bitcoin mining?

[cwdykarn]

what is the gpu idle temp? and what is the gpu temp under load?

clean the heat sink of any dust and get a program that lets you controll the fan speed like msi afterburner or speedfan etc

[maboroshi]

Thanks for the advice downloading MSI Afterburner right now. I noticed that is what you use. In that tutorial I posted, I just posted a link to a hardware reference and estimated MHashes.

I cleaned the heat sink just yesterday .

*cheers

Thanks again

mab

[bad_brain]

@ph0
the Bitcoin payment/currency system is running as P2P, and every transaction made is hashed in a "block", those hashes have to be verified before they are distributed in the network (which is the actual payment process then). and to do that it needs system resources, which is done in the background of every client (like uploading on torrents).
when mining you simply share your system resources actively and in a more extensive way.

solving a block is rewarded with 25 Bitcoins IF you are actively doing it, as regular client process you get nothing....and that's what mining is about: actively solving the blocks and sharing the gain.

of course it leads to some system load, but not in a way that endangers the system...I am mining while writing this, listening to music and checking emails, etc...all working without lags.

[maboroshi]

I am now running two graphics cards again I have my ATI 6850 dedicated to Bitcoin Mining and with these flags -v -w128 -f 1 it clocks at 200 or so MHashes, I have no lag cause I am using my second card (ATI 5850) for games and every day tasks.

*cheers

Mab

Edit* Also updated the Bitcoin mining guide to use bad_brains description of Bitcoin mining

[ph0bYx]

So it works something like SETI@Home etc.
How much time does it take on average to mine one block and how does 25 Bitcoins translate to RL currency?

[bad_brain]

exactly!
well, you are mining in a pool, so you just get a share of the 25. it really takes a while until you make 1 bitcoin, for a block you kinda get 0.000something, how long each block takes depends on the amount of shares and of course on your GPU....simply give it a try.

1 bitcoin equals about 14 USD. the site I have linked where you can buy/sell bitcoins is actually kinda like wallstreet, so you can speculate there by buying cheap and trying to sell for a better price...and make money that way too.

[maboroshi]

So I think my High Power load was due to a faulty Graphics Card, Currently running at 210 MHashes on my 5850 and no Lag and the fan doesn't seem to be going insane.

Will keep an eye on the tempature but seems pretty good

FYI

http://www.butterflylabs.com/landing/landing-aw.php

I have plans to buy the Jalapeno


*cheers

Mabo

[cwdykarn]

lol i whant that jalapeno thingy too, so awesome 4.5 Gh/s O.o

btw

has anyone run in to any hardware issues while mining?
etc BSOD, random reboots, nvidia driver crasch, cpu core time outs... or is it just me?

[bad_brain]

I really might get one of those spicy Jalapenos too...the Bitcoin concept is really nice and I am planning to use this method of payment as often as possible, so it would surely be a good investment.

buying/trading Bitcoins can be a pain in the rear btw, at least on the sites I have linked earlier....it's hard to do deals there because it takes a lot of trust. right now I am using a german site that works with an escrow service, just waiting for the validation of my bank account.

oh, and no, haven't experienced any hardware- or OS-instabilities, the system itself just becomes a bit laggy sometimes which might be because of the intense RAM usage (2 GB and more) of the program...

[maboroshi]

Can some one explain how the non central controlled bitcoin system works? What makes it so it is not controlled by any one organization/company/agency/corporation or government? What makes it so no one can dictate it?

[bad_brain]

asked that myself too, and it's really interesting how it works! about every 10 minutes 1 block is solved, which means 25 BTC will be created (they have lowered it from 50), after every 2016 solved blocks the resulting Bitcoins are released into the traffic.
the control mechanism is the difficulty to solve the blocks, and that is adjusted via some form of weirdo-algorithm, so if suddenly many blocks are solved the difficulty will simply increase....that way nobody with extreme powerful hardware can solve loads of blocks in a short time.
another interesting fact is that there is a hard limit of BTC in traffic, which is 21 million....right now a bit more than half of it is around, so it will surely take a long time until that limit (if ever) is reached.

[maboroshi]

Wouldn't that make buying the Bitforce Jalapeno and other things like that rather a waste of money? If the blocks just get harder they might benefit from a day of usage, but in theory it wouldn't be long before the algorithm is adjusted and becomes immensely hard? Thus that hardware in theory is more of a hindrance?

Still I have the question of how is the Bitcoin a decentralized currency? What makes it Decentralized? How does that work?

*cheers

Edit just a side note I begin to think that Jalapeno and Bitforce products are really just a scam.

Mabo

[maboroshi]

So I think my High Power load was due to a faulty Graphics Card, Currently running at 210 MHashes on my 5850 and no Lag and the fan doesn't seem to be going insane.

My 6850 wasn't faulty but I had a conflict in the GPU load while running two cards it would sit at 99 % Load I was able to fix this by disabling AMD HD Drivers in Device manager.

Much better now

0 - 1 % load Virtually no heat and no loud fan

[ayu]

I have read a lot of articles now, but I find it all a bit confusing ^^

So far this is what I THINK I understand

* The wallet is one separate application connected to the network
* A miner is another application used for calculating/verifying transactions (thus mining bitcoins)
* A GUI Miner is a front end for a miner that you can run on your desktop computer and connect to many of your miners

Is this correct?

So my questions are as follows then:

1: When I start a miner on a computer, do I somehow tell it to which wallet it will send the bitcoins?
Or how does that work? How do I get the coins from having several miners?

2: If my computer that has the wallet is offline, does that mean that I wont receive any coins from my miners?

3: I found this little tutorial for setting up a miner on Linux

Code: Select all

https://bitcointalk.org/?topic=2636

The first post mentions to "change the password if you don't want anyone to connect to your miner".
Does this mean that there are two different programs in action here?
Which one is the miner of the poclbm.py and BitcoinMiner.py?
And what is the second script then?

And in this tutorial it seems that they are downloading the original bitcoin client as well, does this mean that the regular client is needed on the same machine for it to work?
How does this affect running miners on several machines?
Do I need the wallet on every machine that is running a miner?

Yeah ... lots of questions, but maybe someone can shed some light on this for me?

[bad_brain]

@mab
well, there is no central organization that gives out the money, like a central bank does for a country. the money is produced by every user, by making transfers and the rewards for the resulting blocks being solved.

@cats
yeah, it IS a bit confusing, but for me it slowly clears up...
1. when mining for a pool your reward goes into an account there, and when you have reached a specific limit (usually you can set that limit yourself as long as it's not too low) you can transfer it to your wallet. when mining alone you would surely connect your account somehow, but mining alone is totally pointless anyway as long as you don't have your whole basement filled with quad-GPU killer systems, because you would only get the reward (25 BTC) when solving a block all alone....I am not sure though how THAT works, because I doubt you can say "that's my block now, I will solve it alone!".

2. as said in 1., your reward is not transferred directly to your wallet. even if it would, or someone sends you some BTC while you aren't online, it wouldn't matter, because every client is synchronized in context with the transfers when starting...so when you log in you would get the block that contains your transfer too, and then it's added to your wallet.

I have no experience at all with that .py script, maybe mab can add something about that...