Tuesday, March 12, 2013

Mt.Gox lag comments by MagicalTux


<Happzz> MagicalTux you guys need to buy some better hardware, uplinks and coders. you make a fortune and you still can't handle the traffic and processing you're paid for.
<@MagicalTux> Happzz: hardware/uplink/coding is only 10% of our spendings
<@MagicalTux> close to 50% is legal fees to promote bitcoin's legality worldwide
<@MagicalTux> remaining 40% is support

Current order lag is 48.999525 seconds
https://data.mtgox.com/api/1/generic/order/lag
I've seen this go as high as 600 seconds (10 minutes) - some people reported 13-15 minutes during the height of the bitcoin "Crash" of March 6, 2013.....
I was arguing with someone about the fact that the Mt.Gox lag CAUSED the crash. I for one believe it did not. However, it may have had a feedback loop type of effect, where once people noticed how laggy it was they realized the high amount of activity and tried to sell off as if this lag were some type of panic indicator.

This will hopefully all be remedied by the new Coinlab merger/acquisition. But for now the lag remains.

Monday, March 04, 2013

Playstation 4 PS4 Tesselation AMD APU


Do you think the PS4 is going to focus on tesselation?

efx: the 970 core could do it
efx: the ps4 is running and AMD apu
efx: the thing is, games need reasonable amount of tessellation in conjunction with decent normal mapping
efx: among other things

Any chance PS4 is gonna support DX11 if its an AMD Apu then ?

efx: running crazy levels of tessellation is of limited benefit
efx: yes, i'm confident it will
efx: and next xbox is also amd apu based, as is the wii u
efx: I'm hoping it will help sort out some of the console port BS
efx: no more optimizing for power pc rubbish

Note that you do not need DirectX to do tessellation.
Plus, OpenGL 4.1 supports the current tessellation techniques in the latest hardware.
Also, It would not actually be called DX11 on a PS4 :)

Lets see what happens :)

BSOD BAD_SYSTEM_CONFIG_INFO

OK. I have a server running Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 bla blah.... So it was having some HDD issues (I guess a 9 year old hard drive isn't the best thing to run a server off of.) So I ran chkdsk and it found some bad sectors and it erased some files that i thought looked like system files, but I had no choice in the matter.
Sure enough, windows won't boot, it just constantly restarts.
Push F8 on boot and hit "Disable Automatic Restart on Failure" so you can see the blue screen. My BSOD said the following:
BAD_SYSTEM_CONFIG_INFO 
Stop Error 0x00000074

After googling this, it pointed me to a bad registry.
The logical step in the matter is to use "Last Known Good Configuration" on the F8 menu, this option did not auto-reboot with a BSOD like before, but it never actually loaded up Windows. So after cloning the HDD, (I used Paragon Hard Disk Manager, but you can use anything), I had a few problems with the BCD file. So i booted off a Windows Installation disk, loaded a command prompt, and typed:

bcdboot D:\windows

It says D: because it found C: as my 100MB System reserved partition, the one with the Boot partition files on it.  After bcdboot did its job, my bcd file was rewritten correctly. This may be oversimplifying things because i've had so many hassles with the BCD Files, but you can check how things are going with BCDedit /enum all.

Now I was back where I was before, with the registry still broken on the new HDD.
After trying about 50 different things which I won't get into, I stumbled upon a CD I had used a few other times called "Super ERD Commander" (I believe I was using version 2005).
I assumed I could boot this and then check the registry files directly to do something to them manually, but to my surprise, as soon as I booted Super ERD Commander 2005, it tells me something to the nature of
 "Found a corrupted registry hive, Fixing it." 

Well Thanks!
So I reboot, and voila, Windows boots, and everything is fixed! No lost data or anything.

Sunday, March 03, 2013

Unlocking Radeon 6950 to 6970

I was successful in Unlocking my Radeon 6950 to 6970 with just a bios flash!  (simpler than it may sound).
My card was a Radeon 6950 2GB XFX HD-695A-CNFC ver 2.

Followed the instructions at:
http://www.techpowerup.com/articles/overclocking/vidcard/159
It did give the the error: Could not erase ROM
So I followed the part that says  Run atiwinflash -unlockrom 0
Followed by atiwinflash -f -p 0 bios.bin where bios.bin is the path and filename of the HD 6970 BIOS you downloaded.

