Slashdot Mirror
Bitcoin Mining Tests On 16 NVIDIA and AMD GPUs
Vigile writes "For users that have known about the process of bitcoin mining the obvious tool for the job has been the GPU. Miners have been buying up graphics cards during sales across the web but which GPUs offer the most dollar efficient, power efficient and quickest payoff for the bitcoin currency? A series of tests over at PC Perspective goes through 16 different GPU configurations including older high-end cards through modern low-cost options and even a $1700+ collection with multiple dual-GPU cards installed. The article gives details on how the mining programs work, why GPUs are faster than CPUs inherently and why AMD seems to be so much faster than NVIDIA."
Did you know that it's been nearly a week since the last Bitcoin story on Slashdot? I was worried that the standards were changing and blatant slashvertisements for bitcoin were no longer getting through! Never been happier to be proved wrong.
With all that computation power being used I can't help but think about projects like Folding@Home and think it's a bit wasted on the sort of margins you'd be getting back - even at the optimistic high end (which don't factor in power costs).
jaymz
Given that the difficulty increases exponentially you're not going to be making their calculated B$/day for the whole year, so while the quickest to pay of is 70 days if the difficulty increases at the usual rate, you'd probably want to add on another month or two.
For the ones taking nearly half a year to pay off at the current rate, you'll probably spend closer to a year before you'll even break even.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
Other than being a decent applied cryptography experiment, BitCoin has no real use in the real world. It isn't anonymous, it isn't backed by anyone that matters. The currency is too unstable to trust for anything. Its architecture gives a lot more power to people who come on early, and whom likely are going to cash out if people catch on.
I'd rather hear about an Amiga emulator, checkered ball spinning while formatting an 880K floppy disk running on the nVidia hardware than yet another BitCoin article, because BitCoin reminds me a lot of the old MAKE.MONEY.FAST posts of yore.
So now it induces nerds to stock op on GPU hardware? I get it! BitCoin is not currency at all, is just a new game genre: MMOM (pronounced like "mom"), Massively Multiplayer Online Money. The hottest MMOM in town. Spread the word.
I keep wondering why do BitCoin articles keep showing up here. Any given article doesn't really seem quite nerdy enough to be real 'News For Nerds' (and yes, I agree that most of the articles here haven't been News For Nerds for a quite some time), and it's kind of a weird topic.
I kinda feel like "BitCoin articles is to Slashdot as gold advertisements is to the Fox News Network".
So I'm going to coin a term that we can add to the Slashdot Taxonomy (or the 'slashonomy', as I like to call it: :) ): Slashgold!
As in:
Random dude: "So, was the article good?"
You: "Naw, it was just another fluff piece promoting slashgold"
I've always thought Bitcoin was stupid, but let's do some more analysis on the energy costs here, which this site really should have included.
The best GPU perf/watt was the 5870x2 (Ares OC) at 1.584 (Mhash/s)/watt. Not sure where they got their total watt figures from, but from a review site, it is 500W, unoverclocked. This site says it's 50W more overclocked. I'll be generous and not include this since the CPU isn't being taxed as much. So 500W power consumption.
So, typing 500 watts * 1 year * (10 cents / (kilowatt*hour)) into Google: about $482. Taking their $1,666 one year profit figure (mining profits - cost of card), it is now really a cost of $1,184. Which isn't as bad as I thought it'd be.
They didn't include the effect of increasing difficulty on decreased mining speed, but theoretically the currency should become more valuable as it goes on.
Nobody cares about bitcoin. We don't give a rat's ass about bitcoin. Please stop posting stories about bitcoin. I don't know how many other ways there are to say it, but we don't give a fsck about bitcoin.
I'm going to issue my own Fiat currency, backed by Fiats (the automobile). I still haven't worked out how much the average Fiat should be worth. There's no real purpose in this, other than to confuse the hell out of people who think I'm issueing a fiat currency (illegal) rather than a Fiat currency (perfectly legal, AFAIK). BTW, I'm not even sure if Fiat is still making cars, and they have a repuation for being a real POS. Therefore, it shouldn't be too hard for me to fill a lot with rundown Fiats to back my currency.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Please don't start mining Bitcoin. You will not turn a profit. It's hard work. It's no fun. Don't do it.
