Does Bitcoin Mining Cripple your gpus abilites in the long run?

[Anonymous]

I have been mining for a month straight and have seen a gradual decline in the GPU's performance. I have let the computer sit for about one week and then restarted mining again, with the same 20ish% (180 down to 160, don't want to do math right now) decrease in the original MHps. Could someone shed some light on what is going on...

I am using cminer on a linux box with an ATI radeion 6700 series getting 160 mhps (normal 180mhps).

Thanks,
macintosh264

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[deslok]

if your card is run too hot or with too high of a voltage yes it can degrade over time as current leakage increases

[Anonymous]

if your card is run too hot or with too high of a voltage yes it can degrade over time as current leakage increases

But is one month a long time, or not. And my computer stays very, very, cool all of the time, so heat is not a problem.

[deslok]

i've seen no degredation in several cards over months in fact i've pushed some of them further than i had them at orignally, how long does the drop take to kick in, what are your temperatures exactly other than "cool" and are you using the machine in day to day use possibly leaving things open that could use gpu cycles?

[Anonymous]

i've seen no degredation in several cards over months in fact i've pushed some of them further than i had them at orignally, how long does the drop take to kick in, what are your temperatures exactly other than "cool" and are you using the machine in day to day use possibly leaving things open that could use gpu cycles?

I have no tools to take the temperature of my computer at the time being, but in response to the second question, this computer is used as an appache/gitolite/vpn/squid/ftp/afp/ntfs/ssh/memcached/php server, and is also semi high traffic. It also runs a small php script 24/7 to run bitcoin debit and another small 24/7 php script used as a mailing quene. I use it for personal use from time to time, like right now. I think that would have a small to nothing effect on the gpu.

Thanks,
macintosh264

[BkkCoins]

If you have other stuff running on the machine then I'd look at testing the cards with no other load. You really cannot compare hash rates when other factors interfere.

While mining doesn't make heavy use of the CPU any other programs using the CPU can have an effect. An example is when a miner is using a driver with the 100% cpu bug and this causes cards not to be able to reach 99% utilization, only that is an extreme case.

Also, you have to be pretty careful with how you measure hash rate as many things can make small differences and if you go by the stats on your pool server then it continually varies just due to luck.

My cards report the same exact hash rates as when I started a month ago. But on the pool server it is normal for the hash rate to vary up and down at least 20%. This is because pool software only reports a hash rate value estimated based on shares found - which varies statistically.

[Anonymous]

If you have other stuff running on the machine then I'd look at testing the cards with no other load. You really cannot compare hash rates when other factors interfere.

While mining doesn't make heavy use of the CPU any other programs using the CPU can have an effect. An example is when a miner is using a driver with the 100% cpu bug and this causes cards not to be able to reach 99% utilization, only that is an extreme case.

Also, you have to be pretty careful with how you measure hash rate as many things can make small differences and if you go by the stats on your pool server then it continually varies just due to luck.

My cards report the same exact hash rates as when I started a month ago. But on the pool server it is normal for the hash rate to vary up and down at least 20%. This is because pool software only reports a hash rate value estimated based on shares found - which varies statistically.

Thanks for that. Just to let you know, I have that problem with the pools too. I am reporting what my miner says though, so my guess is the fact that my CPU is being used constantly to process all the requests for my various server applications.

Thanks,
macintosh264

[deslok]

bkk is right about the effects of cpu usage, if it's a multi core system assign the miner to a single core and let everything else run on the other(s) as far as temperature from the sounds of it you're running linux so telling you to use trixx would be silly but you can take a look in the linuxcoin thread and see what tools they use

[Anonymous]

bkk is right about the effects of cpu usage, if it's a multi core system assign the miner to a single core and let everything else run on the other(s) as far as temperature from the sounds of it you're running linux so telling you to use trixx would be silly but you can take a look in the linuxcoin thread and see what tools they use

Alright, thanks both of you. Also:

OH YAH! OH YAH! I DID IT! POST #100!!!!!! MACINTOSH264 ROCKS!!! I AM A FULL MEMBER FINALLY

now all I need is 3000 more and I can destroy everyone else's post count

Thanks,
macintosh264 (full member)

[deslok]

bkk is right about the effects of cpu usage, if it's a multi core system assign the miner to a single core and let everything else run on the other(s) as far as temperature from the sounds of it you're running linux so telling you to use trixx would be silly but you can take a look in the linuxcoin thread and see what tools they use

Alright, thanks both of you. Also:

OH YAH! OH YAH! I DID IT! POST #100!!!!!! MACINTOSH264 ROCKS!!! I AM A FULL MEMBER FINALLY

now all I need is 3000 more and I can destroy everyone else's post count

Thanks,
macintosh264 (full member)

Congradulations, just don't make that 3000 wortlhess posts make at least half of them useful for something, and linux coin can be found here if you're having trouble finding it
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=7374.0

[Anonymous]

bkk is right about the effects of cpu usage, if it's a multi core system assign the miner to a single core and let everything else run on the other(s) as far as temperature from the sounds of it you're running linux so telling you to use trixx would be silly but you can take a look in the linuxcoin thread and see what tools they use

Alright, thanks both of you. Also:

OH YAH! OH YAH! I DID IT! POST #100!!!!!! MACINTOSH264 ROCKS!!! I AM A FULL MEMBER FINALLY

now all I need is 3000 more and I can destroy everyone else's post count

Thanks,
macintosh264 (full member)

Congradulations, just don't make that 3000 wortlhess posts make at least half of them useful for something, and linux coin can be found here if you're having trouble finding it
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=7374.0

Thanks, but isn't linuxcoin an operating system. I have to keep my debain operating system up, because it hosts bitcoin debit.

[deslok]

it is, but the the tools and utilites they use for it would work in (someone may correct me on this) most linux distributions if they reccomend x for monitoring gpu temperature and fan speed it's worth trying utility x

[Anonymous]

it is, but the the tools and utilites they use for it would work in (someone may correct me on this) most linux distributions if they reccomend x for monitoring gpu temperature and fan speed it's worth trying utility x

Alrighty, thanks! Will check out.

Thanks,
macintosh264

[BkkCoins]

I run on Ubuntu and use the atitweak utility created by mjmvisser posting on this forum. It works very well and is better for remote ssh use than the normal aticonfig tool. I created a few aliases that allow me to quickly tap into my mining from ssh. In case it's useful here is my aliases (which I added to my .bashrc file so they're available).

Code:

alias ms='atitweak -s'
alias ml='atitweak -l'
alias m0='sudo screen -r gpu0'
alias m1='sudo screen -r gpu1'
alias mw='watch -n 5 atitweak -s'
alias mf='sudo atitweak -f '

function mk { 
  kill `ps a|grep phoenix.*_$1|grep -v timeout|grep -v grep|awk '{print $1}'`;
  echo `date`"Manual kill miner$1" >> /var/log/minewatch.log;
  }

ms - gets current miner stats
ml - lists how cards are configured right now
m0 - show me output from miner 0 screen session
m1 - same for miner 1
mw - just keep showing me miner stats every 5 secs (ctrl-c to cancel)
mf - set the fan speed manually, eg. mf 55 (sets both cards to 55%)
mk - kill miner eg. mk 0 (kills miner 0 process)

I run the miners under the timeout utility to force a reboot every 4 hours. I also have a minewatch script that watches for idle time and restarts phoenix and monitors temp and adjusts fan speed. It uses atitweak to grab temps and set fan speed.