Primecoin GPU miner: 9.1 CPD on a 280x / pool / 2% dev.fee

[ivanlabrie]

Excellent!

I'd like to report a bug...or maybe it was my system stability.
I noticed the time values went down radically (something like 60 and 120 on each 280x) and my usage went down till it reached 0%.

Happened after 6 hours mining at higher than normal clocks, maybe it had something to do with that.

Also, still 0 blocks and 1 orphan only...

[primeGPU]

Happened after 6 hours mining at higher than normal clocks, maybe it had something to do with that.

Most probably.

[SpeedDemon13]

We started to accept reservations for the miner:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=554697.new#new

Sale starts in 1-2 days.

65 XPM, kind of a little steep, thought the target price was going to be between 20 to 50 XPM? As long as the miner is optimized and stable, and can be used for pools.

[ivanlabrie]

We started to accept reservations for the miner:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=554697.new#new

Sale starts in 1-2 days.

65 XPM, kind of a little steep, thought the target price was going to be between 20 to 50 XPM? As long as the miner is optimized and stable, and can be used for pools.

I think it's solo only for now...with the speed it gets you can solo mine perfectly fine on a single 2-4 gpu rig.
It also draws waaaaaay less power than other algorithms.
Downside is you need a half decent cpu for best results. (unless you're super lucky xD)

[djm34]

I don't know anything about xpm  and I don't think to have seen the answer on this thread.
Therefore I will ask a very stupid question: how long does it take to get 65xpm with a gpu ?

[primeGPU]

I don't know anything about xpm  and I don't think to have seen the answer on this thread.
Therefore I will ask a very stupid question: how long does it take to get 65xpm with a gpu ?

With the current difficulty - 10 days.

[trogdorjw73]

So here are my results from a 3 x 7950 rig running the software for about a day so far:

Primecoin GPU miner ver. 1.01
-----------------------------
Pass: 20593
GPU #0   time: 477
GPU #1   time: 491
GPU #2   time: 490

10-ch   found: 0         expected: 2.043
blocks  found: 0         expected: 1.167

I'm not sure what the average "time" is, but it bounces from <100 to >600 and probably gets 480 or so on average. Basically, pretty slow compared to the 280X/7970. I'm running with a G1610 CPU, though, so that might be a problem (GPU load is about 80% on all three GPUs). Bad luck, or is the miner simply so optimized for 280X/7970 that it doesn't work well with other GPUs?

Update: added -cpusage 2 to the client and that improved times from 480 to around 395 on average. Still not anywhere near the speed of 280X.

[primeGPU]

Bad luck, or is the miner simply so optimized for 280X/7970 that it doesn't work well with other GPUs?

Well, I've expected worse results for 7950. These ones ('time', not 'blocks found') are quite decent.
And if it shows the stats, it mines.

[ivanlabrie]

Bad luck, or is the miner simply so optimized for 280X/7970 that it doesn't work well with other GPUs?

Well, I've expected worse results for 7950. These ones ('time', not 'blocks found') are quite decent.
And if it shows the stats, it mines.

My 280x cards at 1100mhz core are twice as fast...using an i7 3820 at 4.3ghz though.

[merc84]

Why selling it already i don't see much hard proof of the performance on the forum, just some lucky and some very unlucky testers, and the whole buy all the license in 2 weeks or we feed them to the whales doesn't give much confidence that u really care for the coin you just want the money within 2 weeks either way u don't care who pays. I highly doubt  many of these ppl with such farms are genuine enthusiast they only see the chance for much better profit than what is to be made elsewhere currently with their massive farms, you can be sure miners like this will dump as fast as possible while its still profitable then move on to the next best thing as soon as it isn't. If you are serious about being fair about this you need to make more effort to assure smaller miners that they will get the advertised speed's and come up with a better plan than feeding the remaining licenses to those who already have deep pockets. Perhaps u can release in batches of maximum 8 license per forum user and not letting all the mining power become concentrated to a few mine/dump farms.

[primeGPU]

Why selling it already i don't see much hard proof of the performance on the forum, just some lucky and some very unlucky testers,

We will surely get more hard proof of the performance from the first customers.

and the whole buy all the license in 2 weeks or we feed them to the whales doesn't give much confidence that u really care for the coin you just want the money within 2 weeks either way u don't care u pays.

Currently it's botnet-infested coin. We do want to cater to small miners (hense the whole 8 licenses per forum member thing).
But if there is not enough of them, farms are much much better than botnets.

[merc84]

Why selling it already i don't see much hard proof of the performance on the forum, just some lucky and some very unlucky testers,

We will surely get more hard proof of the performance from the first customers.

You already have a dozen testers why can't you publish some results? Wasn't that the point in the free testing?

and the whole buy all the license in 2 weeks or we feed them to the whales doesn't give much confidence that u really care for the coin you just want the money within 2 weeks either way u don't care u pays.

