Compute4Cash: it's a trap or not?

[pantherx12]

Mine isn't working... giving me only 0.077 WU/hr and 0% CPU or GPU usage

stupid question, APP installed?


Also I've been running this a few days now, I've had a bit of banter with the people via email and have even got them to fix things .


I'm running a machine that if I ran the program for 6months ( not nesscerily all at once) I'd be making £300 pounds ( 6 months is how long it takes me to get to 600 usd cap with my 6870 by the way) (374 pounds from 600 usd) so £75 there to pay me electricity bill for running the card during that time.

Frankly I thought it was iffy as hell too, but I thought what the hell.

I've walked into dodgier deals than this lol


my 6870 at 1000 core pulls 0.88 peak and can dip as low as 0.55 with 0.75 being average WU per hour.

 

[xbonez]

When someone reached 50 WUs , and does get paid, a lot of us will regret not having started sooner...lol

 

[AlienIsGOD]

i will have no regrets... WCG is my main focus, IDC about this really, $600 meh

 

[n-ster]

stupid question, APP installed?


Also I've been running this a few days now, I've had a bit of banter with the people via email and have even got them to fix things .


I'm running a machine that if I ran the program for 6months ( not nesscerily all at once) I'd be making £300 pounds ( 6 months is how long it takes me to get to 600 usd cap with my 6870 by the way) (374 pounds from 600 usd) so £75 there to pay me electricity bill for running the card during that time.

Frankly I thought it was iffy as hell too, but I thought what the hell.

I've walked into dodgier deals than this lol


my 6870 at 1000 core pulls 0.88 peak and can dip as low as 0.55 with 0.75 being average WU per hour.

Yup... That is disappointing for such a high clocked 6870! How doesa 5970 pull 2WU/hr then though and someone else said something about 1WU/hr on his 6870

 

[PaulieG]

Have fun with this guys, just keep the language clean.

 

[pantherx12]

Yup... That is disappointing for such a high clocked 6870! How doesa 5970 pull 2WU/hr then though and someone else said something about 1WU/hr on his 6870

Seems performance is mostly tired to the amount of stream processing units in the card.

( or nv equivilent)

 

[qu4k3r]

Certainly is not very trusted not knowing what that client is really doing.

But people can try it by creating another email adress and another paypal account, just to see if it works.

 

[pantherx12]

Certainly is not very trusted not knowing what that client is really doing.

But people can try it by creating another email adress and another paypal account, just to see if it works.

To be fair, all 3rd party software has a risk of doing something that is not supposed to doing.

 

[AphexDreamer]

Balance: 2.72 WUs
Value: $0.54 USD

Is that right?

 

[xbonez]

2.72 x $0.2 (Feb special) = $0.54

So, yup...its correct.

 

[n-ster]

Cannot install AMD drivers anymore

 

[AlienIsGOD]

Cannot install AMD drivers anymore

read your thread even more reason for me to stay away from this. Wish there was something i could do to help, N-ster......

 

[PVTCaboose1337]

Cannot install AMD drivers anymore

Wow that is pretty bad. Coincidences? They do not exist.

 

[erocker]

I'll stay far away from this. Perhaps if they actually disclosed what they are having your computer crunch I would think differently. Financial stuff could mean many things.

 

[Athlon2K15]

Malware! Beware!

 

[Compute4Cash]

@PVTCaboose1337 - The SMTP/POP stuff you found in the code comes from the library we compile against that handles our http connections. That library apparently was built with SMTP and POP support in addition to HTTP support.

The filename you found a reference to is not a file that you will actually find on your computer - it only exists on our build machine as it is the debug database from visual studio. Just google "visual studio .pdb" and you will find out all about .pdb files.

The Compute4Cash client does not ever read any files off of the hard drive, except for the Compute4Cash.ini file when the client starts up. You can verify this with any number of tools if you like, that will prove to you that your personal info on your HD is safe.


@SneekyPeet - you are absolutely right about making monthly payments rather than paying upfront. We have invested in several dual 5970 machines ourselves, but it makes more sense to us to rent the hardware from users around the world rather than investing further in our own hardware. We may buy some Radeon 6990 cards when they come out though


@Scaminatrix - you say that the time/effort/money you put into Compute4Cash isn't reflected in the payments, but I don't understand how you can think that. How much effort is required to register, download the program, and run it? Seems pretty simple to me... In fact, as others have said, it seems to good to be true. We have however delivered payments to several users so there are people out on the net somewhere that can vouch for us.