I actually didn't think it was this simple but it was, thanks to this site. Remember not all cards can be flashed, but luckily mine was able to be, and many are also. Good luck. I might be able to help if you post a comment.

OpenCL hassles. ATI OpenCL driver bug detected, skipping OpenCL detection.

I just had so many problems with OpenCL and the AMD Catalyst 13.1 drivers. Under Windows 7 x64.
When I installed Catalyst 13.2 beta 7 everything worked fine because it installed the AMD APP SDK Runtime. My problems started when I downgraded to Catalyst 13.1 .

Not sure what went wrong but these were the symptoms:
1) Could not mine bitcoins (Device detection flat out failed, not even showing any available devices)
Reaper.exe would show no Devices and quit out without any error message.
CGminer would show no devices and quit out without any error message.
GUIminer would attempt to start but quit out without any error message.
2) GPU-Z would start and say "ATI OpenCL driver bug detected, skipping OpenCL detection. Uninstall the AMDStream SDK/Open CL driver to re-enable this functionality."

THE FIX:
1. Uninstall any AMD Stream SDK you have right now.
2. Delete amdocl.dll and opencl.dll from C:\windows\system32 and C:\windows\Syswow64.
3. Reinstall the AMD Stream SDK you have. Does not matter which one (I think)
4. Check to make sure the amdocl.dll and opencl.dll files you just deleted have not come back.
5. Check in C:\Program Files (x86)\AMD APP\bin\x86 and C:\Program Files (x86)\AMD APP\bin\x86_64 to make sure the files are there in that location instead. This is where they should be.
6. Try using GPU-z to see if there is a tickmark next to OpenCL. If there is, all should be well, and you can continue to use Reaper/CGminer/GUIMiner to mine bitcoins/litecoins/etc. Or any OpenCL program for that matter.
7. For some reason I had to delete the kernel files that reaper/cgminer had generated such as litecoin-reaperv13.Cayman-256-5760-2.bin but I am not sure that this was due to OpenCL because I tried unlocking my Radeon 6950 GPU to a 6970 (and succeeded, link here) So it may have just been that the number of shaders or something was wrong.

Good luck!

Stuff that didn't work
Removing the entire video drivers, reinstalling, even using Driver Sweeper. But Driver Sweeper doesn't know about OpenCL.
So I decided to just uninstall the AMD Stream SDK from the ATI Catalyst Install Manager in Add/Remove Programs. This fixed the GPU-Z errors but now GPU-Z had no check-mark next to OpenCL. The programs above had the exact same behavior. I tried installing old catalyst drivers, reinstalling new drivers, even downloading the developer version of the AMD-APP-SDK-v2.8-Windows-64 . They would all proceed to install files to C:\Program Files (x86)\AMD APP\bin\x86 and C:\Program Files (x86)\AMD APP\bin\x86_64.
This is where the OpenCL files are supposed to be located. I did a search for OpenCL and found some files in C:\windows\system32 and C:\windows\Syswow64.

Tuesday, February 26, 2013

Bitcoin Mining Hardware Comparison 7850 7950 5870 5830



https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mining_hardware_comparison

