ROMORC
Even if we did do it, and we all mined the same coin, we would have to do one of the coins with a very low network hashrate. I've heard that to mine litecoin, you want to be in a pool that has a hashrate of at least 800Mh/s. Not sure if we have that between all of us, but I could be wrong. 

Yea not even close, from what I seen around this sub forum already I say maybe 15 MH/s tops.
 
definately need to alot more evga members involved in this to be worth having an evga mining pool.
 
I already tried to convince many members that were running folding@home to switch to this, but they are still either skeptical about it or see no value in it cause it doesn't research diseases and only for personal gain. I explained that it would help cover the power cost and future folding hardware.

Forum lurker checking in..
 
Thanks Eduncan911, your posting has totally inspired me. I was initially considering this back in september but was hesitant due to the nvidia performance issues. Now with the 2013-12-18 release of cudaminer my interest has finally peaked and I've decided to take the jump. I rarely use my gaming rig these days. It's just gathering dust for the most part and i feel there's no better time to get the ball rolling. Plus it gives me a nice little incentive to maintain the rig.
 
Questions:
 

• Looking at these results, the 780ti isn't far behind the R9 290. However, what are the differences in terms of power consumption? (even a vague % figure would be most helpful).
• What kind of Khash/s can i expect with my vanilla 780 in comparison to the ti with this setup?
• I'm expecting to go SLI once i get started. What would be the most economic route to go down out of the following three: 1. Buy another vanilla 780 on ebay 2. Sell the 780 on ebay and search around for a good deal on a pair of ti's. (seeing as they are newer i'm guessing there are much better deals to be had on 780s, but is it worth the performance drop for the price difference)? 3. Sell the 780 on ebay and buy 2x R9 290's and unlock them. I'm pretty set in my ways with nvidia (driver quality, physx etc). However, it is tempting if the price/performance and difference in energy consumption is considerable. Cudaminer has caught up recently, so i'm hoping it will go further to decrease the gap however.

 
Also, if this goes well then in spring i plan on resurrecting my trusty EVGA 790i Ultra and initiating a second mining operation with old parts, a new psu and gfx cards. I love the idea of getting her back up and running 
 
[EDIT]In response to the mining pool idea. I'd happily join an EVGA pool..

tripstyle
Forum lurker checking in..
 
Thanks Eduncan911, your posting has totally inspired me. I was initially considering this back in september but was hesitant due to the nvidia performance issues. Now with the 2013-12-18 release of cudaminer my interest has finally peaked and I've decided to take the jump. I rarely use my gaming rig these days. It's just gathering dust for the most part and i feel there's no better time to get the ball rolling. Plus it gives me a nice little incentive to maintain the rig.

 
First, be sure to read over my Titans mining thread here:
 
http://forums.evga.com/tm.aspx?m=2089066
 
Specifically, the two posts where I figured out a "Temp Target" undervolting trick on the 700 series.  You will want to do that.
 
http://forums.evga.com/tm.aspx?m=2089066#2089744 (and the next post after that)
 
 

tripstyle
Questions:

• Looking at these results, the 780ti isn't far behind the R9 290. However, what are the differences in terms of power consumption? (even a vague % figure would be most helpful).

 
Very poor.  All Nvidia GPUs have a low khash-to-watt ratio.  I've managed to squeeze around 1.4 khash per watt out of my Titans using a custom BIOS, temp target max undervolting, and wishful thinking.  It's not an official number yet as I don't have my watt meters yet.  But, it's close per my UPS' amperage reading (it's an APC 2200W 20 Amp server UPS with a remote management card).
 
In contrast, the 7970, R9 280x, R9 290 and R9 290x all have well over a 2:1 ratio.  The 290x being the best.  
 
Yes, you can get double the hashes, for half the wattage.  or going all Nvidia, you'll only get 1/2 the khash for each watt that you could with ATI cards.
 
It does add up, but not a whole lot.  My power usage from two Titans maxed to the sky is estimated to be about $2.75/day.  So, 3x 7970s would be about $1.40/day at about the same 1,450 khash/s.  At that khash, you can make about $25 to $30/day.  So what's an extra $1.30 loss per day?  You'd loose more in exchange rates playing the market!  LOL
 

tripstyle

• What kind of Khash/s can i expect with my vanilla 780 in comparison to the ti with this setup?