Currently it's botnet-infested coin. We do want to cater to small miners (hense the whole 8 licenses per forum member thing).
But if there is not enough of them, farms are much much better than botnets.

To call it botnet infested is a massive overstatement ypool mints the majority of xpm blocks and most of those come from legit miners not botnets.

[trogdorjw73]

Why selling it already i don't see much hard proof of the performance on the forum, just some lucky and some very unlucky testers, and the whole buy all the license in 2 weeks or we feed them to the whales doesn't give much confidence that u really care for the coin you just want the money within 2 weeks either way u don't care who pays. I highly doubt  many of these ppl with such farms are genuine enthusiast they only see the chance for much better profit than what is to be made elsewhere currently with their massive farms, you can be sure miners like this will dump as fast as possible while its still profitable then move on to the next best thing as soon as it isn't. If you are serious about being fair about this you need to make more effort to assure smaller miners that they will get the advertised speed's and come up with a better plan than feeding the remaining licenses to those who already have deep pockets. Perhaps u can release in batches of maximum 8 license per forum user and not letting all the mining power become concentrated to a few mine/dump farms.

Define "fair", please. It's this ideal that gets bandied about, but really I don't know that anything is ever "fair". Usually people complaining about what's fair and what's not just mean, "I don't want others to get more than me, even if they're willing to do more than I am." If someone invests heavily in mining hardware, and they see it as a chance for profit, how is that different from a "crypto enthusiast"? I dare say 99% of us would not be here if there wasn't a chance to make some additional money. If that's not the case, then please come "mine" in my backyard for some "coin" -- the mining equipment looks suspiciously like rakes, hoes, and shovels and the coin looks a lot like weeds, grass, and vegetables, but just take my word for it: there's some serious "cryptography" going on!  

That said, the price of 65 XPM per GPU seems a bit much. Even if the software could deliver on the promised performance (which would mean around 19 XPM per day on a 280X), we're talking about a current price of $50 per GPU. PrimeGPU thus makes 93,600 XPM in a short period of time (well over $50,000), most likely sells them (dumps them if you prefer) while the XPM price is still high, and then all those miners that bought the software come onboard and it takes around four days of mining to recoup their XPM. In the meantime, the price of XPM goes down and difficulty goes up, and instead of $14 per day per 280X you're earning $5 per day per 280X -- and dropping. Every coin that's "CPU only" and then gets a GPU miner basically experiences the same thing, and eventually prices and difficulty reach an equilibrium where you earn about as much with any decent coin as with any other decent coin.

The trick of course is figuring out which coins are "decent" and which are just garbage/clones, and even if a coin looks good (or bad) the market sentiment can go the other way. As I don't have a bunch of 280X GPUs available and I'm not willing to pay $50 per GPU to mine XPM, I will sit this one out and watch from the sidelines.

[ivanlabrie]

Why selling it already i don't see much hard proof of the performance on the forum, just some lucky and some very unlucky testers, and the whole buy all the license in 2 weeks or we feed them to the whales doesn't give much confidence that u really care for the coin you just want the money within 2 weeks either way u don't care who pays. I highly doubt  many of these ppl with such farms are genuine enthusiast they only see the chance for much better profit than what is to be made elsewhere currently with their massive farms, you can be sure miners like this will dump as fast as possible while its still profitable then move on to the next best thing as soon as it isn't. If you are serious about being fair about this you need to make more effort to assure smaller miners that they will get the advertised speed's and come up with a better plan than feeding the remaining licenses to those who already have deep pockets. Perhaps u can release in batches of maximum 8 license per forum user and not letting all the mining power become concentrated to a few mine/dump farms.

Define "fair", please. It's this ideal that gets bandied about, but really I don't know that anything is ever "fair". Usually people complaining about what's fair and what's not just mean, "I don't want others to get more than me, even if they're willing to do more than I am." If someone invests heavily in mining hardware, and they see it as a chance for profit, how is that different from a "crypto enthusiast"? I dare say 99% of us would not be here if there wasn't a chance to make some additional money. If that's not the case, then please come "mine" in my backyard for some "coin" -- the mining equipment looks suspiciously like rakes, hoes, and shovels and the coin looks a lot like weeds, grass, and vegetables, but just take my word for it: there's some serious "cryptography" going on!  

lmao xD

Yeah, I think everyone's in it for profit...naturally.
We all have to pay bills, what's the problem with that?

As for the devs, they could have kept this to themselves and instead they decided to publish their software.
I guess they figured they might make more money that way, but even if that was the case they'll help the primecoin price once the coin is no longer a botnet fest so we all win.

[aamarket]

Hi, PrimeGPU, thanks for your answer about Nvidia, but I mentioned specifically CUDA - everybody knows, that Nvidia promotes their stuff and punishes others (OpenCL).
I take it as a given (although sad) you are not interested in technology every supercomputing centre (worth mentioning) uses.