@n-ster - sorry to here about your experience, that is a real shame. That doesn't have anything to do with Compute4Cash though, that is a problem with the AMD drivers. We have experienced many problems with the AMD drivers ourselves and we've had to reinstall the OS several times on a few systems during our testing of different driver versions. Also in your thread you mentioned a concern about a dll - our Compute4Cash client does not come with any DLLs so this must have been related to the drivers you were installing.


@AthlonX2 - There is no spyware/adware/malware of any kind in the Compute4Cash client. Why do you think there is?

 

[PVTCaboose1337]

@PVTCaboose1337 - The SMTP/POP stuff you found in the code comes from the library we compile against that handles our http connections. That library apparently was built with SMTP and POP support in addition to HTTP support.

The filename you found a reference to is not a file that you will actually find on your computer - it only exists on our build machine as it is the debug database from visual studio. Just google "visual studio .pdb" and you will find out all about .pdb files.

The Compute4Cash client does not ever read any files off of the hard drive, except for the Compute4Cash.ini file when the client starts up. You can verify this with any number of tools if you like, that will prove to you that your personal info on your HD is safe.


@SneekyPeet - you are absolutely right about making monthly payments rather than paying upfront. We have invested in several dual 5970 machines ourselves, but it makes more sense to us to rent the hardware from users around the world rather than investing further in our own hardware. We may buy some Radeon 6990 cards when they come out though


@Scaminatrix - you say that the time/effort/money you put into Compute4Cash isn't reflected in the payments, but I don't understand how you can think that. How much effort is required to register, download the program, and run it? Seems pretty simple to me... In fact, as others have said, it seems to good to be true. We have however delivered payments to several users so there are people out on the net somewhere that can vouch for us.


@n-ster - sorry to here about your experience, that is a real shame. That doesn't have anything to do with Compute4Cash though, that is a problem with the AMD drivers. We have experienced many problems with the AMD drivers ourselves and we've had to reinstall the OS several times on a few systems during our testing of different driver versions. Also in your thread you mentioned a concern about a dll - our Compute4Cash client does not come with any DLLs so this must have been related to the drivers you were installing.


@AthlonX2 - There is no spyware/adware/malware of any kind in the Compute4Cash client. Why do you think there is?

Can you give us an idea of what you are doing? You have a reason to be secretive, so therefore I think you are doing something illegal. Please PM me what you do and I will promise not to reveal to the community, pinky swear.

But in all seriousness, can you post your source code to show us this is legit? If the program is legit, I am sure a whole lot of TPU'ers would do this! We would love to support you, we just don't trust you.

 

[marvelous211]

Is this trap or not?

I want to make some money. All utilities included in our rent.

 

[Compute4Cash]

@marvelous211 - no, this is certainly not a trap. You can stop the Compute4Cash client at any point if you choose to. The Compute4Cash opportunity works exactly the way it is described on the website: http://www.compute4cash.com.

@PVTCaboose1337 - There is only one reason we are being secretive about what we are doing: competition. Right now there is not too much competition in the market we are participating in, but being more open about things would be inviting more competition which would hurt our bottom line. We know this secrecy can't go on forever and competition will find its way into our market, but we don't want to accelerate that process. For this same reason we cannot share our source code. We understand this makes it difficult to trust us, but with a bit of time we're sure you will hear enough positive reports from those who have already been working our system to convince you all that our words are true.

 

[Easy Rhino]

@marvelous211 - no, this is certainly not a trap. You can stop the Compute4Cash client at any point if you choose to. The Compute4Cash opportunity works exactly the way it is described on the website: http://www.compute4cash.com.

@PVTCaboose1337 - There is only one reason we are being secretive about what we are doing: competition. Right now there is not too much competition in the market we are participating in, but being more open about things would be inviting more competition which would hurt our bottom line. We know this secrecy can't go on forever and competition will find its way into our market, but we don't want to accelerate that process. For this same reason we cannot share our source code. We understand this makes it difficult to trust us, but with a bit of time we're sure you will hear enough positive reports from those who have already been working our system to convince you all that our words are true.

so you admit to you subsidizing the cost of the card but what about electricity costs to the person doing the work units.

for instance, for me to make the stated $600 max cap i would actually have to currently own a card that costs around $600. then, i would have to shell out over $500 in utility costs at 11 cents per KWH (a card that can do 2 WU/h pulls currently 425-450 watts). that is low compared the the U.S. national average. don't you feel inclined to mention this on your website?

 

[AphexDreamer]

@marvelous211 - no, this is certainly not a trap. You can stop the Compute4Cash client at any point if you choose to. The Compute4Cash opportunity works exactly the way it is described on the website: http://www.compute4cash.com.