Look into my Titan thread I first linked to above.  Several have posted their 780 and 780 Ti hashes in it.  I think it's around 500 to 520 if you don't touch it, and you can squeeze 600-ish with overclocking and undervolting with the Temp Target trick to keep it down from the Power Target limiter.
 
I went back to stock BIOS on the Titans and it was a PITA at the low power target limits of 106%.  So I went back to custom BIOS.  I highly recommend flashing a custom BIOS for any of these 600 and 700 GPUs with the Power Target limits - you'll hit a wall every time (and it's a steep wall, as it downclocks BIG time!).
 

tripstyle

• I'm expecting to go SLI once i get started. What would be the most economic route to go down out of the following three: 1. Buy another vanilla 780 on ebay 2. Sell the 780 on ebay and search around for a good deal on a pair of ti's. (seeing as they are newer i'm guessing there are much better deals to be had on 780s, but is it worth the performance drop for the price difference)? 3. Sell the 780 on ebay and buy 2x R9 290's and unlock them. I'm pretty set in my ways with nvidia (driver quality, physx etc). However, it is tempting if the price/performance and difference in energy consumption is considerable. Cudaminer has caught up recently, so i'm hoping it will go further to decrease the gap however.

 
SLI just for gaming, right?  No sweet!  :)  Doesn't mean jack diddy **** in mining.
 
(this is off topic) Most economic route is to go with a 2nd 780 as the Ti isn't that much faster.  If you only have a single monitor, I am not even sure a 2nd 780 is worth it.  My single 780 Classified max out BF3 at 65 to 80 FPS @ 1920x1080p @ 60 hz.  But then again, I have 120 Hz monitors, and I have 3 for Nvidia Surround gaming at 6000x1080.  So, uh, I need more horse power!  Just don't go 3-way (except with blondes) - I had series micro-stutter and input lag issues with 3 different 3-way setups, until I sold one of my 670s and was forced to play with 2-way.  Oh man!  FPS was lower, sure, but no more stutter!  no more input lag!  It was buttery smooth!
 
Now, that was for gaming... If you plan on mining with these GPUs, oh hell yeah sell that sucker!  use the funds for a single R9 290 (MSRP: $399) or R9 290x (MSRP: $550) if you can find one.  I put the MSRP there so you can see how much of a price gouging that is going on.  I got my GPUs from Taiwan before the New Year's price increases. I can put yo in touch with him if you like, but the prices have increased significantly that you might find a better deal in the states (plus, he now charges $75/shipping).
 
Personally, I do plan on throwing in two of the R9 280x I just bought to do some gaming to tinker with.  Kind of hard to do that when they are making $20/day you know.  LOL
 
I plan on keeping my Titans, even though I could sale them for a nice profit for what I paid for and buy a whole lot of mining stuff with.  I am keeping them because of the 6 GB ram (even though only 384bit bus limits its usage) and generally tingling feeling I get on the inside when I see them.  I've learned so much about them with the custom BIOS and know its limits.  Only maybe when something comes out that beats it at twice the performance may I consider upgrading - but that will be a while.  My rig (see sig) does BF4 @ 6000x1080 @ 120 hz at a solid 80 FPS with everything maxed.  I usually lower the MSAA a tad though to get it to 100+ FPS.  So I'm happy for a while.
 
 

tripstyle
Also, if this goes well then in spring i plan on resurrecting my trusty EVGA 790i Ultra and initiating a second mining operation with old parts, a new psu and gfx cards. I love the idea of getting her back up and running 
 
[EDIT]In response to the mining pool idea. I'd happily join an EVGA pool..

I am *this close* (holding fingers 1/4" apart) to setting up a few p2pools.  One for DGC and a DOGE p2pool.  I got the Azure VMs setup, most things downloaded and compiled.  
 
I want to run it without a wallet though because of the low memory I have.
 
And, I want to verify that it is profitable for single users.  I keep reading where LTC p2pool's mining doesn't make sense unless you are at 1400 khash/s or higher.  I'm trying to find the muddy details around how they came up with that number.  Because, most guys here at EVGA using EVGA cards and cudaminer aren't that high, so I don't want it to be for nothing for you guys.
 
