Linux vs Windows for Dedicated Mining

[Swishercutter]

Ha Windows 7 is so easy to pirate - Windows 7 loader 

Also if you flash your card to an OC'ed ROM it will work in Linux too.

Or just use the Windows 7 trial and do the "slmgr -rearm" thing for 180days, then wipe and start over...usually there is newer drivers/software by that point anyways.

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[brunoshady]

could someone explain to me what is MH/J ?  "J"?

[kripz]

megahash per joule

[Mabsark]

Did you read my post?  I'm assuming when you write MHZ, you really mean MH/s.  First, we were trying to find the most profitable settings, surprisingly as you overclock, while you're MH/s increases, often your MH/j tends to decrease, meaning while you get more BTC, it costs you more per BTC to generate them.

Yes I did read your post and yes I did mean Mh/s. If you're just talking about profitability then why did you specifically say that Linux was far faster than Windows? Did your testing show Linux to have a greater hash rate or not?

[JayC]

At peak MH/j Linux has a higher MH/s rate than Windows from the testing we did.  This probably has a lot to do with the fact Linux in general has a lot less 'overhead' than Windows.

I'll give you an example, card A is an ATI 5770 we found on this specific card the optimal MH/j was core 947mhz, memory 321mhz...  Under Windows this card averaged 197.9 MH/s over a 15 minute period, with those exact same settings we are getting 212.3 MH/s under Linux.  15 MH/s isn't a lot, but you factor in we were able to then remove the HD and the CPU load (and thus power usage) is lower, the Linux system has a much better profit margin than the Windows.

Now, our measurements aren't exact...  we took a network power switch/battery backup, and pulled snmp power usage every 15 seconds for a 15 minute period.  Then we wrote a script that would move the core and memory settings up and down until it found a sweet spot in MH/j for a specific card.  We ran this test on 8 different cards from 2 different vendors in the 5770 line, the results are similar for all the cards in that test.  We ran the same test on a smaller batch of 5850's and 6950's again with similar results.

If all you know is Windows, and you're setting up a single mining rig, then it probably doesn't make sense to worry about those numbers as much...  if you're trying to setup a bunch of rigs and plan to operate long term in a 20-30% profit margin...  every little bit of cost savings helps.

Not to mention, that writing a script to remotely move the core and memory mhz settings remotely in windows would not have been an easy undertaking.  IMHO (and it's just an opinion) Linux wins hands down as the better dedicated mining rig OS.

Did you read my post?  I'm assuming when you write MHZ, you really mean MH/s.  First, we were trying to find the most profitable settings, surprisingly as you overclock, while you're MH/s increases, often your MH/j tends to decrease, meaning while you get more BTC, it costs you more per BTC to generate them.

Yes I did read your post and yes I did mean Mh/s. If you're just talking about profitability then why did you specifically say that Linux was far faster than Windows? Did your testing show Linux to have a greater hash rate or not?

[RedLine888]

Perfect reply!!!

Mooving to Linux)

What Linux are you using?

[syb3ria]

You can use ubuntu as it's the most easy distro to operate with. But search around this forum, there is SMART Coin distro also made and optimized for bitcoin mining.

[shivansps]

At peak MH/j Linux has a higher MH/s rate than Windows from the testing we did.  This probably has a lot to do with the fact Linux in general has a lot less 'overhead' than Windows.

I'll give you an example, card A is an ATI 5770 we found on this specific card the optimal MH/j was core 947mhz, memory 321mhz...  Under Windows this card averaged 197.9 MH/s over a 15 minute period, with those exact same settings we are getting 212.3 MH/s under Linux.  15 MH/s isn't a lot, but you factor in we were able to then remove the HD and the CPU load (and thus power usage) is lower, the Linux system has a much better profit margin than the Windows.

Now, our measurements aren't exact...  we took a network power switch/battery backup, and pulled snmp power usage every 15 seconds for a 15 minute period.  Then we wrote a script that would move the core and memory settings up and down until it found a sweet spot in MH/j for a specific card.  We ran this test on 8 different cards from 2 different vendors in the 5770 line, the results are similar for all the cards in that test.  We ran the same test on a smaller batch of 5850's and 6950's again with similar results.

If all you know is Windows, and you're setting up a single mining rig, then it probably doesn't make sense to worry about those numbers as much...  if you're trying to setup a bunch of rigs and plan to operate long term in a 20-30% profit margin...  every little bit of cost savings helps.

