Yeah... It's not that simple. Every miner I know uses custom BIOS on AMD cards.

 

You can lock bios flashes as well by requiring on board chips to verify security signature in the firmware. If the firmware isn't signed - it gets rejected by the card.

 

They could, but AMD doesn't do that. It's also possible to spoof the signature.

 

Well, spoofing signatures is a rare thing and is only possible under specific circumstances (as for example on Android where even self-signed certs are accepted. But then again - they are not used to verify authenticity/publisher but actually to verify that the same entity is updating/changing the app). Or maybe in situations where a crypto alg with a known weakness was used, or if you are really good/lucky you actually find a weakness (extremely rare) - then yes, you could potentially reconstruct private key and use it to sign the package. I really doubt that it is doable where a single entity controls all three points - card doing the check, private signature used to sign the firmware and public key programmed in the card. Just too many IFs.

 

I totally agree. It's extremely difficult. I don't think it will make any sense for AMD to lock the firmware because it will deter miners from purchasing the cards (no voltage control = higher power usage, lower hash rates).

A much better move for them will be to offer more variants of compute-only cards based on desktop GPU used for mining. Biggest challenge will be offering the same level of SLA as FirePro with a chip designed for desktop use. If they offer it, they have to make sure it will last a reasonable amount of time (at least 5 years) under 24/7 use.

 

Miners can take responsibility for appropriate hardware operations (op temps and cooling, dust control, etc).

They don't have enough manufacturing capacity to satisfy the mining demand alone, forget about miners and gamers. Locking gaming cards to prevent mining and then dedicating a part of the supply line to mining, but charge premium would make sense all around. Even for miners as the cost goes up and total mining rate will slow down, making each mined coin more valuable. This will also even out the costs distribution between miners who have access to free or cheap electricity and those who are hampered by it. Anyway, just my 2 cents.

 

 

Gridcoin + SETI@home = everybody wins.

Of course when we find aliens, all money becomes worthless.

 

I started mining my own ether on my 1050ti... I see a couple solution accepted messages scroll across the screen and check my balance...

>web3.fromWei(eth.getBalance(eth.coinbase), "ether")
10
>

Surely I did not get lucky and really mine 10 eth that quickly... considering that's over 8 grand.

..AAAND it disappeared after a restart. Must have been an error...

 

interesting that this thread didn't wake up the other day when all the coins hit their year highs...

 

Cuz we're all just HODLing

 

I currently "camping" at a girl scout camp in west VA owned by a guy who has made millions off BTC.

 

When did you become a girl scout? You are so hard to keep up with.

 

Girl Scouts couldn't keep up with the mortgage payment. So my friend came in and bought 800 acres of amazing west VA land for stupid cheap. He also owns Dream Mountain Ranch which is one of if not the largest private game ranch on the east coast.

 

I sold a little but heldl the rest. still mining though.