Crunching-> Hashing: BOINC -> Bitcoin

[cncguru]

I am(inactive atm) the #1 contributor to the BOINC project Milkyway@home which uses AMD cards to crunch numbers to help map tidal flows in our galaxy.(awesome project,IMO)
Last May I wanted to branch out a bit so I put two of my 5970's up for sale on ebay to buy some GTX 580's for a different project.
Well, I noticed they were selling on ebay for the same price or more than I had paid for them! So I listed them as a quadfire pair for $300 more than I had paid for them and .....15 mins later they were sold!
I thought , "Holy shit"! so I put two more up for sale and......gone again within 1/2 hr!!
I always do a follow up communication with anyone I sell something to just to make sure all went well and this buyer tells me, "They are already mining bitcoins, all is well"
I say to myself, bitcoins??? WTF is a bitcoin???
Well, it took me another week of reading and wrapping my head  around this and I say to myself, Holy shit, you(from 11 June 2010) have contributed 1.01 sextillion floating-point operations to Milkyway@home, how many bitcoins would you have now if you had been hashing instead of crunching?? (I probably don't really want to think about that,LOL)
So I was sitting on a large amount of hashing power, that was just my hobby=expense already justified.

Sorry Milkyway my kids are mining bitcoins now!

P.S. I have learned (and laughed) ALOT from reading here in this forum and would like to thank you all!



 

[1714121033]

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[1714121033]

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[cncguru]

Hello Holliday!

It took me about a week to read up and switch everyone over to hashing last May. My computers are kind of like a "family" and are definitely overkill machines for mining as they all have Fast Xeon and Core i7 CPU's.(and a few Opterons)
I did set up one guy to test out p2pool and yep it works great( I used your tutorial post to set it up,Thank You!) but I have been doing just fine solo as my "kids" seem to defy the rules when it comes to luck.
 Now if they would just deliver my "Rig Boxes" LOL

 

[cncguru]

Well, I have 8 of them on a KVM switch hooked into a 30" IPS panel that rocks and I use those core guys to do other stuff, mostly CAD CAM  3D modeling and CNC programming. I worked for 10yrs in robotics R&D and dabble with designing stuff too.
It seems that I am going to have to design my own "Iron Man" suit as I was recently diagnosed with Primary Progressive MS and walking is become more and more difficult, and I actually used BTC to pay for an MRI, LOL!
The rest of the guys just hash away and I sold off all my Nvidia cards and replaced with 5970's & 6990's, I have all dual GPU cards as from crunching in BOINC I already had the density formula figured out.
I don't bother mining with the cpu's although I probably should, anything extra counts.
.
 

[rjk]

Since it seems that you have done a lot of reading already, you probably know that AMD cards are best at Bitcoin mining. The reason for this is that Bitcoin doesn't bother with floating point math, it is all about the integers, and AMD cards with their simple, high-speed shaders do integer math really well.

[cncguru]

@rjk

Yes, AMD has it locked so far but it's interesting that the highest paying(creditwise) BOINC project is a hashing project called Distributed Rainbow Tables ( DistRTgen) which uses Nvidia cards.
I had 5 GTX 580's on one P6T7(one on flexible) that was the no.1 computer there for awhile(and @ Primegrid)
When I asked one of the guys on that project why they were not coded for AMD he said that the BOINC software they used was Nvidia optimized but I don't know this kind of programming.

@Holliday

Well, I wonder what throwing a shitload of overclocked cpu's at hashing would yield but I do know that it would greatly increase the power draw! I have an SR-2 board with two Xeon X5687's@5.0+ Ghz with (4) MSI Lightning GTX 580's running @ 950 core and that puppy takes a Silverstone ST1500 AND an Antec 1200 to run stable with enough overhead, LOL!
Building badass computers was my hobby before I ever heard of BTC.
It's way cool they can even pay for themselves now.

 

[Rassah]

Obligatory: But can it run Crysys?

That aside, you could use your CPUs to mine Litecoin. It's not worth much, but it may be more than what you'll earn CPU mining Bitcoin (though I may be wrong).

[cncguru]

Obligatory: But can it run Crysys?

That aside, you could use your CPUs to mine Litecoin. It's not worth much, but it may be more than what you'll earn CPU mining Bitcoin (though I may be wrong).

Ha! You know I have never even played that game,or many others for the matter.
I do like simulations though, like X-Plane across multiple monitors!
Hell, you can even cruise around Mars, LOL!

NASA has very exact data on the atmospheric pressure, density, and temperature on Mars.
NASA has very exact data on the gravity of Mars.
NASA has rough topographic maps for the entire planet of Mars, and very detailed data for some areas.
The laws of physics, which are programmed into X-Plane, are the exactly the same on Earth as on Mars.
X-Plane needs atmospheric pressure, density, temperature, gravity, and topographic maps to deliver an engineering-accurate flight simulation.
Enter a new level of flight simulation. X-Plane can simulate Mars.

But it's a trip to get used to, 1 percent(of Earth) atmospheric density, 1/3 the weight but with full inertia to deal with!

[Joshwaa]

Got anymore HD5970's you wanna trade for GTX580 or GTX570's?

[cncguru]

Got anymore HD5970's you wanna trade for GTX580 or GTX570's?

Nope, actually I've got a couple more arriving next Monday, they comprise about 90% of my GPU's.

 

[Rassah]

I think we have the same passion. I played MS Flight Simulator since 2.0 for DOS, and switched to X-Plane after FSX was announced to be the last one. Also have multiple monitors, as well as flight rig, like yoke, pedals, levers, and bunch of switches for stuff. Flying on Mars is easy, but landing at 600+ MPH is a bit rough. A long time ago I also used to play with a free Space Simulator (Orbiter I think), using my main joystick for main controlled, and dual thumb joystick pad for micro thrusters (control in all directions). Was fun flying around chasing space stations and trying to dock. Even more fun, someone made a fully working Firefly class ship for it. I must say, those GIANT articulating thrusters on the sides made it a bitch to control. If one of them is a tad misalligned with the other, you go spinning like crazy. Surprised the Firefly crew didn't throw up on every takeoff and landing  

[cncguru]

I think we have the same passion. I played MS Flight Simulator since 2.0 for DOS, and switched to X-Plane after FSX was announced to be the last one. Also have multiple monitors, as well as flight rig, like yoke, pedals, levers, and bunch of switches for stuff. Flying on Mars is easy, but landing at 600+ MPH is a bit rough. A long time ago I also used to play with a free Space Simulator (Orbiter I think), using my main joystick for main controlled, and dual thumb joystick pad for micro thrusters (control in all directions). Was fun flying around chasing space stations and trying to dock. Even more fun, someone made a fully working Firefly class ship for it. I must say, those GIANT articulating thrusters on the sides made it a bitch to control. If one of them is a tad misalligned with the other, you go spinning like crazy. Surprised the Firefly crew didn't throw up on every takeoff and landing  

LMAO, Yep I used to play with Orbiter also!
Have to check out what's up with it nowadays.
Thanks Rassah, you just killed the weekend for me(maybe)LOL

 

[Rassah]

I'll save you the time. Not much. Project stopped in 2010