Cryptocoin Mining?

[thilanliyan]

I just joined Mt.Red. Do I need to set up 2 workers or can I just have both cards log in as the same worker? I was logging in as the same worker with both cards for Slush's pool.

Also, what is the APIKEY? It is blank right now on my Mt.Red profile page.

 

[RussianSensation]

So overall, is the only disadvantage to using a pool such as Slush's vs. a PPS pool the fact that your payout is not always consistent day to day?

It's more to it than that. The payout varies not only from day-to-day but also throughout the day. What this means is that if you are not mining 24/7 x 30 days a month where this variability washes out, you may rejoin the pool after gaming (etc.) and run into a 7-10 hour batch and get 1/2 or 1/3rd the reward you'd get at a PPS pool. Suddenly your GPU just mined inefficiently for 7-10 hours! At a PPS pool, it would get a consistent reward, which means you can leave and re-enter a PPS pool any time (a lot more flexible).

Also, because of the day-to-day variability, you have a situation such as right now when the 7-day pool luck at Slush's has fallen to just 87%. So if someone joined Slush's pool 7 days ago, they would have made less money than any other PPS pool. Slush's pool ultimately has to come back to a monthly average of roughly 100%, which means situations where pool luck is low have to be compensated by areas where pool luck will be high. Due to this variability I think it makes a lot more sense to hop to Slush's pool when the pool luck is very low (40-50%) and ride it back up to 120-150% and then leave again to a PPS pool because you know for sure it'll drop way lower to get to that 100% monthly average.

Slush's pool also charges a 2% fee, despite not being a PPS pool, so really that's a lot of risk to put up with its variability and definitely not worth it for anyone who isn't mining non-stop 24/7.

I just joined Mt.Red. Do I need to set up 2 workers or can I just have both cards log in as the same worker? I was logging in as the same worker with both cards for Slush's pool.

Also, what is the APIKEY? It is blank right now on my Mt.Red profile page.

I have no idea what the API Key is. Mine is blank. I was under the impression that you needed to set up a separate worker for each of your GPUs/miners. Interesting how you were able to mine with both under 1 worker.

 

[thilanliyan]

Thanks for all the info Russian...much appreciated.

As for the miners, I am running with both connected to the same worker at MtRed and it is correctly reading my hashrate as the sum of the 2.

 

[Zargon]

The api is usually for reporting. People can set it up and monitor miner output

Tapatalking on my pos thunderbolt. Sorry for teh typos!

 

[RussianSensation]

Thanks for all the info Russian...much appreciated.

As for the miners, I am running with both connected to the same worker at MtRed and it is correctly reading my hashrate as the sum of the 2.

Glad it's working for you. I am going to do another 2-day testing at MT. Red. I think during the days when I ran it I got carried away watching a bunch of Youtube 1080P videos with GPU hardware acceleration on and it was taking my GPU speed down to 500mhz in cases and not reverting back. I guess I didn't notice this since I was only checking GPU utilization at 99%. I read up on this later. I disabled GPU hardware acceleration for Adobe Flash so my 7900 card never drops to 500mhz when watching youtube videos while mining. So far I've been running Mt. Red for 8 hours and my per hour return is already higher than my BTC Guild per hour average (based on ~0.343 daily rate). So it's looking much better so far for Mt. Red than my initial testing. I'll report back my new 2-day average at Mt. Red soon.

 

[f1sherman]

I think during the days when I ran it I got carried away watching a bunch of Youtube 1080P videos with GPU hardware acceleration on and it was taking my GPU speed down to 500mhz in cases and not reverting back.

^^ wow... UVD bug still going strong with AMD

That would be what...5 full generations. Is this a WR or what?

 

[thilanliyan]

I will also report back with my rates after a couple days of mining for Mt.Red.

 

[RussianSensation]

^^ wow... UVD bug still going strong with AMD

That would be what...5 full generations. Is this a WR or what?

Ummm...never had these problems with HD4890 or my 6950. Either way it's actually better for me that I found out to disable GPU hardware acceleration with Adobe Flash since my GPU is now 98-99% pegged even when mining and watching youtube. The CPU handles the rest without any problems. This may be important for people running Pentium 4 and HD7970 where their CPU is too slow for Flash. Also, pretty much the entire industry and adobe themselves are abandoning flash to HTML5; so this "issue" will be irrelevant shortly. I could care less about Adobe Flash GPU acceleration when my AMD card pays for itself and works great for everything else

 

[Despoiler]

May its time to put my Good'ol 5870 and 6970 to do some work ?
or May bell sell 5870 and get 7970 ?
I am thinking about joing Eclipse
They appears to be a very good Pool
What you all think ?

