Fantastic thread, Yipyip.  It was really helpful for me.  Even though I'm not technically a newbie, there is a lot to learn in mining coins.  I've tried the Add2PSU device and found that I couldn't get it to work.  2nd PSU would blip on really fast and then shut right off.  At one point, as I was fiddling with everything, I hit the power switch and saw a small puff of smoke come up from the motherboard right in front of my face from a tiny (literally .5mm^2) chip on the MB.  I thought "crap I've fried my $200 MB" but restored the cabling to it's original config (removing the 2nd PSU from the system) and it booted up just like normal - whew!

Based on your advice, I'm going to invest some coins to get a new 1500W PSU (my main one is a 1000W, good for running 3 video cards and that's about it).

I also thought it impressive you managed to cool your rigs when temps outside were 100+ deg F without air conditioning.  Very impressive :-)

Cheers, mate.

nevermind.  I didn't realize the field to the left of the change button was editable.  I pasted the address in my wallet into that field and clicked change and it worked fine D'oh! (where's the facepalm smiley?)

Sorry, I guess that last post was a question.  How am I supposed to change the address in my account's settings when it won't let me?  The minute I click that change button, the error message appears.

Thanks for the link!  It doesn't give me a chance to enter a different address - when I click on change wallet address I get an error message "Wallet address entered was already assigned to your account."

http://i.imgur.com/Swhc55N.png

Hello, I've managed to accumulate several bitcoins and have been reading and reading to try and understand how to get them from my account at BTC Guild to my Bitcoin wallet.  I must have done something wrong because when I request a payout from my account it says "Send My Balance To

" as you can see in the following image
http://i.imgur.com/FIuZiak.png
However, the addresses shown in my bitcoin wallet are different and I don't see a way to add the address from my account at BTC Guild to the wallet:

http://i.imgur.com/EbnNVE5.png

Sorry for cutting the right edge off of each image - I don't know if I'm supposed to show wallet addresses or not 

I really just wanna cash these things in so I can do something with them!

Thanks for posting this!  As a newbie, I am struggling to take in all the information related to bitcoins.  Posts like this are really helpful.

A user on Newegg's EggXpert hardware forum has posted a very useful chart of all the modern Radeon cards broken down by price category first, and then generation (5850, 6870, etc) next.

The most helpful feature is that 5000-series cards are ranked next to 6000-series so you can see how they compare to each other.  These cards are all ranked alongside nVidia cards for further reference.

It has helped me to understand just how screwed up AMD's naming scheme was for the 6000-series cards.  It's not entirely accurate for our uses - for example, the 6000-series equivalent to a Radeon 5850, according to our charts at Mining Hardware Comparison is the 6950 - a 1,100-bump-up in number.  But the chart has the 5850 next to a 6850 .

For reference, according to our charts here are the least and largest hashrates for each card:
6950: 272-432
5850: 240-420

Very interesting, huh.

I've been keeping records of various statistics, including the current value of the BTC and have noticed it steadily declining over the last few weeks.  I don't think I've seen it go up once.  Does anyone know what's going on?  The highest value I have for the BTC is from when I began keeping records, on 6/16/11.  Then it was 16.7 USD/BTC.  Today, 12.52

Yeah, the disparity between hash rates on the same cards is kind of perplexing.  I see a difference of more or less 100 Mh/s between the lowest rate and the highest rate in some cards.  Some cards are genuinely better than others within the same generation (better silicone) allowing for better overclocks while some bitcoin miners are more experienced with bitcoin mining and/or hardware/software setup.

I corrected that figure in the post right before the one you wrote (above).

I didn't exactly read it wrong, I was just being lazy.  I took a survey of the 20 lowest-scored 5850s, not realizing there were 10 more beyond that.  The average of all 30 5850 scores (which maxed out at 410 for an OC'd card) resulted in an average rate of 318.2 Mh/s

Based on the available data of 24 entries, the 5830 has an average hash rate of 290 Mh/s  That is not much less than the average 5850 rate.  But then again, the price of the 5850 is just like its hash rate - just a bit more than the 5830. 

Regarding the 5770, I don't think we've been talking about that one in this thread.  Did you mean the 6790?

Hmm, I'd like to know how this is possible at an average of 286 Mh/s.  That will generate only 1.3BTC/week (that's every 7 days).  To generate enough money to pay off the card ($130) it would take you about 7 weeks.  Maybe this used to be possible, but it's not anymore 

Let's say I purchased 3 of these things (enough to populate one motherboard), well that would theoretically do the job 3x as fast...

So we're making 3.9BTC/week.  At this rate one could pay off one card every 2.3 weeks.

I think that means since the days when a HD 8350 could pay itself off in 2 weeks, the difficulty has roughly trippled.

