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Generally, it's not worth your time and effort to mine at home! (Some exceptions may apply.)
Age of ASIC mining
CPU mining has been unprofitable since 2011, GPU mining just slightly later.
Today, ASICs rule mining. The Bitcoin network has more than 1.7 Ehash/s (Oct 2016) now which is 1,700,000,000,000 Mhash/s. Your graphics card will be running full ...
33
Javascript has access to OpenGL ES, including shaders, so it has access to programmable parts of the GPU at nearly native speeds. I think that a smart kid might be able to build a fragment shader that does SHA256 hashing, which outputs to the stencil buffer, so that Javascript has a 2-way communication channel with the GPU.
So yeah, you could probably use ...
23
Please check this question first:
How much Bitcoin will I mine right now with hardware X?
Before you go through all this work, it is important to know what to expect from your hardware.
There are two options: solo mining or pool mining. Unless you have a lot of computing power (several ASICs), you should probably mine at a pool.
So the first thing to do ...
19
Yes it will. The component you're likely to use for mining is your video card (GPU) which consumes very little power when idle but can consume a great deal under load. Check this list of common cards and consult the Watts (W) column for how many watts your card is likely to draw. Any card worth mining on will probably draw at least 100 Watts under full load. ...
18
The specific reason that AMD cards are more efficient for Bitcoin mining is twofold and the answer to this question depends on both reasons:
AMD GPUs tend to have lower-end ALUs but make up for this by packing more ALUs onto the card overall. For most hash algorithms this is preferable.
AMD GPUs uses ALUs which can perform the 32-bit integer right rotate ...
17
An NVIDIA Tesla “Fermi” M2050 is not as fast as an ATI 5870. According to the wiki, the NVIDIA card makes around 70Mh/s and the 5870 makes around 400Mh/s.
If they were similar and if Amazon had that amount of cards available for rent, then it would be possible. Just don't forget that you would be paying $65415 per hour to sustain an attack that will not ...
15
It is possible to damage your computer by mining in the following ways:
the computer will degrade more, as it is used more (you will have to replace it sooner than normally)
the computer will overheat and some components will fail because of that (if for example, the computer is dusty. If the parts are well-maintained and the computer is not boxed in, this ...
15
Summary: different approach to calculations. Nvidia GPUs are more like CPUs, in that they have only a few processors that do work, but faster. ATI GPUs have slower processors, but a lot more of them.
You can find a more complete description on the relevant wiki page :
Firstly, AMD designs GPUs with many simple ALUs/shaders (VLIW design) that run at a ...
13
Thanks for asking this question. I see a lot of people all the time who assume GPU mining is profitable.
Try googling "bitcoin mining calculator" and see.
Presently (in 2015) the calculator will tell you that you would be able to mine one bitcoin in about 1000 to 10 000 years. But you have to consider that there are reward halvings every four years, which ...
12
For solo mining with a single GTX 680, which will produce 120 Mhashes/s, you would expect to find one block approximately every 98 years.
At the current difficulty, solo mining is inadvisable under practically all circumstances. Pooled mining should be done instead.
Furthermore, mining utilizing graphics cards is rapidly losing viability with the release ...
11
Any CPU can still be used to mine Litecoin, although much less effectively as a modern AMD GPU could.
Mining with a CPU gives you very bad hashrate therefore I wouldn't recommend it.
Even a high end CPU will not give you the hashrate of a mid range GPU.
You should use a graphics card (GPU) to mine litecoins or switch to another coin
Additional Information:...
10
I purchased Krad Miner from the creator for the bounty cost of 50 BTC, and have released it as open source (Apache 2.0 license) on Github. Since the author has other projects using the Krad label, I have renamed it to Tumen Miner. I would currently consider it alpha-quality; I have not run it, merely cleaned it up as best I could.
In the short term, I plan ...
10
It is heat that kills.
You need sufficient airflow and good case design to keep the GPU and VRM (voltage regulators) cool. Most commercial workstations have insufficent airflow. Likely it has one or two small intake and one small outtake fans. Sufficient airflow generally requires much larger fans and more open case design. Things like cases which mount ...
10
There are several options for Mining Bitcoins some of these are no longer profitable, but for the sake of being thorough here they are in order of efficiency lowest to highest:
Methods
CPU Mining (minerd)
GPU Mining (cgminer, bfgminer)
FPGA Mining (Custom software - https://github.com/fpgaminer/Open-Source-FPGA-Bitcoin-Miner)
ASIC Mining (cgminer, bfgminer,...