Click the Link for Sortable Tables and Readable Column Headers

genBTC's Card Comparison Spreadsheet

I will continue to work on this chart, and it is a work in progress.
Created February 25th 2013, Updated February 25th 2013 
Columns listed are:
Model !! MH/s #1 !! MH/s #2 !! Record Hashrate !! Common Hashrate !! TDP(W) !! Measured(W) !! Shaders !! Core Clock !! Max Clock !! Comments !! Newegg($USD) !! Ebay Price($USD) !! MSRP ($USD) !!  Cheap Price ($USD)
ModelMH/s #1MH/s #2Record HashrateCommon HashrateTDP(W)Measured(W)ShadersCore ClockMax ClockCommentsNewegg($USD)Ebay Price($USD)MSRP ($USD)Cheap Price ($USD)
5770212.83200108$178?$159$ 50
58303022203022751751120800 MHz$105$239$ 65
5850346.162703311511601440725 MHz$101$259$ 90
58703934203701882131600850 MHz$165$379$125
59707047007467002943253200725 MHzDual 5870s$248$599$269
6750167.5917086720725 MHz$ 67$109
6770196.67200108800900 MHz$ 84$135
6850213.7250127121960775 MHz$104$179
6870278.313001501411120900 MHz$124$239
69503693503602001408800 MHz$171$299
69703974004002501536880 MHz$172$369
69907727007503753072830 MHzDual 6970s$372$699
775012320012555512800 MHz900$ 89$ 93$109
7770250200806401000 MHz1120$119$ 98$159
78503753001301024860 MHz$169$177$249
787040017512801000 MHz$229$227$349
79504505002001792850 MHz$299$307$449
79706856006002502712048925 MHz1100$399$391$549
799011005555414096925 MHzDual 7970s$899$777$999
MH/s #1 taken from Joseph Woodrell's chart directly below this one.
MH/s #2 taken from https://bitclockers.com/calc
Record Hashrate & Common Hashrate - If you want your Hashrates added in the chart, please send a message to genBTC on this site.
TDP, Shaders, Core Clock comes from http://www.hwcompare.com/ & Amd.com to Verify
Max Clock means max STOCK clockspeed, ie: cards that come factory overclocked. Data acquired by scanning whats available on newegg.
Newegg Price was taken from the LOWEST priced card on 2/25/2013 @ 8 PM EST, REBATES DISREGARDED
Ebay Price taken from http://cgi5.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?SellHub3 and questionable prices marked with a ?
MSRP may be removed from this chart, as I'm not sure it serves any purpose.
Cheap Price = Used price. Sourced from All over the internet as if I had to buy the card today.

Sunday, February 24, 2013

Bitcoin

For Bitcoin to work as a currency, its value against USD has to keep rising since there's so much less of it. In a perfect world, one Satoshi might equal one US mil (1/10th cent)


If that ever happened, 1 BTC would equal 100,000 USD
It won't ever get that high, but that example shows you why it has to increase to work

From now until some time in 2016, the block reward is 25 BTC. One block is solved on average every 10 minutes. Every 2016 blocks, the network self-adjusts block difficulty based on the current network hashrate to keep this average intact.

The 25 coin difficulty was pre-built in. Every 210,000 (?) blocks, the block reward halves, until it eventually goes to 0 once 21 million coins exist.

So was difficulty but the difficulty didn't react quickly enough for fpga's hence why we will have an ASIC armageddon if they are real, because the diff adjust will not let the system spiral out of control but wasn't resistant or quick enough to combat exponential hashrate increases so it went all bonkers.


So, for the next few years, 25 BTC is mined every 10 minutes. That ends up being 1,134,000 BTC/year


So it doesn't matter what the network hashrate is, that's the maximum BTC to be divided up annually among all the miners.

Network hashrate matters for time it takes to get to the next drop, just not directly related

So Butterfly Labs has done almost 20,000 pre-orders, and they're bound to do a few hundred more orders once they actually ship. Now let's imagine that they're the ONLY company on the market, and that every GPU miner just ups and quits once the network is saturated with ASICs.

Let's also imagine that those 20,000 BFL ASICs hash at equal speeds.

That would mean that each miner could only get 65.7 BTC of the 1,314,000 BTC available per year.

Now, the problem with that example is that every ASIC isn't equally powered, and they're NOT the only company on the market, and a lot of GPU miners are actually in it for the network philosophy and not just for the money.

Anyway, you see the ASIC dilemma.... in an ideal situation, each ASIC is going to bring you 65 BTC/year. But it's probably not going to be an ideal situation.

Saturday, February 16, 2013

Bitcoin rates


Bitcoins are becoming more and more popular.
The following is a short list of where you can buy bitcoins and what fees you can expect to be charged to receive your BTC currency from USD.

Compiled @ 2/15/2013

Bitcoin Rates!

__________________________________________________
AurumXchange
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=****!****-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Perfect Money
Liberty Reserve
MtGox
VouchX
CosmicPay Exchanges FROM CosmicPay require us to obtain payment approval (usually within 1 business day).