(the difficulty is high enough, we don't need another influx of miners)
All this hype is not coincidence, and it is not because bitcoins became useful suddenly. It is people hyping it to try and get others in to the market. They want to cash out, but can't in any large amount without tanking the value. Need to get new suckers lined up.
The assertion that early adopters have an unfair amount of bitcoins is on the one hand completely irrelevant to the issues of usability, and on the other hand is completely typical of all inventions, commodities and the world in general.
This continued repetition of this idea stems from the misconception that Bitcoin is a Ponzi, pyramid or other type of scheme designed with the intent to defraud later adopters. That is not the design intent of bitcoin. It is an online medium of exchange that compensates people who improve it's security. The fact that people improved the security early on helps the security for everyone later. They got paid pennies at the time, and people who are helping now are getting paid pennies too. It has turned out that those pennies (if they kept them) have become valuable now. This is EXACTLY like being an early adopter of Apple stock, and could just as easily not have happened.
The reason bitcoin is being talked about so much is not because someone is trying to scam you and "cash out" their early adopter advantage. People are talking about it because regardless of the value of a bitcoin, it is a frictionless* way to exchange value over the internet. You needn't hold bitcoins to participate in bitcoins. You can change them to cash the second you receive them. Bitcoins are useable now. They are a currency now.
I would respectfully recommend that people who want to talk about what's wrong with bitcoin do their due diligence, before commenting on something that they clearly have little understanding of.
*frictionless means: 1) you can open a business and start excepting payments this very second anywhere in the world, with customers anywhere else in the world, (excepting money is no more difficult then paying money - try that with credit cards), 2) money you transfer to anyone in the world is instantaneous, in as little as an hour you can be 100% sure that you have received bitcoins that can never be taken away from you or reversed in any way. 3) It cost almost nothing to pay anyone any amount with bitcoins.
All of these elements provide value whither you call it currency, commodity or just software. I use it to do work, and I find that valuable to me right now. The value of bitcoins is not a theory, predictions of it's failure are what is theoretical.
currency! First one to post a verifiable signature on a Slashdot story gets a Slashcoin. Taco and crew are then our new federal reserve--they can inflate the currency to pay our debt to China by posting more duplicate stories!
Our problems are solved!
This sig is false.
So as I've been reading on bitcoin for the last hour - I think I realized something that I have not heard really in the criticism of it yet.
So - a lot of people are thinking bitcoin will be REALLY huge in the future, so let's pretend it does get really huge - let's say it's the only currency that the entire world uses, for example. What would happen is... as soon as I do a single transaction with an individual, I would be able to use sophisticated software (just bear with me) to figure out their entire self-worth by looking at the database-thing, is that correct? Because you could see the entire bitcounts that have went to, and came from that address.
Wouldn't this be a single point of failure for bitcoin - because most people probably wouldn't want their entire self-worth being on display for the whole world to see.
Any thoughts?
I see no evidence of this at all. No major stores take it, so you can't use it for any kind of serious commerce. It isn't exchanged on any reputable currency exchange. I've seen nothing done to address some serious flaws brought up (like the possibility of spending a coin multiple times before it is noticed or the built in deflation). I've seen no analysis of the cryptography by leading authorities.
All I see is speculators playing around and people who think Cryptonomicron is an instruction manual not an entertainment novel.
You compare it to Apple stock, I compare it to Flooz.com stock. Sure, there was a time when it was "worth" something and if you had gotten in and out in the right time you could make money. However as it was a stupid idea with nothing really behind it, it collapsed to nothing.
I built a bitcoin mining machine two weeks ago. There's more you should know that TFA only hints at. First, check out these graphs. The total CPU power competing for the 50 BTC generated every 10 minutes has increased 10X every quarter for 6 quarters, and soon, it will drop to 30 BTC every 10 minutes. If you think you can make money given that bitcoin value is flat or falling, while you have to split pay outs with more miners every day, well... ha ha! That's a good one.
That said, I'm a happy miner. I was looking for an excuse to build a gaming machine anyway, and I was able to do a decent machine for about $430, with an HD5770 doing just over 200 MH/s. Even if I earn nothing for mining, I'm still glad I built the machine. I needed another Ubuntu server anyway, and the mining only loads the CPU 1%. Next year, I plan to put Windoz on it and give the machine to my son. I can hardly wait to see what he thinks of the graphics.
