[How to] fund your cruncher's utility bill OR how to make money using bitcoin

[Deux]

Did your income ($) per Mhash/sec go down during this time? And if so, by how much? Any idea?

So far, it's has actually increased. Keep in mind though, that's not really the expected behavior over time. Since I started mining, difficulty had risen ~5x while price has risen almost 20x so right now it is actually significantly more profitable than when I started.

[CaptMorgan]

Another jcool thread going hog wild but still great stuff but I had to go and catch up . I apologize if this was answered but I do know it was asked but what are the wu's and what are they for? I am just curious as others and it is too bad WCG could not compensate crunchers in this fashion as others beyond us good hearted folks would most certainly join!

[kjeldoran]

I switched to BTC Guild from deepbit and it seems I am ahead with more BTC than compared to deepbit, even with a 2.5% donation.

I do have some GUI lag *depending* on work load. If my GTX560 runs near 100% my system is pretty much unusable. I am not sure why it is like this, but maybe something with WCG, but I'm not killing a core of WCG on my sandy CPU lol. My fiance's system does have a bit of lag, but it isn't too bad and she hasn't complained. She did complain about the increase in noise from the stock fan so I set it to 50% manually and temps are about 2C higher. Since we use these rigs daily, we average about 210Mhashes.

Seems prices are going up to, based on the 210Mhashes I am now generating about $250 a month...enough to fund a 5870.

[rcofell]

Another jcool thread going hog wild but still great stuff but I had to go and catch up . I apologize if this was answered but I do know it was asked but what are the wu's and what are they for? I am just curious as others and it is too bad WCG could not compensate crunchers in this fashion as others beyond us good hearted folks would most certainly join!

They're not "WUs" in the classical sense. Instead, they're basically a cryptographic way of packaging the records of all recent bitcoin transactions since the last block, making it secure through a bunch of probability theory, etc.

Basically what mining is doing is taking the list of transactions (actually a compressed form of it), adding in a few addition pieces of information (last block ID, timestamp, client version, client computing it, difficulty, etc.), plus a random number (called a nonce). As a whole, all of this information is SHA256 hashed twice with the goal of achieving an output value composed of 00000000XXXXXXXXXX... where the number of zeroes required are determined by the difficulty and the Xs are left to whatever value they may be. The input's nonce is incremented until the output happens to match such an acceptable value.

Once the hash's output reaches the accepted goal, it's sent to the whole network as the official next block, where it's used as a header to the log of transactions going with it. Just to note, there's additional confirmation that continues for the next so many blocks to make sure something underhanded didn't happen, like someone generated a bunch of blocks targeting a really easy difficulty or something.

What mining is all about is: the first person who generates one of these valid solutions first gets a pre-determined "prize", which right now is 50BTC. However, view it as whoever is "lucky" enough to generate a valid solution first, since the transaction log is continuously changing and hashing is a one-way function. This means that no matter how long you've been trying things, it's basically brute-forcing, you don't know how much longer there is to go.

Lemme know if this is too wordy of an attempt at explanation

[snoro]

actually thats perfect and it should be added in jcool's original post so we dont have 1 person each page asking what are the "wu". Did settled it up on my hd5770 rig ( i5-760 crunching also on wcg but brother daily rig so he sometime shut it off the damm ) and my hd5670 rig (i3-530 that i got from whitefiredragon a while ago [thanks again mate] dedicated wcg cruncher) for a nice 210-250 mhash/sec output. Will help pay the bill that a university student can have( starting next september in litterature here in quebec) and maybe add another cruncher with a hd5870 or hd6970

[lkiller123]

So Nvidia cards can't participate in this?

[[XC] gomeler]

I think I bought all the available HD 5850s I could see Man, next week is going to be hilarious. Sure hope the GPU mining profitability maintains or grows in the next 2 months.

[rcofell]

So Nvidia cards can't participate in this?

They can, however they're nowhere near as productive/efficient as ATI cards (~1/3 of equivalent ATI cards).

[kjeldoran]

They can, however they're nowhere near as productive/efficient as ATI cards (~1/3 of equivalent ATI cards).

QFT. My gtx 560ti gets around 68Mhashes when running maxed and my radeon 5770 gets 180Mhashes when maxed.

I'm only running my gtx 560ti since it adds to my total. Once I add another card, if it remains profitable, I am not going to run the gtx 560 for mining.

[INFRNL]

So it looks like the 5850/70 are the cards of choice? whats a good price to pay Used/new?

might have to give this a shot and see how it goes; just do not want to invest too much just in case

also do the 2gb cards benefit over the 1gb cards? Thanks

[L0$t Pr0PhEt]

I don't understand what is encouraging buyers to buy these? Its not like they are backed by gold or anything like that so the only thing that makes them valuable is relative rarity which, like collectables for example, doesn't mean anything.... once people loose interest and stop buying they become useless right? And as others have said it is a little worry-some what they are doing with the computational power... but I'd probably try it if I had an ati video card, switched to nvidia purely for gpugrid... I also couldn't sell this to my wife thats for sure...