To add some recent info : ... scrypt ... But the Maxwell architecture's improvements allow the 60 W GeForce GTX 750 Ti to outperform the 140 W GeForce GTX 660 and approach AMD's 150 W Radeon R7 265, which just launched, still isn't available yet, but is expected to sell for the same $150. On a scale of performance (in kH/s) per watt, that puts Nvidia way out ahead of AMD. Today, four GM107-based cards in a mining rig should be able to outperform a Radeon R9 290X for less money, using less power.

source :
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/geforce-gtx-750-ti-review,3750-17.html

The good thing is that I can take it as a challenge to make a better miner - using CUDA + 750ti
Anybody interested in testing ?

[merc84]

Fair
free from bias, dishonesty, or injustice.

free from bias; ie make sure those who can pay the most don't get majority access
free from dishonesty; ie clear performance data
free from injustices; ie the dev's dumping xpm paid for license to btc and forcing the price down.

I highly suggest dev's take payment in btc that way if u really want xpm u can go buy it and help the price not hinder it, that would give everyone who pays for a license a "fairer" chance to make roi.

I'm not one of these ppl who thinks someone with 10times the resources of myself shouldn't be making 10times as much as they also carry 10x the risk, what i don't want to see is the difficulty skyrocket and the price nose dive. I believe those with large farms who payout alot in license fee's will only do so for short term profits and then will simply abandon the coin at first sign of something better, ensuring a larger variety of ppl get the miner should help to mitigate such things. That is what i believe is "fair" of course its a loaded word and i should have known better than to appeal to ideals and instead appeal to the greed. If u want ROI from your 65xpm per gpu then it would be in your interest for this to be as "fair" as possible.

[primeGPU]

merc84, ok, you made you points, we got them, anything else?

[smoothie]

Why selling it already i don't see much hard proof of the performance on the forum, just some lucky and some very unlucky testers, and the whole buy all the license in 2 weeks or we feed them to the whales doesn't give much confidence that u really care for the coin you just want the money within 2 weeks either way u don't care who pays. I highly doubt  many of these ppl with such farms are genuine enthusiast they only see the chance for much better profit than what is to be made elsewhere currently with their massive farms, you can be sure miners like this will dump as fast as possible while its still profitable then move on to the next best thing as soon as it isn't. If you are serious about being fair about this you need to make more effort to assure smaller miners that they will get the advertised speed's and come up with a better plan than feeding the remaining licenses to those who already have deep pockets. Perhaps u can release in batches of maximum 8 license per forum user and not letting all the mining power become concentrated to a few mine/dump farms.

Define "fair", please. It's this ideal that gets bandied about, but really I don't know that anything is ever "fair". Usually people complaining about what's fair and what's not just mean, "I don't want others to get more than me, even if they're willing to do more than I am." If someone invests heavily in mining hardware, and they see it as a chance for profit, how is that different from a "crypto enthusiast"? I dare say 99% of us would not be here if there wasn't a chance to make some additional money. If that's not the case, then please come "mine" in my backyard for some "coin" -- the mining equipment looks suspiciously like rakes, hoes, and shovels and the coin looks a lot like weeds, grass, and vegetables, but just take my word for it: there's some serious "cryptography" going on!  

That said, the price of 65 XPM per GPU seems a bit much. Even if the software could deliver on the promised performance (which would mean around 19 XPM per day on a 280X), we're talking about a current price of $50 per GPU. PrimeGPU thus makes 93,600 XPM in a short period of time (well over $50,000), most likely sells them (dumps them if you prefer) while the XPM price is still high, and then all those miners that bought the software come onboard and it takes around four days of mining to recoup their XPM. In the meantime, the price of XPM goes down and difficulty goes up, and instead of $14 per day per 280X you're earning $5 per day per 280X -- and dropping. Every coin that's "CPU only" and then gets a GPU miner basically experiences the same thing, and eventually prices and difficulty reach an equilibrium where you earn about as much with any decent coin as with any other decent coin.

The trick of course is figuring out which coins are "decent" and which are just garbage/clones, and even if a coin looks good (or bad) the market sentiment can go the other way. As I don't have a bunch of 280X GPUs available and I'm not willing to pay $50 per GPU to mine XPM, I will sit this one out and watch from the sidelines.

So at what point did LTC experience this and not recover from it? I was there when Litecoin launched and was only mined by CPUs and then I was also there when GPUs came on board. So far so good...no problems there.

Your view is too short-term.

[primeGPU]

Even if the software could deliver on the promised performance (which would mean around 19 XPM per day on a 280X)

Huh? Where did you get those numbers from?

[ivanlabrie]

Good sir, I have the shittiest luck lol...

Got 4 10 ch so far, 1 orphan and that's it.

Maybe my internet connection or the wireless router are to blame too?