Celebrate failure, and then learn from it - Nolan Bushnell
Sorry, I find those arguments highly uncompelling.
First off, no I can't send them to almost anyone. I can send them to almost noone. Ok well let's be a bit more precise: I can PAY them to almost no one. Money is only money if you can spend it, and nobody I wish to spend money with accepts bitcoins.
In terms of currency, that is not an issue. Credit cards are global and my bank will convert currency on my behalf, in realtime. I've used my cards in other countries with ease.
The no chargeback/third party is a disadvantage, not an advantage. I have no one to help protect me and my money. If my credit card is compromised somehow, I bear no financial responsibility. If someone across the world rips me off, I have a recourse. I have none of that with bitcions. They get stolen, I'm SOL. If someone outside of the laws of my country screws me, I can do nothing.
Credit card transactions happen in seconds these days.
It is NOT easy to spend bitcoins. You can only spend a currency people take. I know of NOWHERE that I shop that takes them.
Your portability argument is extremely silly. why the hell would I want to keep millions on an easily lost, stolen, or damaged SD card? Part of the usefulness of digital banking is money is secure in databases, you don't actually carry it with you. I carry the means to access all my wealth (passwords, SecureID tokens, ID cards, etc) with me. However the money itself is tracked in banks, so that it cannot be easily taken.
As for the disadvantages, I've seen no response. Where is the cryptographic analysis? Let's see some analysis from people like Schneier and Rijmen. Let's see the reports from institutions like the NSA and IBM? Crypto takes a long time and a lot of analysis to prove. AES went through 5 years of evaluation by the top minds before becoming a standard.
Also, please tell me how it at all prevents a multiple-spending attack: Someone sends bitcions to multiple different entities, in rapid succession. How do you verify this doesn't happen? I understand that yes, eventually this can be traced, I mean as the person accepting them, how do you make sure this didn't happen and you aren't stuck holding the bag?
You've said a lot about what you'd like bitcoins to be. That changes nothing of what they are.
People aren't good at math and they don't consider all the costs. They see a get rich quick scheme and/or think that Cryptonomicron will be a reality and forget to check their figures and make sure all costs are accounted for.
I'm amazed how many people forget power costs for things. I've got that for things like F@H and distributed.net. People will say I should do it because I have a very high end computer at home, or suggest I set the lab system at work to do it at night. They can't understand why not since I've "Already bought the hardware." The idea of power never seems to occur and they usually say "But it can't cost that much." I explain that when you take in power usage, and then again more usage for cooling costs, it adds up fast. It is not a cost I care to bare.
The obvious reason for BC's attraction is that it shares the same properties as gold: limited supply, inoxydable, barely falsibiable (except for gold plating of tungsten ingots).
...
*PLUS*
In some respects, BC is even better than gold: zero weight, invisible, unseizable.
It can still be (slowly) mined at no cost, in winter as a byproduct of heating.
It is a tax haven, immune to government greed.
*BUT*
Unlike precious metals, BC is artificial: Science and technology will never create new precious metals, but Computer Science can create infinitely many clones of bitcoin, so that the claimed rarity is an illusion.
I expect the birth, within a few months, of some new BC look-alike, easier to mine, backed by some wealthy individual able to offer a large choice of goods and services: enough to start a real ecosystem, but of course, imitations will emerge to compete.
The original Bitcoins will then be forgotten, and by the way, so will be the dollar.
My two cents
Pyramid scheme: A system of selling goods in which agency rights are sold to an increasing number of distributors at successively lower levels
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyramid_scheme
A pyramid scheme is a non-sustainable business model that involves promising participants payment, services or ideals, primarily for enrolling other people into the scheme or training them to take part, rather than supplying any real investment or sale of products or services to the public. Pyramid schemes are a form of fraud.
No real investment, products or services? Check.
Promising participants payment? Check.
Priority in enrolling other people into the scheme? Check.
Non-sustainable business model?
Hmmm... Converting electricity into ones and zeroes of highly volatile value and no practical use beyond said value, which can't be readily converted to goods, services or even monetary units...? Oh, SO check.
