Fakeman:

If it is still counting accepted shares, then I would assume it should still be keeping up. I don't know for sure though.

Sukrim:

The volume is in MNC. Although considering this is still a relatively new market, it is growing super fast. The next difficulty jump is going to be huge. Over the past three hours, an average of about 35 blocks have been found each hour. That mean it is running at 5.8X the desired block creation rate. This would indicate that we should expect a 580% increase in difficulty if it was based off just this time span. I think the actual number may be smaller, but still a triple digit increase. The number of NMC flowing into the system will decrease by the XXX% after this jump. This makes me think that the price will see an increase around that time, but as we all know price doesn't necessarily follow the difficulty. Personally, I wouldn't think of selling until that point. I've actually been moving more BTC from MtGox to bitparking to buy up as many as I can before the difficulty jump. It's a gamble, but if I'm right, it should be a nice return.

-SteveA

edit: fixed my math.

Here is the command to send NMC
./namecoind sendtoaddress

Be sure to leave enough extra to cover the 0.01 transaction fee.

-SteveA

MtGox is having some issues today. Buying and selling isn't really working right now. If you still have this issue once they have everything fixed up, you could always create another MtGox account. Move your bitcoins to that account to sell.

-SteveA

Building a rig is super easy. Have you ever changed a component in a pc? RAM, HD, or Video Card? It is the same, only repeated a few more times, then install the OS and you are good. If you have never changed a component in a pc before, mining efficiently might be above your current skill level. Getting the hardware is only the first step. To get the most out of your machine, you need to be comfortable working with your gear. Overclocking, cooling, and being able to quickly diagnose issues are prerequisites to running a profitable mining rig. This rush is a great time to learn these things though. If you hit problems, try to distill them down to the most basic keywords, then google will have an answer for anything you come across.

-SteveA

We have another thread started for a group meet-up. Check it out for up-to-date info on what we are planning.

http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=14025.0

Awesome.

I know Gabriel would be coming from Athens, but where would you be coming from hoki? For me anywhere an Gwinnett would work well.

Would Sat around 6pm work well for everyone? Gabriel, could you bring at least one "Bitcoin Tree" and "Bitcoin Miner" shirts (in large mens size). I would like buy one of each.


-SteveA

Awesome; I sent you a PM pedro.

A hashing savant would just drive up the difficult to the speed in which he could solve the blocks. If he could solve the blocks faster than 50% of the network, he could cause some issues. Do I think it is likely that there is a hashing savant that would be able to come even close to the current network hashing ability? Absolutely not.

SteveA

Hey Everyone,

I've had my mining rig setup for a few days now and have generated a handful of coin. In order to further expand my mining, I am looking to find other local traders in the Atlanta area who are in the market to buy for cash in person. Basically I am looking for a regular group of people that are interested in making small transactions (for me, the max would be about $100 usd). Ideally this would eventually become a weekly Atlanta traders meet-up for both buyers and sellers. This would be a great opportunity to make some new like minded friends and trade locally. Basically we could meet at a Starbucks or Dunkin Donuts with our laptops (anywhere with WiFi and food). After making the trade, we could hang out and chat about this crazy new currency until the transactions confirm. Let me know if anyone is interested.

-SteveA

I don't know about shaders, but according to the hardware chart, the 6470M will hit 31.0Mhash/s. I wouldn't recommend mining with the mobility GPUs (they are designed for laptops). You'll likely fry it running full blast 24/7; it will not be able to dissipate the heat fast enough. Buy a desktop if you are going to mine.

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mining_hardware_comparison

-SteveA

Your miner should be pointing to your wallet address. If you hit a block, the first transaction will be 50BTC to your wallet address. You can just check your wallet balance to see if you hit one.

-SteveA

It is always better to have more wattage than you need. I wouldn't recommend pushing more than 80% of your PSU capability. A 1000kw supply should work, but you are going to be pushing it hard. This will effect its lifespan. So it really come down to how much you want to gamble. Is it more important for you to keep the initial investment as low as possible or to have something more reliable?