Not to mention, that writing a script to remotely move the core and memory mhz settings remotely in windows would not have been an easy undertaking.  IMHO (and it's just an opinion) Linux wins hands down as the better dedicated mining rig OS.

Did you read my post?  I'm assuming when you write MHZ, you really mean MH/s.  First, we were trying to find the most profitable settings, surprisingly as you overclock, while you're MH/s increases, often your MH/j tends to decrease, meaning while you get more BTC, it costs you more per BTC to generate them.

Yes I did read your post and yes I did mean Mh/s. If you're just talking about profitability then why did you specifically say that Linux was far faster than Windows? Did your testing show Linux to have a greater hash rate or not?

Check my MinerPE approach, for single gpus setups is by far the best option, much better than linux. But for multiple gpu rigs the best option is Linux on a pendrive.

[teukon]

Check my MinerPE approach, for single gpus setups is by far the best option, much better than linux. But for multiple gpu rigs the best option is Linux on a pendrive.

Care to elaborate?  What is MinerPE?  Do you have any stats which will convince us that MinerPE is superior to other approaches?

[shivansps]

Check my MinerPE approach, for single gpus setups is by far the best option, much better than linux. But for multiple gpu rigs the best option is Linux on a pendrive.

Care to elaborate?  What is MinerPE?  Do you have any stats which will convince us that MinerPE is superior to other approaches?

fair enoght.

pros:
*Easy to setup: 10 minutes from first boot to mining, incluiding overcloking.

*Easy to update software in the farm: (5 minutes to update a up to 252 pcs farm, another 15-30m to reboot afterwards, depending on network speed and pcs)
 -Adding Phoenix hashrate mod??? just update the kernel.cl file in server and reboot the farm
 -Updating drivers and SDK??? update the files in the server and reboot the farm.

*MSI Afterburner support on every pc in the farm, oc settings are saved and stored.

*VNC Server support on every client on the farm.

*PXE boot, no pendrives or HDDs, just LAN boot.

*Easy to mod, 90% of the work is on batch files, making it trivial to mod or add funtions.

*No problem with corrupted files on client pcs on the farm, so you will never worried again about some client not booting because a file is corrupted.

cons:
*Only 1 VGA is supported.
*Its not Linux (?)

Anyway, check the video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xN52sWA1BBM

[teukon]

Check my MinerPE approach, for single gpus setups is by far the best option, much better than linux. But for multiple gpu rigs the best option is Linux on a pendrive.

Care to elaborate?  What is MinerPE?  Do you have any stats which will convince us that MinerPE is superior to other approaches?

fair enoght.

pros:
*Easy to setup: 10 minutes from first boot to mining, incluiding overcloking.

*Easy to update software in the farm: (5 minutes to update a up to 252 pcs farm, another 15-30m to reboot afterwards, depending on network speed and pcs)
 -Adding Phoenix hashrate mod??? just update the kernel.cl file in server and reboot the farm
 -Updating drivers and SDK??? update the files in the server and reboot the farm.

*MSI Afterburner support on every pc in the farm, oc settings are saved and stored.

*VNC Server support on every client on the farm.

*PXE boot, no pendrives or HDDs, just LAN boot.

*Easy to mod, 90% of the work is on batch files, making it trivial to mod or add funtions.

*No problem with corrupted files on client pcs on the farm, so you will never worried again about some client not booting because a file is corrupted.

cons:
*Only 1 VGA is supported.
*Its not Linux (?)

Anyway, check the video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xN52sWA1BBM

Cool, I particularly like the network booting.  This gives Windows an 'easy and quick to configure' bonus over Linux which I won't deny.  If you are setting up even a moderate sized farm and/or are just looking for maximum profit (and your time is valuable) then this could be a good choice.

However, it may well be that one can achieve better MH/s or MH/J in Linux and I think there are a few people on these forums who value the extra MH/s more than the 2-3 hours time configuring the miner.  Indeed I doubt I'm alone in actually enjoying the configuration and tweaking.

[error]

Cool, I particularly like the network booting.  This gives Windows an 'easy and quick to configure' bonus over Linux which I won't deny.  If you are setting up even a moderate sized farm and/or are just looking for maximum profit (and your time is valuable) then this could be a good choice.

However, it may well be that one can achieve better MH/s or MH/J in Linux and I think there are a few people on these forums who value the extra MH/s more than the 2-3 hours time configuring the miner.  Indeed I doubt I'm alone in actually enjoying the configuration and tweaking.

I've put together my own PXE setup for my Linux mining rig as a proof of concept. If there's demand, I'll develop it further and release it.