The 5830 averages 286 Mh/s in a survey of 20 of the entries on the Hardware Mining Comparison Chart.
The 5850 averages 236 Mh/s in a survey of about the same number of entries (can't remember now).  That is an incredible difference!

I guess it can be attributed to the fact that the GPU used in the 5830 is the same one used in the 5870.

Right now Amazon has a 5830 for $154 and a 5850 for $161.  Very small diff in price, but big diff in Mh/s.

I tried what you posted but get roughly 9-11 Mh/s more by using the following flags: PLATFORM=0 DEVICE=0 VECTORS BFI_INT FASTLOOP AGGRESSION=6  I don't know why, it just works.  I got these flags by looking at the console of the guiminer and copying what it had there to a batch file on my desktop.

Going by the information at http://bitminer.info/  I noticed that the AMD HD 6790 appears to be the card whose investment one could recoup the fastest.  This is 72.91 break-even days - just over 2 months.

But in Maximum PC's July issue, in the article "Attack of the $150 GPUs," (I scanned it in and uploaded it here) the 6790 was billed as playing second fiddle to the ever-so-slightly-higher-priced 6850 with this conclusion: "In the end, [the 6970] offers decent enough performance in its class, but bear in mind, for just a few bucks more, you can pick up an HD 6850."

It says that the 6790 is derived from the Barts GPU used in the 6850, but with a big chunk disabled (READ: disabled at the factory).  The 6790 and 6850 both have the same number of transistors (1.7B) but the 6850 has 960 stream processors while the 6970 only has 800.  ROPS are cut in half on the 6970 from the 6850's 32.

To compensate for this, they bumped up the core voltage and speed, making a second power cord to the 6970 necessary (the 6850 only uses 1).  Now at https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mining_hardware_comparison the Mh/s for the 6790 is listed as 220 while that of the 6850 averages 236.6 (from a low of 171 to a overclocked high of 301.4).  Since the single entry on that chart for the 6970 states the card was overclocked by 140Mhz above the factory default of 860 Mhz, it is safe to assume one would get lesser results from a typical retail card, let's say 195 Mh/s. 

I don't know what "simple maths" kristopher did over at http://bitminer.info/ but I'm sure they're accurate as long as his data is accurate.  Taking the only entry from the Mining Hardware Comparison Chart and using it to base the rest of his data on is fine - it's the only data there - but in this case it is misleading.

I don't think the 6970 is a very good card to buy for mining based on what I've seen thus far.  If anyone around here is using these cards, please update the Chart so we can have more data on them.

The most perfect place in the world to mine for bitcoins might just be Antarctica.  Why?  Because it has 2 elements in abundance needed to mine for bitcoins - a never-ending supply of freezing cold air, and endless wind due to the vast expanses of land with no trees or anything to break up the wind.

Now if you were lucky enough to secure a spot in an outpost there AND had somewhat limitless funds you could theoretically ship all the hardware you'd need to the base, and assemble it all.  For electricity you could build small wind turbines.  For internet just use 2-way satellite!  And every once-in-a-while just buy more stuff off Newegg and have it shipped to your location.

To take advantage of the freezing cold outside, use liquid cooling throughout all your rigs and have it all funneled to radiators outside the building (or just build your rigs in a shed outside - probably an easier method, though it would suck to have to go out there all the time).  The only problem I'd foresee would be if there was an interruption in your electricity supply from the wind turbines and you had your radiators for the cooling loops outside the water would freeze in the radiators - very very bad.  So it would be best for those of your moving down south to mine for BTC to instead just place your PCs in a shed outside the outpost.

IF you need any more advice for life mining in the freezing cold, just ask - I'm here for you, dear BTC miner ;-)

I would use very good ear plugs and put a warning sign on the door to my bitcoin mining operation: "Danger!  Extreme Noise.  Ear protection Required"

@bitcoinporn - The only thing I've purchased so far was a AMD 5670 for $59.  It gets around 86 Mh/s.  I also mine with my GeForce GTX470, which computes at the same rate as the 5670.  I've generated 2 BTC in the last 1 1/2 months :-/

@yellowcar - Good point.  But when you're unemployed, you begin looking at income generating options you'd never consider while employed.  And the longer the unemployment lasts, the more options one considers.  This is a poor vector of income for the unemployed - actually, I understated the point - this is an extremely poor vector of income for the unemployed.

So then why even bother?
I know some people who mine bitcoins do so for the sheer geekiness of it all, the fun of playing with uber PC hardware and making it sweat.  I know some other do so for the idea of perhaps getting back some of their investment in hardware.  But surely there aren't very many other reasons, right?

I guess if someone were to just happen to have a lot of hardware already installed and at their disposal it would seem smart to put it to good use.  But it seems to me in the end it's just a rich man's game.  If I had disposable income I would probably play around with it like this I suppose - it would be fun!

And I still wouldn't be out of the hole to buy new mining equipment to stay on top of the difficulty curve.  Bleh.