I read on another forum that there is an anonymous marketplace (Silk Road) for drugs that only accepts Bitcoins. Maybe that's where all the bitcoins are going to

[Otis11]

6950 Running 100%... Try this out for 2 weeks and if it works out I'll be upgrading pretty quick.

[[XC] Oj101]

Well my GTX480 is getting around 120Mhash per second, I think I'll grab a 5870 or 5970 soon. If this falls over within two months I can sell them for the same price I paid or even more (no loss), if it falls over after two months... Well they'll pay for themselves within the first month and I can sell them afterwards anyway

[jcool]

actually thats perfect and it should be added in jcool's original post so we dont have 1 person each page asking what are the "wu". Did settled it up on my hd5770 rig ( i5-760 crunching also on wcg but brother daily rig so he sometime shut it off the damm ) and my hd5670 rig (i3-530 that i got from whitefiredragon a while ago [thanks again mate] dedicated wcg cruncher) for a nice 210-250 mhash/sec output. Will help pay the bill that a university student can have( starting next september in litterature here in quebec) and maybe add another cruncher with a hd5870 or hd6970

Just did, thanks rcofell!
Bitcoin still increasing in value, now at almost 18€ per BCT. If I were to sell the 10 BCT I made in the last 2 days, that would be 180€
And this was just using my existing hardware, new cards won't arrive till Monday.

Also, here's a vid about bitcoin if u still wanna know more: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwNfBgwbqng

[Reflex1]

my 2x 480gtx's have been at it for 2 days and still no buttcoins ...nVidia owners are left out i guess

[jcool]

Not left out, no - it's just down to the architecture. A 5870 has 1600 stream shaders that can all be utilized for hashing, whereas a GTX 480 "only" has 480 stream units. Sure, they are organized differently, and in most cases, the Nvidia shaders are more effective, but not where sheer brute force is required (also see milkyway@home and Collatz). If it makes you feel any better - even the most powerful CPU miner is slower than your Nvidia cards. Dual Hexacore @ 4Ghz gives 28mHash/s... so yeah, definitely leave the CPUs on WCG.

[RADCOM]

A few questions for y'all
1)Is it feasible to make a portable mining rig from a shuttle like PC ( i.e micro ATX sandbridge)
2) is it okay to stop and start the client?
3)Are the figures based on running it 24/7?
4)what sort of internet connection is required?

[artemm]

Been at this for about two months, not sure how I feel about its long term stability.

Currently doing 2.9 Ghash/sec with 2x5970 and 2x 5870 mining at BTCmine

Argh.. Deux. I realized what was up shortly after I sold you that 5970. Well played, you bastage, well played

[SMTB1963]

All I know is that RIGHT NOW, it does generate some instant money if you already have the right hardware.

Can't argue with that. Looks like a lot of folks here will be able to make an easy buck or two...at least for now. (very nice write-up BTW)

Lemme know if this is too wordy of an attempt at explanation

One of the better synopsis I've read so far on the mechanics of bitcoin computation, and I've been following this for a while. "Nakamoto's" original paper here, if anyone's interested. It really is a spectacularly ingenious system. It's radical decentralization is basically the antithesis of current regimes, and distinguishes bitcoin from other virtual currencies. But in the long run I think it carries the seeds of it's own destruction - even in the unlikely event that The Man takes no action against it.

Undoubtedly the near term looks pretty rosy for miners, as long as they don't run afoul of their local tax laws.

[OldChap]

Best retail price here around $260 for a 5870 so I just ordered the one to trial this for now. It should be here Tuesday.

[Otis11]

How long does it normally take for them to show up?

And they show up in the wallet app we have right?

[Tom128]

I just got a second 5850 and was trying to set it up. I see reference that having them setup in XFire isn't as good, however I can't get the second card to show up without enabling it. I connected my second monitor to the second card as well with no change.

EDIT: I will say the performance seems the same with XFire enabled. I just can't set the cards to their own clocks/fan speeds it seems. I think my new card can OC alot better so I will be trying to figure this out today. Need to dig out my waterblock too.

[nanoprobe]

What would be the minimum card that would work effectively on this?

[ggdh]

Strange.

I moved my 5870 to another computer and although i did everything as for first rig now windows (xp 32bit) is not able to recognize this card. "No OpenCL device".
I have 10.5 and SDK 2.1 from jcool's link. Re-installation did not help.

[Fhqwhgads6680]

Strange.

I moved my 5870 to another computer and although i did everything as for first rig now windows (xp 32bit) is not able to recognize this card. "No OpenCL device".
I have 10.5 and SDK 2.1 from jcool's link. Re-installation did not help.

one thing I noticed, as jcool mentioned, if no monitor is hooked up to the card it won't recognize it, and on the same note if you try to set it up via RDP or vnc etc it won't notice it because it's not recognizing a monitor connected.