There's no hierarchy of "agency rights", and, even metaphorically, bitcoins have never been sold as "a remedy for all diseases." It's like kids don't know what words mean.
Seriously?
You'll be the one to pull the "kids don't know what words mean" AND "metaphorically" card(s)?
When arguing about lite-FUCKING-ral meaning of a meta-FUCKING-phor for a FUCKING SCAM?
For fucks sake... Kids these days...
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
I feel that Bitcoin discussions always fall apart because people cannot make a distinction between the Computer Science of Bitcoin and the Economics of Bitcoin.
The Bitcoin Algorithm is a peer-to-peer transaction protocol. The algorithm was self-published by S Nakamoto as "Bitcoin: A peer-to-peer electronic cash system" in 2008. To my knowledge, the paper has not been accepted in a peer reviewed Computer Science journal. Nevertheless, there appears to be growing acceptance that the underlying technology is sound. However, that says nothing about the validity of applications based on the peering transaction protocol.
The Economics of Bitcoin is about how the original coins are generated, how new coins are minted, how the currency is regulated, etc. Nakamoto's paper has nothing to say about these issues. In particular, many people feel that Bitcoins have been distributed in a manner that makes them a Ponzi scheme. I am not aware of any paper published in a peer reviewed Economics journal that contradicts this.
The lack of a peer reviewed CS publication is terrible, but not fatal. Bitcoin has enough popularity now that we can expect crypto researchers to be looking at it as an easy target for a quick pub. The lack of a pub on a flaw in the technology of Bitcoin is not bad. This technology might be useful for something.
However, the lack of a peer reviewed Economics pub addressing the Ponzi Scheme issue is fatal. In addition, I'm pretty sure that there are other important things that need to be investigated by Economists. I can't say much more about this since I am a computer scientist.
I hope people will understand that there is a distinction between Bitcoin technology and Bitcoin coins. It is possible to have a different opinion on each and an opinion on one does not imply anything about the other. I urge people in future Slashdot discussions to take care to make it clear in their posts whether or not they are talking about the technology or the coins. Thank you.
Actually, there's something else you can buy : http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/06/silkroad/
And the big advantages of bitcoins? Let's go over the advantages, shall we :
(advantages list taken from another post)
You can send them in any amount to anyone on the internet, and with almost no fees.
- International drug lords can be paid from anywhere
Your customer base is therefore the entire world not just people with your "coin of the realm"
-makes it easy to launder that drug money
If a customer pays you the money it's yours they can petition or sue you for a refund, but they can not issue an automatic charge back.
-very helpful for someone selling illegal goods
No third parties are involved, there is no one else to trust or pay fees too.
-a HUGE advantage for illegal goods transactions
You needn't hold bitcoins, there are a number of markets, as well as real world people who can change your bitcoins to cash in moments.
-Can cash out that money the moment it is convenient
Transactions happen very quickly compared to wire transfers, checks, paypal and credit cards.
-great for street corner dealing!
It is as easy to accept bitcoins as it is to spend them, unlike credit cards.
-ditto
They are very portable. While it would be difficult to travel with more then 10 thousands dollars of anything, you could easily hold millions of dollars on a micro SD.
-This is HUGE. The current drug currency of choice, the $20 and $100 bill have a massive problem : over the years, as deflation has occurred, you need more and more of it to represent a significant amount of money. A large drug business needs to move huge amounts of currency around, and micro SDs (that can be BACKED UP) are perfect. Even better, you can send huge sums of money around the world just by
Downsides : transactions are not anonymous, even though the identities of the parties are. A large drug business would be forced to use cutouts - people who act like hubs, conducting large numbers of transactions between bitcoins and real world currency (it need not be physical) and then back again. These people would not keep records of their transactions and would be based in 'liberal' jurisdictions in the world where the authorities don't give a shit.
All the arguments above also apply perfectly to the other 2 major vices - gambling and hookers. Bitcoins are a perfect way to do internet gambling, secure from the moralizing of the big credit card processors. You could do transactions with your bookie safely and securely. Hookers, same thing.
This part bugs me. I'm considering mining for a little coin, hoping I can at least pay back the cost of the hardware. But the big reason to go to BTs for people is to do transactions that can't be reversed and have no fees.