Keep in mind also that you can't always count on manufacturers to supply accurate information, so stick to PSUs with good reviews from well known companies.

-SteveA

Currently every block generated creates 50BTC + transaction fee for the person or pool who generated it. Every 210,000 blocks (about 4 years), this is reduced by half. Until eventually creating a block generates 0BTC. The idea is when it reaches this point the transaction fees should be enough to make it worth wild for the network to keep generating blocks.

I think you are missing a point. The next block in the series is based off the previous block. So if we are currently at block N, I can only compute block N + 1. I can not compute N + 2 until I know what N + 1 is. Also the difficult changes are based off the computing power of the network. We can make a guess of what the next difficulty will be, but won't know for sure until the last of the 2016 blocks from the previous difficulty is created. So it would be impossible to start generating at the next difficulty level until the previous on has ended.

Basically there is no way to compute future blocks until the current block is completed.

-SteveA

Try running a higher memory clock. I have a PowerColor 5870 that doesn't like to have the memory run under 800. I have a couple 5830's that have absolutely no issue running with the memory running at 300. Keep an eye on the wattage draw though. An 850 will work, but you generally don't want to push a PSU past 80% of its capacity. Also as the equipment heats up, it will be less efficient and will draw more power. See what you can do to get some more air to that 5850 running at 85C. It would be much better you could drop it by at least 15C. Run it without a case if you need to.

-SteveA

Welcome to the forum proverb. I'm kind of new as well, but have been reading as much as I can over the past couple of weeks.

1. Once a block is found, the problem changes and your computer does have to change what it is looking for. This isn't a big deal because you have the same probability to hit a block so long as the difficulty remains the same.

2. Accepted is the response from a pool for a piece of the work (or share) your machine has done. You will see how many shares you have completed and this number is used to compute your payout when the pool hits a block.

3. Your miner will always need to check with the pool to get the latest work. There is no need to remember because your probability of hitting a block remains the same if difficulty remains the same.

Hope that helps.

SteveA

I agree, the forum as grown fast enough to be able to support narrowly scoped sub-groups. It would be more work trying to keep everyone posting in the correct forum. There might be a need for more moderators.

If you look around at the people who use extenders to keep their GPU's cool, most of them are only using the PCI-e x1 ribbons. It doesn't require much bandwidth to the card to mine.

Ideally it would be best to split this into 2 machines. This would be preferable for several reasons.
1. Downtime: with only one machine, your hash rate drops to 0 during maintenance.
2. Redundancy: if you have a single component fail, all of your miners will go offline. Since you will be co-locating this service somewhere outside of your immediate control, this could be a big issue. Lets say your miner goes down in the middle of the night. Will your friend be willing to go let you into the server room at 1am? With two, you only drop to half of your hashrate.
3. Cheaper components: to go from 1000w to 1200w you are looking at a 95euro increase in price. That is almost the cost of another 850w PSU.


Since this isn't going to be a machine you are going to have immediate access to, I would go with two cheap motherboard with 3 PCI-e slots (buy these new). Two cheap CPUs (buy used if you can). 2G of the cheapest ram that will work in each machine would be way more than enough (buy new). Cheap HDD, borrow and old one from someone or just run off flash drives (borrow if you can). Then 6 GPUs, 3 in each. The most important thing is to get them online as quick as you can. Buy locally if possible, 3-4 days tied up in shipping is 3-4 days you aren't making money.

-SteveA

Hello everyone,

I'm kind of new to the Bitcoin community, so I thought I would introduce myself and see if there are other people in my area that have also been bitten by the Bitcoin bug.

Ideally I would love to setup a weekly or bi-weekly meetup for others here in Atlanta. This would be a great opportunity to meet other people locally for trading, sharing knowledge and making some new like minded friends. If you are interested, let me know so see can see if we can get this ball running. 

Meeting place would be flexible and based on where everyone was coming from. Basically any public place  with WiFi and food/drinks. What do you guys/gals think?

- SteveA