@PVTCaboose1337 - There is only one reason we are being secretive about what we are doing: competition. Right now there is not too much competition in the market we are participating in, but being more open about things would be inviting more competition which would hurt our bottom line. We know this secrecy can't go on forever and competition will find its way into our market, but we don't want to accelerate that process. For this same reason we cannot share our source code. We understand this makes it difficult to trust us, but with a bit of time we're sure you will hear enough positive reports from those who have already been working our system to convince you all that our words are true.

But by promoting people to do work for you you are becoming more popular and thereby risking competition from the start.

By informing users what work their computers are doing how exactly do you add to that risk if that risk is already there?

You aren't the first to do this and you won't be the last. Currently folding@Home and many other have users donating. Cloud computing isn't something new and if anyone wanted to do it and knew how they could. I understand keeping your source code a secret but still fail to understand why you won't tell users what it is they are getting paid to do?

And I fail to understand how you further add to the risk of competition by telling us.

 

[laszlo]

But by promoting people to do work for you you are becoming more popular and thereby risking competition from the start.

By informing users what work their computers are doing how exactly do you add to that risk if that risk is already there?

You aren't the first to do this and you won't be the last. Currently folding@Home and many other have users donating. Cloud computing isn't something new and if anyone wanted to do it and knew how they could. I understand keeping your source code a secret but still fail to understand why you won't tell users what it is they are getting paid to do?

And I fail to understand how you further add to the risk of competition by telling us.

i understand them as in the market if u have 1 business which make profit u won't give away to others the idea from which started.

every company has its business secrets and is normal to keep it secret.

everybody is paid for the work period.u don't like it don't downloaded it.

even if the work is illegal it can't be proved as every gpu receive pieces (is like torrent but reversed) so is their responsibility fully.

a good programmer can make a soft like this to work for a big company to create a project.;just imagine that a 100 milUSD project made by 10000 gpu's around the world;payment 10000USD for them and a nice profit for developer and the company which don't have to invest in hardware;this way of making business will grow fast and but payments to final owner won't grow as more & more gpu's will be available.

 

[AphexDreamer]

The guy has been banned from Videocards.com

http://www.videocards.com/forums/member.php/4968-Compute4Cash

Reason? I'm not sure.

But he has been banned from 02-06-2011

 

[Compute4Cash]

Yes, this is a difficult position to be in. If we explained enough for everyone to understand why we're being secretive then there wouldn't be any secret! The secret isn't our model - as you said, F@H, S@H, and countless others use this model. The secret is in what we're doing with the model and how we're using it to make money. That information is quite valuable, so it shouldn't be too hard to understand why we're not giving it away. Instead, by keeping it secret and using this distributed model we are able to allow other people to gain some from our idea while we guarantee that we will still be able to gain from it as well. This is a age-old business strategy.


Here are some profit calculations for those who are interested:

Estimated Stock Performance
6970 = 0.9 WU/hr, 250W
6870 = 0.6 WU/hr, 151W
5970 = 2.0 WU/hr, 300W
5870 = 0.8 WU/hr, 188W
5770 = 0.4 WU/hr, 108W
GTX580 = 0.4 WU/hr, 244W
GTX480 = 0.35 WU/hr, 250W
GTX285 = 0.2 WU/hr, 204W
GTX260 = 0.16 WU/hr, 182W

Assuming $0.15/kWh
Monthly profit calculation: WU/hr * 24h * 30days * $0.2/WU
Monthly cost calculation: TDP * 24h * 30d * $0.15/kWh


Calculations for all cards listed, using Feb. promo rate:

6970 = $103 net profit/month
6870 = $70 net profit/month
5970 = $255 net profit/month
5870 = $95 net profit/month
5770 = $46 net profit/month
GTX580 = $31 net profit/month
GTX480 = $23 net profit/month
GTX285 = $7 net profit/month
GTX260 = $3 net profit/month

All profits will roughly halve when after February when we return to the standard rate and nVidia cards pretty much all net a loss.

These calculations all neglect the motherboard/ram/cpu/hd power usage and they assume that you are not using the computer for anything other than Compute4Cash. If you are surfing the web, for example, then your GPU is already using about 1/3 of its TDP so you would only be increasing your power costs for using Compute4Cash in the background by about two thirds that of the figures provided here.

Also, if you live in a cold climate, the heat thrown off by these cards will heat your house and offset some of your heating bill. In warmer climates if you use A/C then obviously this will increase your cooling costs.

 

[Compute4Cash]

We posted on videocards.com to advertise our website, apparently they did not like that so they banned our account. We received a similar reaction from most forums, so we moved to Google AdWords instead