Plus, p2pools can tick off the short-attention-gurus: you have to wait for up to 24hr before you start getting payouts.  Yes, that's up to 24hr that you get nothing for.  In my experience, it ranges from a few minutes to a few hours though, so it's not that bad.  The "24 hour" warning is to keep the complaints down.  
 
Note: p2pools punishes "pool hoppers" - those that jump from pool to pool to mine only the most profitable coin.  If you do connect to a p2pool, you should be in it for the long haul as it is most profitable that way.  
 
Working out logistics...  
 
 

Great tutorial! Manage to get my Gpus solo mining after hours or trying to find a proper guide. But I have one thing I'm not too sure if I have set up properly is my litecoin wallet. It seems to be fine and running, but I don't have any mining icon, or just anything to show that it is actually going to accept any coins if I manage to find any. Hope to hear from you soon cheers.

What is your hash rate? You can also paste your litecoin.conf file for us to verify (and it has to be located in the AppData/Roaming/Litecoin/ directory).

The miner programs would complain if it couldn't connect or if password was wrong. Try it: change the password of ur wallet and restart it. See if your miner yells at you. Then you know it is working.

Solo mining Litecoin, at say 1000 khash/s, with today's difficulty will take you about 6 months of being "idle" until you find 1 single block. That's 6 months of being "idle" with nothing to see.

Also, the value of a single litecoin block vs the amount of energy used for 6 months negate the whole point. Calculate it here:

http://www.coinwarz.com/c...coin-mining-calculator

Of course my point to this post was to show that it can vary greatly (i found 3 DGC blocks at startup yesterday within 2 hours, ur haven't found another in 10h @ 1500 khash/s).

You may want to look into other coins for solo mining that have a very low difficulty unless you have a massive farm of 50+ GPUs. For example, I listed Digitalcoin as with current difficulty and 1000 khash, you can find a few coins a day (most likely, pne day though it did take me 27 hours to find another).

I use coinwarz.com to find those coins and its mining calculators.

Well I failed back when I tried to get this working with DCG, but I worked with it some more tonight and got it working
with Phoenix coin of all things. lol My problem before was the route port wasn't open. With a Current Difficulty of 1.36864858
and only 600KH/s I'm not sure how long it will take or if it is even profitable, but now that I've gotten it all worked out it shouldn't
be hard to move to some other coin and solo mine.

TheWolfWell I failed back when I tried to get this working with DCG, but I worked with it some more tonight and got it working with Phoenix coin of all things. lol My problem before was the route port wasn't open.

Humm, shouldn't need to open any ports if mining on the same box - if using 127.0.0.1 as your IP address that is.  But yeah, if you have your wallet open on one VM and are mining from other machines, you will need to open the firewall port that you set in your *.conf file.  
 

With a Current Difficulty of 1.36864858
and only 600KH/s I'm not sure how long it will take or if it is even profitable, but now that I've gotten it all worked out it shouldn't
be hard to move to some other coin and solo mine.

 
http://www.coinwarz.com/calculators/phoenixcoin-mining-calculator/?h=700&p=500.00&pc=0.10&pf=0.00&d=1.20864225&r=50.00000000&er=0.00001103&btcer=574.17100000&hc=0.00
 
According to that, you'll average a block every 0.09 days (or one about 2.4 hours).  Again, your luck will greatly vary.  Nice find that Phoenix coin has a low diff to actually let solo miners work.
 
You'll also want to inspect this site for what coins are profitable.  It fluxiates greatly throughout the day because they parse new data like every 30 seconds and there are many mini-rallys all day long across the different exchanges.
 
http://www.coinwarz.com/cryptocurrency 
 
^- You will want to bookmark this site.  Hell, set it as your browser's homepage to scan the top of the page every few minutes for the current values of Bitcoin trading.
 

AwOOOoooOOOooo! found my 1st solo block 50PXC!!  
 Looking threw the log now to see if I can find how long it took.

Personally, I log everything to a file - so i can search.
 
cudaminer [your options] &> log.txt
 
The "&>" is important as it says to redirect stderr to somewhere else (or at least that is what i I think he's using).
 
You won't see anything in your window, but just open the log file to monitor it.