@ Exchange Rate of 0.0359
11 BTC
=$306.41 (@ rate of 1 BTC will cost $27.86 MtGox USD)

__________________________________________________
MtGox
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=****!****-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
AurumXchange =
E-Currencies:
Liberty Reserve (Instant funding - NO FEE)
PerfectMoney (INSTANT funding - 1% FEE)
Pecunix (INSTANT funding - NO FEE)
HD-Money (INSTANT funding - NO FEE)
VouchX Vouchers (INSTANT funding - NO FEE)
CosmicPay (INSTANT funding - NO FEE)
C-Gold (INSTANT funding - 5% FEE)
SolidTrustPay (WITHIN 1 to 2 business days - 8% FEE)

Banking and other payment methods:
International Wire Transfer in USD (WITHIN 1 to 2 business days - NO FEE)
CASH deposit at 10,000 locations in the USA (WITHIN 1 hour - at 3.75% fee!)

Bitinstant - Payments generally clear within 1 minute and
- Fees vary on average between 0.25% and 1.00% based on the amount being sent and various market factors.
Dwolla - Verified Only
Bank Transfer   - not recommended, minimum 1000 yen fee + intermediary bank fees (mentions something about ~$50 USD cost)
Liberty Reserve ------ Not working ???
OKPay / CashU/ Liqpay - 1% Fee

__________________________________________________
BitStamp
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=****!****-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
International bank transfer deposits carry 0.1% deposit fee on our side (minimum fee = $15) and take 2 - 5 business days to credit. All other currencies will be converted to USD, free of charge.

__________________________________________________
CoinBase
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=****!****-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Buy  11 BTC  at $27.30 USD each.

Subtotal $300.30
Coinbase fee $  3.00 (1% Fee)
Bank fee $  0.15 (15 cent fee)
Total = $303.45


__________________________________________________
BitFloor
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=****!****-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
$303 Deposit / 11 BTC = 27.54~ MAX price
$3.80 LocalTill Fee
=$306.80

__________________________________________________
BitInstant
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=****!****-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Major Bank partners via Trustcash.
Cash Deposit 3.99% Fee @ Local Locations via ZipZap.
==========================================
ZipZap Coupon to MtGox
$300.0 USD $288.03 USD 3.99%



Exchanges (MtGox,Bitstamp, BTC-E)
==========================================
Bistamp Coupon to MtGox
$300.0 USD $297.33 USD 0.89%
MtGox Coupon to MtGox
$300.0 USD $297.33 USD 0.89%
Dwolla to MtGox
$300.0 USD $294.03 USD 1.99%
BTC-E Coupon to MtGox
$300.0 USD $297.33 USD 0.89%
VouchX Coupon to MtGox
$300.0 USD $297.33 USD 0.89%


VirWox
---------------

VouchX
------------------



__________________________________________________
EXCHANGES
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=****!****-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
One exchange (Bitcoin-Central, owned by Paymium)
VouchX vouchers can also be redeemed natively at four new exchanges:
- Bitme.com
- Vircurex.com
- Icbit.se
- Bitcoin-24.com

Wednesday, January 23, 2013

Concerts @ Webster Hall NYC

I'm going to Feed Me + Mord Fustang on Saturday Feb 2nd @ Webster Hall NYC.

Also Zedd on March 1st @ Webster Hall NYC.


Spotify Links (if you don't have spotify - Get spotify!!) I have a premium subscription and its so worth it.
Zedd – Clarity
Zedd – Shave It (501 Remix)

Morgan Page – In the Air (Mord Fustang Remix)

Don't normally post things but I will start posting more and I wanted to let everyone know that they should get tickets now!!

Sunday, January 06, 2013

Time is wrong.

Somewhere along the way, the concept of counting what time of day it is - on a 12h scale - went wrong.
The 24h scale is also equally wrong but less so.
Starting at midnight:
Midnight (the word) makes sense, but why is it 12:00. I would propose it being changed to 6:00. Since (at least around winter time) its been dark for about 6 hours... This is not a very convincing reason ... yet.
Next take a look at 6:30 AM.
Most people are waking up for work or for grade school around this time. Since it is the time that 90% of mainstream society accepts that the day is beginning, 6:30 AM should be 00:30. (6 should be 0).
Noon will no longer be 12:00 it will now be 6 since it is halfway through the day.
When it gets dark, it will no longer be some time around 5:45/6:00 PM = we can now call it 12:00.

Of course nobody will ever succeed in changing the format of which clock system billions of people use, but I can always hope.