[Un zafado cualquiera]

LinuxCoin rules!!!! ups... sorry. My bad.

[shivansps]

Adding LinuxCoin to PXE boot is trivial(i already using Grub4dos for MinerPE), after that i guess i can mine trought SSH.

[Digigami]

Cool, I particularly like the network booting.  This gives Windows an 'easy and quick to configure' bonus over Linux which I won't deny.  If you are setting up even a moderate sized farm and/or are just looking for maximum profit (and your time is valuable) then this could be a good choice.

However, it may well be that one can achieve better MH/s or MH/J in Linux and I think there are a few people on these forums who value the extra MH/s more than the 2-3 hours time configuring the miner.  Indeed I doubt I'm alone in actually enjoying the configuration and tweaking.

I've put together my own PXE setup for my Linux mining rig as a proof of concept. If there's demand, I'll develop it further and release it.

If it was nice and easy to setup and use, I would definatly be interested. I would like to build a few diskless mining rigs and a central server. Make it easy to push different images or configurations on the fly, central control and monitoring of all the mining clients. But hopefully easy enough that someone with just basic linux (ubuntu) knowledge like me can get it going. Would be nice if it could handle installing the driver/sdk/python, and maybe even the miner software itself. I had much difficulty getting my rig mining with linux..

[error]

Cool, I particularly like the network booting.  This gives Windows an 'easy and quick to configure' bonus over Linux which I won't deny.  If you are setting up even a moderate sized farm and/or are just looking for maximum profit (and your time is valuable) then this could be a good choice.

However, it may well be that one can achieve better MH/s or MH/J in Linux and I think there are a few people on these forums who value the extra MH/s more than the 2-3 hours time configuring the miner.  Indeed I doubt I'm alone in actually enjoying the configuration and tweaking.

I've put together my own PXE setup for my Linux mining rig as a proof of concept. If there's demand, I'll develop it further and release it.

If it was nice and easy to setup and use, I would definatly be interested. I would like to build a few diskless mining rigs and a central server. Make it easy to push different images or configurations on the fly, central control and monitoring of all the mining clients. But hopefully easy enough that someone with just basic linux (ubuntu) knowledge like me can get it going. Would be nice if it could handle installing the driver/sdk/python, and maybe even the miner software itself. I had much difficulty getting my rig mining with linux..

This is indeed exactly what I was thinking about. I'll put something together in the next few days; stay tuned for an announcement (in a new thread!).

[drgr33n]

I'm very interested in jumping on board if you want me LinuxCoin is already capable of booting from a USB stick and cloning itself via PXE. This is all pretty much setup and there for you to use I have some quick and dirty scripts to set things up.

I'm very interested in creating something that can administrate this all and give the user more control without having to dive into a teminal and start hammering away at the keyboard

[Un zafado cualquiera]

On debian exists a terminal dialog creator used on deb package configuration...anyone can help creating that?

[CydeWeys]

For a dedicated mining rig, Linux is a no-brainer.  Linux is free (in speech but more applicably here also as in beer), whereas Windows is going to run you $100-200.  There are lots of arguments over which is faster, but I can pretty much guarantee you that even if Windows is somehow faster, it's not $100-200 faster.

[drgr33n]

Cool, I particularly like the network booting.  This gives Windows an 'easy and quick to configure' bonus over Linux which I won't deny.  If you are setting up even a moderate sized farm and/or are just looking for maximum profit (and your time is valuable) then this could be a good choice.

However, it may well be that one can achieve better MH/s or MH/J in Linux and I think there are a few people on these forums who value the extra MH/s more than the 2-3 hours time configuring the miner.  Indeed I doubt I'm alone in actually enjoying the configuration and tweaking.

I've put together my own PXE setup for my Linux mining rig as a proof of concept. If there's demand, I'll develop it further and release it.

If it was nice and easy to setup and use, I would definatly be interested. I would like to build a few diskless mining rigs and a central server. Make it easy to push different images or configurations on the fly, central control and monitoring of all the mining clients. But hopefully easy enough that someone with just basic linux (ubuntu) knowledge like me can get it going. Would be nice if it could handle installing the driver/sdk/python, and maybe even the miner software itself. I had much difficulty getting my rig mining with linux..

This is indeed exactly what I was thinking about. I'll put something together in the next few days; stay tuned for an announcement (in a new thread!).

This has got me thinking. LinuxCoin 0.2.1b is capable of distributing its filesystem via http to the PXE clients. What about if we code a nice db driven front end using php ? Would be simple and easy to setup.