58XX cards are the most sought after cards for mining. They are pretty power efficient for their delivered mhash. I wouldn't sell it.

I just joined Mt.Red. Do I need to set up 2 workers or can I just have both cards log in as the same worker? I was logging in as the same worker with both cards for Slush's pool.

Also, what is the APIKEY? It is blank right now on my Mt.Red profile page.

You can have separate workers for each card/device or mine them all on one worker. Your choice.
The API key allows you to do things like remote monitoring your workers.

 

[thilanliyan]

You can have separate workers for each card/device or mine them all on one worker. Your choice.

Is there any disadvantage to a single worker? Like a higher reject rate or anything like that?

 

[KompuKare]

58XX cards were the most sought after cards for mining. They are pretty power efficient for their delivered mhash. I wouldn't sell it.

There, fixed that for you!

Using the stats from https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mining_hardware_comparison (where nobody has updated that first table to include the 7970):

Model___Mhash/s__Mhash/W____Watts
5830_____248_____1.29________192W
5870_____400_____1.90________210W
5970_____740_____2.15________344W
6970_____365_____2.28________160W
7970_____825_____3.86________214W

Those are still good values but only if you have very cheap electricity.

 

[MrTeal]

Is there any disadvantage to a single worker? Like a higher reject rate or anything like that?

I would say no. I have a separate worker for each computer but all the cards in the same rig use the same worker.

 

[thilanliyan]

7970_____825_____3.86________214W

825MH/s!!???

From a single 7970? That's pretty darned good...is Bitminter (the miner that person is using) better suited for the 7 series cards? That card is at 1290 MHz core but still...I didn't think it could get that high!

 

[KompuKare]

825MH/s!!???

From a single 7970? That's pretty darned good...is Bitminter (the miner that person is using) better suited for the 7 series cards?

Well, okay that list (https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mining_hardware_comparison) is of course full of user supplied data. But if you look it up that's running at 1290 core and whoever supplied that data says their card is using 214W but unless they own a hardware review site and have something like this

or

I would say the power usage of their 7970 is more of a guess. Still plenty of 7970 samples in the mining hardware comparison which hit 700ish.

 

[thilanliyan]

Yea to me that power usage is a bit suspect since you would have to pump a decent amount of voltage to get 1290core from what I have read.

More than that though I am amazed at the MH/s rate...maybe I should give bitminter a shot too.

EDIT: Nvm about bitminter...it's some sort of browser/java based miner, and possibly for their own pool.

 

[MrTeal]

It doesn't take much to measure the actual power draw of a card. Pretty much all my cards are on risers that have the 12V lines to the MB cut and rewired to a Molex connector. I do this so you don't overpower the MB 12V line with 5+ big cards, but it also makes it relatively trivial to measure the DC power draw of just the cards.

 

[RussianSensation]

Yea to me that power usage is a bit suspect since you would have to pump a decent amount of voltage to get 1290core from what I have read.

I don't trust those power consumption #s. When I bumped my Vcore to 1.25V, the power consumption goes to 232W at just 1150mhz, up from 192.5W at 1150mhz @ 1.175V. I am having a hard time believing his card is using up just 214W of power at 1290mhz.

More than that though I am amazed at the MH/s rate...maybe I should give bitminter a shot too.

Well it's just shaders and clocks at work here:

HD6950 = 1408 SP * 800 mhz ~ 325 MHash/sec (Base = 1.0)
HD6950 = 1536 SP * 880mhz ~ 390 Mhash/sec (1.2x faster shader speed)
HD7970 1150mhz = 2048 SP * 1150mhz ~ 680 Mhash/sec (2.09x faster shader speed)
HD7970 1290mhz = 2048 SP * 1290mhz ~ 762 Mhash/sec (2.35x faster)

His Hashing rate also seems way too high based on the other known Mining shared pool applications.

BTW, my 1-day average at MT.Red is now up to 0.3694 (7.7% faster than my fastest over at BTCGuild). Looks like I found my new mining pool! Thanks Despoiler

 

[Binky]

Interesting on Mt. Red. I've been using bitparking, which is a super minimalistic pool that pays out in 5 different coins (most are close to worthless). Their payout is pretty good, but a tiny bit below Mt.Red.

I also like that Mt.Red supports the Miner Status android app, but holy crap is it hard to find the API settings on the website.

