As the official spokesperson of The Official Worldwide Freemason Shadow Government Conspiracy, LLC*, I can make this statement:



*, **: "The Official Worldwide Freemason Shadow Government Conspiracy, LLC" and "The Worldwide Jewish New World Order, Inc" are officially registered trademarks of Fox News.  Janet Jackson's Wardrobe Malfunction used by permission.

By the same token, no one can refute "Bitcoin could be at $30 in a few months!" since both statements rely on subjective and selective data.

This is a gamble, pure and simple, and anyone who thinks they have a "foolproof system" is the one who's going to be hurting soon.  Play this like any other market -- take profit when you can, don't invest more than you can afford to lose.

There is a second gamble here, though:  the VLIW design could change for worse or for better, like you said.  Consider this: if the 7000-series changes in such a way that they emulate NVidia's approach (better actual D3D/OGL performance at the cost of lower hashing performance) then the 69xx cards you now have start to go UP in resale value, since it becomes known that there won't be anything in the near term to replace them.  This is, again, a gamble, you are betting that the future will turn out one way or the other.

CoolerMaster is good, definitely not the cheap crap you find in bargain-basement PCs.  It's a name that has been around for a while.

With two cards, if you're getting a lot of heat from the PS and no heat from the other exhaust fan then the heat you're feeling coming out of the PS could actually be FROM the PS.

Do you know the quality of the PS?  Is it a "cheapie" or something more premium?  I ask because cheap power supplies have pretty sucky efficiency ratings, so the more power your system needs to more heat your PS generates.  It you're using a budget PS I'd definitely consider upgrading to a more premium PS with dual fans and/or "80 PLUS Certified" at least (80 PLUS Gold/Platinum is better, but more expensive).

You don't like it when people attack you personally, huh?  This shit just got real...  Check it:

You kick puppies.
You eat babies.
You make babies and puppies fight for money.
You make Michael Vick fight babies and puppies for money.
YOU caused Hurricane Irene!
The upcoming horror of QE3 is YOUR fault.
The DC Earthquake?  Yeah, you, jerk.
It's your fault every time Arsenal loses to Man United.
..and vice versa.
It it wasn't for you, the Tacoma Narrows bridge would still be standing.
Justin Beiber.  We blame you for him.
..ditto Lady Gaga.
Naoto Kan resigned because of YOU.
Janet Reno used to be a supermodel until YOU got a hold of her.
The Statue of Liberty is green because of you.

And most importantly...

Every time I get an ice-cream headache, it's YOUR FAULT.



(I have no idea who you are, but I saw this post and had to reply.)

"The only secure computer is one that's unplugged, locked in a safe, and buried 20 feet under the ground in a secret location... and I'm not even too sure about that one."

Variously attributed to Dennis Huges of the FBI or Bruce Schneier.

Yes, people still do.  I don't know about them online, but you can get them at any US Post office, obviously.  I used to use them all time for eBay orders, though that was over 10 years ago and I don't know what they cost now.

Good to note that there are other companies besides the USPS that offer money orders for the US (and some for Canada).  Western Union can do them (as well as money wires) and the 7-11 Convenience Store chain does them, though you can only cash them in at another 7-11 store (or Western Union office for WU Money Orders).

People still use money orders in the 'States a lot because USPS Money orders are one of the only forms of payment accepted for a lot of government transactions, too, the other being a Certified Bank Check/Cheque.  For example, getting your US Passport requires you send the payment in either a USPS Money order or Certified check (no cash or personal checks are accepted for that).

Many options:

(hardware)
KVM Switch.

(software)
VNC.
Remote Desktop.
SSH.

I'll argue your language, but the point is true.  This is not unique to the US Dollar though, it is the same story for any fiat currency; I think it was Keynes who theorized that any currency that A) is not tied to a uncommon base commodity and B) can have it's quantity arbitrarily increased, is inherently inflationary.

In a strange way then, BTC is less "virtual" than $, £ or €: we all know now that because the protocol that BTC operates on sets an arbitrary limit on the total number of "coins" that the currency has to (eventually) be deflationary.  Obviously that was the point when Satochi set a solid limit.  There has never been a commonly exchanged currency with an absolute ceiling on the number of units "floated", so it would be very interesting to see what would happen, especially if we get to the point where 8 decimal places is not enough to service all potential holders.

A true deflationary system would royally fuck the money-lending market as it exists too, since our current system of usury relies on a currency valuation being flat or inflationary.

A pure gold (or any other non-renewable commodity) standard is *theoretically* deflationary, but in practice it is almost never strictly that way since the pool of available gold is not set and new gold is mined or recovered all the time, but the same gold is also removed from the currency pool by industry.

Quite a lot, if you're implying that that bitcoin is currently enjoying a more stable valuation than USD.

The 10-day moving average (10MA) for bitcoin has fluctuated from 14.3USD to 12.8USD.  That's about an 11% fluctuation.

