So, for the last week or so the internet has been abuzz with stories about “BitCoin”, the new all-digital currency that’s going to destabilize governments around the world and bring us to a new utopian society. Well, yeah it’s a lot of hype. But when I heard about the “mining” aspect of it, and how it’s almost entirely GPU based, I figured I would check it out.
From what I can tell, the “mining” part is really just a brute-force hash attack, looking for specific numbers. I ran some experiments with this once before as part of my Quadro5000 review using HashGPU. Using the OpenCL bitcoin miner, I figured I could some up with some nice results. I had a machine handy with two GeForce GTX285’s in it, and easily managed to eek out about 64Mh/s on each card, for a total around 128Mh/s. (Mh/s = Million Hashes per Second). I also happen to have the Quadro 5000 card around, based on the Fermi Architecture, so I thought I’ld throw it in as it’s not currently in the Wiki Hardware Results.
I was very disappointed to find that my Quadro5000 could only manage about 58-59Mh/s, a startling 10% less than the GTX285. This truly baffled me. The Quadro 5000, which handily beats AMD cards in most benchmarks, falls waaay behind the ATI offerings which easily rake in 100+Mh/s, some hitting 300Mh/s.
All in all, I ran with two GTX285’s for about 4 days, and mined all of 2 BitCoins. Presumably with a single AMD Radeon 6990, for $700 which claims to rake in over 650Mh/s , I could have make 5x that. It’s interesting to see that as popular as CUDA is, there are still several problems where AMD’s “stream” design beats NVidia’s hands-down.
And of course, this wouldn’t be a BitCoin article if I didn’t include “If you liked this article, feel free to send some BitCoins to 1Gahg3UcDDi96an43AUUSVE2jTJomj8AzZ“.
P.S. If anyone actually does send me any, shoot me an email with the amount for a Shout-Out here.
Update 7pm: Wow.. I just refreshed my wallet and thanks to the 3 people who actually sent me a total of 0.12 BTC, the equivalent of about $1 at current exchange rates.
As your first idea was to test it because the Quadro 5000 is missing in the wiki… Would you please add your setting to the wiki now? 🙂
I was going to, but it seems you have to be an approved user to edit. I was hoping someone else would see it and add it, maybe even with a link back? *hinthint*
ATI is the way to go for integer math, and bitcoin and most cryptography is integer.
http://cryptoanarchy.us/store
As if Bitcoins is nothing more than a computertrick ! It is far more, and hopefully it would be able to replace the financial mash that is created in the USA
It’s not a fraud. I joined a Mining Pool ( http://mining.bitcoin.cz/ ), and managed to eek out 2 BitCoins for my efforts.
Your article is a fraud. The Bitcoins are released in 50 Bitcoin increments. Since you say you mined 2 bitcoins means you really didn’t do it. Stick to writing and don’t pretend to be a miner or at least don’t lie.
With bitcoins I was able to send you .01 bitcoins from my iPad using my instawallet bitcoins will is equal to the invention of gold as money. I’m sure 6000 years ago many people said you can’t eat gold and not useful for anything else. Yes that’s PART of what makes it good money.
It’s a currency designed to sell graphics cards?
It would be great to see more in depth analysis on breaking even on the cost of card (and pc, electricity, net access) given likely future deflation of hardware costs vs. bitcoin value.
Future deflation and such is anyone’s guess, but if you hit their Wiki you can see breakdowns of “Megahash/Joule”, which an interesting metric of efficiency. The problem is that there’s no fixed number of hashes per Bitcoin, so that part of it is variable.
There are several factors in play when you try to calculate the profitability of buying hardware to mine bitcoins, but two are major: BTC/MHash and USD/BTC. The first one is always decreasing. The second one is not always increasing, but has a tremendous track record.
héhé nice !
i’m usuing amd radeon 5870 and i’m ~600Mh/s :p
BS
Maybe two 5870’s. A single 5870 tops out at just under 400MH/s using the latest poclbm miner and overclocking to the max…
Thank you for not writing a sensationalist and biased article on BitCoin. There’s been a rash of them lately. In reference to ‘mining’, an important fact to mention is that the reward is payment for your node providing vital services to the peer-to-peer network that BitCoin consists of.
Your hash-finding secures transactions in the next block, if you find the solution, including your bounty if you succeed. The collective Terahashes of the network is what provides security to all transactions flowing across it.
As you’ve discovered, CPU mining is definitely out, as is any GPU mining using NVidia chipsets. As a result, there’s been tremendous backorder problems at most major suppliers for older 5870’s and even 6990 series video cards.
It is an interesting race ‘to the bottom’ as difficulty rises to match the desired 1-block-every-ten-minute creation throttle, lagging by as much as ten days.
As for ‘hype’, all BitCoin promises is exactly what currency today is not – decentralized, and free from abuse by short-sighted political and economic policy making. The future is here, all you have to do is get on board.
Cheers!