8
First report about mining botnet was made at the end of June, and it evolved rapidly from CPU to GPU mining. But there is no consensus about what kind of harm it will do to Bitcoin, because from the bitcoin network point of view, infected computers run legitimate mining that supports network operation.
17 Jun 2011 - Symantec suggested that it would be ...
7
Controlling the computer's temperature is really important. Excessive heat may cause hardware damage and constant crashes. High end cards tend to consume more power and produce more heat, but any system can overheat if not properly ventilated. iMac's are known for their terrible airflow and there are reports of people running into problems by mining on them. ...
7
Yes, it consumes more power. You can see, for example, by using a notebook from the battery. Turn on mining and you will see how your battery time goes down.
But unfortunately I don't have any data to provide you (saying for example that mining will consume 10%, 20%, 50% more power energy)... That depends how power-efficient is your computer processor, ...
7
Yes and no.
As far as FPGAs are concerned, I see no reason why you should not, technically, be able to handle a getwork on one of these and pass the work units to one or more FPGAs via USB.
These units do not, however, have a PCIe slot nor do they have any connectors which, to my knowledge, are capable of connecting to an external PCIe enclosure box, so ...
7
Using the Bitcoinx calculator, I found that a $1,000 rig with a 300 W power draw would need to have 750 MHash/s just to break even on power at $0.20/kWh at the current difficulty (3,438,909), exchange rate (13.13), and block reward (25).
You'd never break even on the rig itself. Thus why GPU mining is on its way out.
For a more absurd example, I priced ...
7
It would not at all be useful for Bitcoin mining. However, it may be useful for other digital cryptocurrencies, such as Litecoin or PPCoin.
6
EC2 would be prohibitively expensive to attack bitcoin but would be well suited against so called "GPU unfriendly" block chains. Against bitcoin EC most likely usage would be to "top off" an attackers hashing power. If a hypothetical attacker built a massive hashing farm but was slightly short of 51% hashing power the attacker could use EC2 instances to ...
6
Price comes from ratio of supply and demand. Bitcoin supply rate doesn't change, about 300 bitcoin per hour. So the price changes only when demand changes, and the difficulty to mine bitcoins adjusts to the new price, in another words price change would affect network difficulty, but not the other way around. Therefore video card price would affect ...
6
OpenCL allows all graphic cards to be handled in a higher level in a uniform fashion. As all GPU mining software relies on OpenCL, you would need to create your own software to mine on non-OpenCL card. Whereas it is possible, the process would be very complicated and the reward probably wouldn't be worth it (NVIDIA cards aren't good for mining).
So all in ...
6
poclbm has not been set to alter the clock rate of your GPU. Windows media player is doing this when open and adjusts the system to what it requires.
If you specify clock speeds for your GPU via parameters or a separate application you can overcome this.
Theres a number of applications which effect clock rates on windows machines, flash player open within ...
6
Heavy usage will certainly decrease the lifetime, but I think it's not incredibly much as long as it's not overclocked. You will probably even buy a new card (because the current becomes too outdated/slow) before the current one breaks down.
Keep an eye on the temperature for a few hours (or as long as it's not stable/maxed out), it shouldn't exceed about ...
6
It is likely that neither is profitable for you, because ASIC miners are alot more effective than any GPU mining, which in turn is alot faster than CPU mining. But don't take my word for it. This hardware comparison wiki is a good source to make an initial estimate. There is one entry listing the combination of an A10 and a HD7660G GPU, claiming to get 105 ...
5
For people reading through this in 2017+:
Times have changed and a lot of higher end cards are now far more power efficient. I'm mining ethereum with a 1070 FTW card and I get a solid hashrate around 25-26 Mh/S and my temperatures never break 65 degrees (C) even with an 100 Mhz memory overclock and 75Mhz GPU overclock.
As is common knowledge these days, ...
5
There were a number of news articles in September 2011 about the rootkit TDL4 using the Ufasoft GPU miner to mine bitcoins. A few links:
World's most dangerous botnet mines Bitcoins - The Inquirer
TDL4 Worms Discovered in Bitcoin Pools: Trend Micro - spamfighter.com
New worm turns PCs into Bitcoin miners - GMA News
Quotes below are from the article in the ...
5
This is a common problem whose cause is not well known. You can try switching miners, switching flags, or switching OpenCL versions. Usually you can find a combination that resolves the problem. I've seen this question asked several times and I've not yet seen a solid answer.
5
The creator took the service down after coming under DOS attacks. He offered to open source the software for a bounty, and eventually brought his offer price down to 50 Bitcoins. The message with the offer was on the kradminer website until a couple of weeks ago, and only recently has the site been inaccessible.
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