Compare that to something like the USD -> Euro exchange for the same period, 0.713 to .7028.  That's about a 0.9% fluctuation.

I'm not going to say it's bad or good, right or wrong, all I am saying is consider a 10-fold difference in pricing volatility.

92C is really too high for sustained periods (more than a few minutes at a time).  Silicon starts to warp and break down at 90C.  Not that it will abruptly stop at that temp, but that's when the MTBF curve starts to really accelerate.  The card may be qualified to run that hot but that is just in short bursts, not for hours on end.  Even 89 is pushing it in terms of long-term reliability; strive for temps below 80C if you can.

Try to exchange it under warranty, I think you will succeed since you did not modify the card and they should see it as a run-of-the-mill RMA. In theory they could inspect the card and chips and maybe claim it was over-stressed, but that would take a lot of time I doubt they would put that kind of effort in to it since it would be easier just to replace your card.

It may not even be heat related, it may be that you got a card with a bad VRM.

Good luck!

It all depends on timeframe and investment.

As long as the kWH/BTC is less than the tradable price of BTC then it is profitable depending on how patient you are.

I started mining about 5 weeks ago, I bought a new midrange card for it.  I have now just about broken even on that card with regard to the BTC I've generated.  No, I can't quit my job, but it does effectively reduce the cost of the new card (that I can then use for games) to zero, assuming I cash in my BTC for "real money". Technically I have "profited".

"Profit" is relative.  With regard to BTC a huge pitfall people hit is that PROFITABLE has to mean I CAN LIVE OFF THE MONEY GENERATED.  That's simply not going to realistic and, frankly, trying to achieve that is reckless.  True, some people do that, but some people also win the lottery, and spending your paycheck on lottery tickets is never considered a stable form of income.

If you are mining BTC for a quick large payout, look elsewhere, this is not for you.

Public Service Notice: Please don't feed the trolls.

I like the concept, but I think the pricing model is problematic because you're basically trading money for money, essentially buying hashes.  Where that could have problems is that as the BTC exchange rate goes down people will be less likely to pay because they can see, in black and white, the cost basis and get turned off.

Another model, one I would like to try if I had the capital (I don't) is a leasing model: lower entry fee but a larger cost in the long term.

Example:  A basic machine with 2 6990's would be about $1,800USD, more than most people are wanting to pay up front.  You could offer to lease that machine for $200/month, but require a 12-month commitment (contract), so in the end you earn $600 extra gross.  Those costs are just examples, you would change them to suit your market.

It's not even a new model, really, server hosting companies have been doing this for over a decade.  It won't appeal to everyone, especially those who like playing with hardware, but people who believe BTC is a long-term currency but don't have the space/time/skill to build or maintain miners would jump at the chance.

Possibilities:

Lower the aggression on that card alone, it may be too hard for the card to mine and draw the desktop at the same time.

If this is in a tower config, try laying the case on the side -- the 'main' card may be soaking up heat from the cards below it and overheating.

Lower that cards' GPU/mem clocks and undo any voltage changes, the card may not be as stable at high clock/high heat/low mem as the others.

Swap the crashing card to a different slot, see if it still crashes.  It may be the slot itself.

Above all check heat and rejection rate; a higher than average rejection rate often means a card is overclocked too high or somehow defective.

... as for making the miner restart when the driver crashes, try using of the scripts floating around the forums that will kill and restart your miners ever XX minutes.

I am able to get 296MH/s with my HIS 6870 (reference design):

Phoenix 1.5 using phatk
worksize 128
aggression 11
bfi_int
vectors
Core at 990mHz
Mem at 880mHz
Stock voltages.
Fan at 65%
GPU ~74C with case closed.

I have been able to get 305MH/s by pushing my core to 1,000 but it is not reliable for more than a few minutes.  990mHz is my limit.

"No Mr. Bond, I expect you to die."

Translation: it isn't.  If you mine in a pool and this fact worries you:

A) ask your pool admins to enable HTTPS urls for miners
B) move to a pool that uses HTTPS for miners
C) move to a pool that allows you to create miner-only passwords (e.g. you can use them in a URL for your miner, but they cannot be used to log in to that pools' web site to change your account, a la bitcoinpool.com)

With high CPU usage is sounds like GUIminer is using a CPU core for mining.

Try running without the crossfire connector (run them as two separate, independent cards): sometime when cards are crossfire'd they will be seen as one GPU to the system, not two, depending on miner and system.

By no means does that mean there is no value here.  There are still many, many dot-coms from the bubble era that are alive and well.  Sure, only 2% of dot-coms ultimately survived the crash, but that's the point: The bubble did not cause those dot-coms of a crash, they failed largely not because they had no viable long-term business model.

Short moral of the story: Invest for value, not because everyone else is doing it.

If you are riding the BTC train because you have done research and see a value proposition here, that's one thing.  If you are getting in to it because you want something for nothing just because everyone else is doing it, you deserve to lose.

YOU must decide YOURSELF if the model underlying bitcoin is something you wish to trust, and for how long.