them from you at 50% of MSRP  

Can't seem to find that page... right now if you were local... I would give them to you!!!

Booking a ticket now.  See you in 24 hours lol.

I think the trick for me was dropping the "-g" switch in the batch file.  Let me find that page...

Found it - https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=324938.msg4399407#msg4399407

So I still run with the "-g" switch, but I think I've bumped the GPU-Engine down a little for the Sapphire cards I run in my main rig now.  I keep all the pool and fan settings in the config file.  Just my preference, but I try to run with the minimal amount of settings and config options.  Less for me to mess up.

-Fuse

[vesperwillow]

I am still making no progress with BAMT... somehow it just elludes me... so I installed Windows 7 and cgminer 3.7.2... and the best I can get 340Kh/s to 350Kh/s out of any of my cards... tried every trick in the book... I would call out Vesper on his claims... but I know he simply so far ahead of me that I will never catch up... pretty bummed out... could have put 3 - 2x280X rigs online for the price of these 270 rigs.

Don't fret, I will find a way to get your hash up. For what it's worth, I can only get the toxic 280x series to hit 800kh, my other 280x's waver between 700-740. What precisely is failing in bamt? Does it not see GPUs? Does it not load? Etc. Which BAMT are you using?

I have no idea what I am doing wrong... but not one single one of my cards will run even close to TC24000... most will not even run 11000... tried 1 thread... various lookup gaps... no setting except specifying the TC... no go.

Optimum threadconcurrency is tricky. Here's what I would do to start (since you need a foundation), have cgminer go with stock clocks (engine/memory set to 0), set your intensity/power to 10. Now play with TC until you find something which is stable and increases hashrate (sometimes significantly, sometimes just a little bit). Track of what kh you find with TC. There's a few ways I find optimum TC:

Slow / tedious / reliable - This is what I do when all else fails

For super tricky cards or ones with failing hardware (basically this works from a safe/slow point, on up):
* Start at 4096 and go UP in multiples of 96
* Start at 4192 and go UP in multiples of 128

For everything else, the multiplication method (this works from an aggressive point, on down):
* Find the bus width of the card (I believe it's 256 for 270 series), multiply it by 64. 256 * 64 = 16384
* Bus width times 96, 256 * 96 = 24576

This method will give you an upper limit of what is likely the optimum. Now start from either of those points and go DOWN by multiples of 96. The way AMD drivers and hardware react in Windows vs Linux is different, which is part of the issue.

Fast TC attempts - this is what I usually do to start
Popular TC settings (try these right away):

24576
24000
16374
16000
8192
4192
4096

See what the kh is for these after the card settles for a couple minutes, and keep track of the kh. Now once you determine base kh, for each of these TC, try these settings while cgminer is running:

Engine: 1120, 1130, 1145
Memory: 1500

See which if these work best.

I am about ready to pay for a ticket to fly Vesper over.

I have 4 weeks of vacation time sitting and doing nothing.. lol!

My other thought is this: Your ASUS cards likely need a force-bios-flash, as I documented on one of my other posts. If you haven't already done so, go to their website and punch up the 270 series and find the .exe file which is their new bios.. i think it's dated 12/10/2013 or something close to that. Do one card at a time, basically you just run the exe and it does the work in 10 seconds. When I did that, I opened up 100kh more hash power on my ASUS cards.

Also I can't emphasize this enough, during this testing, have an extra fan blowing at the cards, to help cool them, this will help stabalize things especially during the summer heat down there--while you're tuning. An extra sidenote, when you make a change, let it sit about 2 minutes before determining the hashrate. I've seen some cards take 1min or more to start going up in hash, sometimes they even go down before bottoming out and going up.

[Dabs]

Fuse, could you watch my stats for awhile. I'm testing something. (I got a Dual Miner, and I think it's the real thing.) I'm going to sleep and let this thing run.

Which stats mate?  Just hash rate and share rate?

I've got something that does 70 kh/s for only 1.5 watts.

Here is my review:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=409756.msg4709897#msg4709897

I'm thinking of doing a Group Buy. These will sell like Block Erupters and Furies did. Pricing makes it so that ROI is tricky, but at least power consumption is definitely a lot lower.

I can now imagine the other manufacturers... fibonacci, alpha-t, flower... We got 6 to 8 months before the ASICs hit. The one I have running now is real.

[vesperwillow]

That's a pretty slick device, I'd love to replace my 50 BE's with 50 of these lol.

[ny2cafuse]

Wow... thanks for the share, Dabs.  This is really interesting.  ROI would be a bit tricky on these though.  That would be the only thing holding me back.

So will it actually dual mine BTC and scrypt, or just one at a time?  If it was both, that would seal the deal for me.  I really like the GridSeed units, but like hell I'm going to drop 5 BTC on a unit right now.  I really do believe that this will be the year of the $5k-$10k Bitcoin.

-Fuse

[vesperwillow]

Wow... thanks for the share, Dabs.  This is really interesting.  ROI would be a bit tricky on these though.  That would be the only thing holding me back.

So will it actually dual mine BTC and scrypt, or just one at a time?  If it was both, that would seal the deal for me.  I really like the GridSeed units, but like hell I'm going to drop 5 BTC on a unit right now.  I really do believe that this will be the year of the $5k-$10k Bitcoin.