 

[MrTeal]

I don't trust those power consumption #s. When I bumped my Vcore to 1.25V, the power consumption goes to 232W at just 1150mhz, up from 192.5W at 1150mhz @ 1.175V. I am having a hard time believing his card is using up just 214W of power at 1290mhz.

Are those numbers with full speed mem clocks? You'll see a pretty big drop running the mem down to 200.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=87504.0

The guy in the link is running 5 7970s @ 990MHz/180MHz, 1.03V and getting 2.9GH/s with 860W total system consumption at the wall.

 

[RussianSensation]

Are those numbers with full speed mem clocks? You'll see a pretty big drop running the mem down to 200.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=87504.0

The guy in the link is running 5 7970s @ 990MHz/180MHz, 1.03V and getting 2.9GH/s with 860W total system consumption at the wall.

He is using 990mhz @ 1.03V. That's why. Increasing voltage from 1.175V to 1.256V increases my power consumption 42-43W alone! So think about him dropping his GPU clock to 990mhz and dropping voltages below 1.175V all the way to 1.03V. That's probably going to drop power consumption 40-50W+.

I tried running the memory at 1375mhz and at 685mhz (the lowest it goes for me in MSI Afterburner Unofficial overclocking mode 2). There is only a 4-5W power consumption difference but performance is slightly worse with memory at that speed. Card temperature is unaffected for me running 685 or 1375mhz memory.

I wonder if he used ATI Tray Tools to drop memory to 180 then?

His throughput of 2.9GH/s for 5 cards means ~ 580Mhash or 17% slower than my card (680 Mhash) That would work out to almost 1.8-2 extra BTC/month or $14-16. The loss in 17% mining production isn't worth the savings of 40-50W of power per card in that case for me since my monthly electricity cost for ~200W is less than $20/month to begin with. That 17% speed increase actually almost pays for my monthly electricity cost to mine.

 

[netzz3d]

580mhash? 5870 could probably do that at $150 or less per card

 

[RussianSensation]

580mhash? 5870 could probably do that at $150 or less per card

Not even close. 385-390 Mhash for a stock 5870 (990mhz * 2048 SP / 850mhz * 1600 SP = 49% faster than a 5870). 5870 cards are crappy overclockers too. Of course in terms of bank for the buck 2x 5870s for $300 are better than a single HD7970.

 

[MrTeal]

He is using 990mhz @ 1.03V. That's why. Increasing voltage from 1.175V to 1.256V increases my power consumption 42-43W alone! So think about him dropping his GPU clock to 990mhz and dropping voltages below 1.175V all the way to 1.03V. That's probably going to drop power consumption 40-50W+.

I tried running the memory at 1375mhz and at 685mhz (the lowest it goes for me in MSI Afterburner Unofficial overclocking mode 2). There is only a 4-5W power consumption difference but performance is slightly worse with memory at that speed. Card temperature is unaffected for me running 685 or 1375mhz memory.

I wonder if he used ATI Tray Tools to drop memory to 180 then?

His throughput of 2.9GH/s for 5 cards means ~ 580Mhash or 17% slower than my card (680 Mhash) That would work out to almost 1.8-2 extra BTC/month or $14-16. The loss in 17% mining production isn't worth the savings of 40-50W of power per card in that case for me since my monthly electricity cost for ~200W is less than $20/month to begin with. That 17% speed increase actually almost pays for my monthly electricity cost to mine.

Yeah, those were more two separate thoughts; the question and a link with some numbers just for your reference.

That reduction is really surprising. On my 6970s I see a 65W drop for two cards when I got from 1200MHz to 200MHz, with no decrease in hash rate. I see the same results on my 5970s, as well.
The later SDKs are known to be poorer performers, so maybe that has something to do with it.
The later SDKs are know

 

[RussianSensation]

Yeah, those were more two separate thoughts; the question and a link with some numbers just for your reference.

That reduction is really surprising. On my 6970s I see a 65W drop for two cards when I got from 1200MHz to 200MHz, with no decrease in hash rate. I see the same results on my 5970s, as well.
The later SDKs are known to be poorer performers, so maybe that has something to do with it.
The later SDKs are know

It's not a lot but it's there. Yup, my unlocked 6950 card had no effect on dropping memory clocks from 1375mhz, but my 7970 definitely does (using the same client version).

685mhz memory = 676.6 Mhash
1375 memory = 680.4
1800 memory = 681.9

What are you using to drop memory clocks to 200mhz, ATI Tray Tools?

 

[Chiropteran]

I had my main wallet on a virtual machine, which somehow has become corrupt. I have a backup of the wallet.dat, but restoring my wallet has been trickier than expected. Joy.