-Fuse

Another guy in the thread confirmed dual mining at the spec'd rate. Wish I could get some of these lol.

[Dabs]

According to another reviewer, it can dual mine at the same time. But it only does 500 mh/s BTC and 40 kh/s scrypt if you do that, and increases power consumption to 2.5 watts. If you make it mine just scrypt, like I'm doing now, it does 70 kh/s.

The Furies (red, blue and nano) do 2 gh/s, and even the Antminers do 1.6 gh/s. You'd buy this just to do scrypt.

Lowest price is for 300+ units at $79 USD.

So, if vesper gets 50 units, that would be 3500 kh/s at 75 watts, but it will cost you at least 3969 USD, probably more if we include shipping. Then you need a 50 port USB hub if you don't have one already, or a bunch of 10s. I'm getting a 18 port USB powered hub from this guy in Hong Kong (who I sold 40 Blue Furies to. hehe.)

I just need 250 more units from a bunch of other people.

[vesperwillow]

According to another reviewer, it can dual mine at the same time. But it only does 500 mh/s BTC and 40 kh/s scrypt if you do that, and increases power consumption to 2.5 watts. If you make it mine just scrypt, like I'm doing now, it does 70 kh/s.

The Furies (red, blue and nano) do 2 gh/s, and even the Antminers do 1.6 gh/s. You'd buy this just to do scrypt.

Lowest price is for 300+ units at $79 USD.

So, if vesper gets 50 units, that would be 3500 kh/s at 75 watts, but it will cost you at least 3969 USD, probably more if we include shipping. Then you need a 50 port USB hub if you don't have one already, or a bunch of 10s. I'm getting a 18 port USB powered hub from this guy in Hong Kong (who I sold 40 Blue Furies to. hehe.)

I just need 250 more units from a bunch of other people.

I have 50 USB ports being used by BE's right now, but if you think about it, that price isn't bad for what you're getting. You spend like 1.5-2k to get that much hash power now, but look at the power savings!! More than tenfold.

It's also in line with what other scrypt-asic companies are offering. For my usage/desires, I'd need many, many of these things. Many.. I'd want to basically use the same amount of power now (4800-7200watts) but increase my hash, which is what these would do.

With 4800 watts available, figuring 1.6w per device, that's 3,000 units. Can't do that without factoring computer power.. so let's see... 100w per computer, 10 computers, that's 1kw, which leaves 3.8kw, enough for 2,375 devices (10 computers). 2,375 of these devices running on 10 computers pulling 4800 watts is 166,250kh.



Of course I can't afford that many ($190k, not counting shipping/import fees).

But the power savings is awesome on these things..

[ny2cafuse]

Man... just venting, but that Rick James seller guy is a tool.  On two occasions today, I've caught him bashing on new sellers, only to stomp them down, or further his own sales.  I don't get into flame wars on threads, I don't think the trolling is worth it, but man I want this guy to go away.  What a complete lack of community relation skills and integrity.

I will never recommend his sales threads to anyone... ever.

/vent over

-Fuse

[vesperwillow]

MSI 270 (non-X) Brief Review

Test system (75w):
HW: ASRock 970 Ex4, Sempron 145, 2gb HyperX
OS: BAMT 1.3 w/sgminer 4.0.0 on 8gb USB
PSU: Seasonic Gold 1050w
Risers: USB
Ambient Room Temp: 30*C

GPU Tests, TC @ 24000, Power/Intensity @ 20:

Eng   / Mem / KH      / Watts / GPU Temp (stock cooler)
  955 / 1400 / 414kh / 140w / 73*C
  955 / 1500 / 418kh / 141w / 73*C
1050 / 1500 / 455kh / 154w / 74*C
1120 / 1500 / 475kh / 161w / 75*C
1145 / 1500 / 493kh / 167w / 76*C

(purple = stock engine clock, ie, "0")
(green = overclock setting)

Summary / Highlights

This is definitely a neat card. If you can get this for $220 or less, I say grab it. Up until now the ASUS 270 has had my nod due to how quiet it was--much quieter than other 270 cards, but not silent. MSI's TwinFrozr 4 cooler is astounding, it's what I would say all high-end GPUs should have. It's nearly silent, quieter than the ASUS, in fact nearly on par with the Prolimatech's sound output. For cooling, it does really well, keeping the card in the mid 70's while being overclocked in a warm room. The cooler also covers half of the memory chips, and halfway covers the remaining half.

What's most surprising isn't just the hashrate (1kh higher than any other 270), but it's the power usage! All other 270 & 270X's I've checked so far have used 175-180 when pushed to their limit. This card is drawing 167w max! This shows high efficiency, but also that there's likely room to pass into the 500's. With an 8w savings, times 5 cards, you're saving 40 watts.

Silent, super-efficient, and great looking: This is a must have.

I'll post pics of the rig when I get a chance.

[24Kilo]

I feel like total idiot... I have an identical set-up sitting on my bench in front of me except ASUS 270's instead of MSI 270's... and I cannot even get my cards to start...  

EDIT - BAMT recognises all my cards - 3 x ASUS 270

RE-EDIT - Did you flash the BIOS of your 270 ASUS... it would not let me update... the 270X's were as easy as you said.