Anyone tried yet? I just saw it release the disk version on Chia 1.6.1
I tested on the initial alpha release and bladebit times were 50mins vs madmax 60mins on my system.
But bladebit held my cpu max and I couldnt use my PC while it was running. Madmax I can work and plot at the same time
1 Like
There is no binary answer to your question
1 Like
BB uses %100 of the resource so if you want to plot and copy the plot to a disk in the end, it takes 70 minutes for my box. But here MM has an advantage. You can plot and also run chia node on the same pc and copy the finished plot to a disk takes totally 48 minutes. I have tested this on the same pc. So my choice is MM.
I have read other comments telling to copy the plot to a nvme ssd. But you have to add the time needed to copy the plot from nvme to a disk.
3 Likes
This last is true, but it only adds at most 1-2 minutes to a BB plot time, even when done simultaneously while plotting is happening. Copying is not at all CPU intensive task. You do not need to plot first, then copy. That is a total waste of time. My BB plotting goes from 14-15 minutes wo/copy out to HD, to 15-16 minutes w/copying.
Beyond that, it gets even better. If you connect, say, a 1-4TB USB SSD as final destination, you can get most of the speed advantage of BB plotting (or a MB or PCI-E connected SSD for fastest plotting). Then that SSD destination acts as a “well of plots”, that can be copied out in bulk (many plots) continuously to a hard drive, or multiple hard drives, with little effort on the SSDs part (so barely affects plotting time). It very convenient to do, say, fill two (or even more) drives during a plotting session.
As far as doing other things whilst plotting, I don’t get the issue? Set CPU affinity (and/or use the BB setting) for the plotting .exe file to however many CPU threads you want to use, leaving whatever you want for other tasks. Takes seconds to do this in task manager.
Maybe you’re using an OS that makes all this difficult, but with Windows it is super easy and works well.
1 Like
Not 1-2 minutes for me. Not all the systems have the same processor or speed. This speed also changes according to the write speed of the disk. Yours is very fast I see. For me, it is 5 to ten minutes. I say that for my pc, MM finishes the job faster than BB. There is no need to defend MM or BB. You can make a simple test and choose the faster method.
1 Like
For sure. It’s more an art in many ways… just trying different things to find the fastest setup.
1 Like
I guess, one can only wish that those plotter providers would have a tool that could analyze the box and provide a couple of command lines, e.g., aggressive and laid back, so at least we could start from some already prepared baseline.
As it is right now, in the peak we had over 300k farmers, and most of them were basically starting from scratch.
1 Like
I want to sample one of this with MadMax
Amazon.com: AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3990X 64-Core, 128-Thread Unlocked Desktop Processor : Electronics
2 Likes
On the Mac Studio Ultra, BB is 2x as fast as MM. I make K=32 in 9 to 10 minutes on BB, 20 minutes on MM.
I have this system for sale if you’re interested.
Wow, that is a lot of work and manuail effort. If I’d do that, my hourly salary would be really poor.
I rather hook up 5-10 additional HDDs on my harvester and let it plot slowly.
If the disk is full, it is set to write ownly, mount point is changed and its included into the farm. Id rather plot slower than having to deal with transferring disks between systems.
I wonder: Is it just for fun or is there a specific reason to plot as fast as possible?
One must have a tremendous disk supply at hand. Like a warehouse to fill or so.
Please don’t take it in an insulting way. Im just trying to understand.
1 Like
No it takes seconds to 'Prime the plot pump from the well’. Think of a well, the plotter is pouring plots in (to the SSD), the copy f(x) is sucking the plots out (to HDs). Once started, they pretty much equalize and it can be left for 10-20 hrs…filling & sucking, filling and sucking… and it stays about the same level of plots for a good long time.
As to what you may call “…plot as fast as possible” … consider this:
I put 2x 20TB Hard drives I just got in the 'ol ThreadRipper and proceed to plot them. If there are no interruptions it will be 185 hrs later or 7.7 days later @15 min/K32 plot before those two drives are full. Also I want to minimize electricity use as much as possible (we have 2 $$ levels depending on time of day). I would liken that to watching paint dry… but your reality may be different 
but yeah, of course this is all for fun and to keep busy 
and then there’s that lambo…when crypto turns around…
1 Like
I hope you changed those SATA cables by now to the gold ones so you can make 3 minute plots…
.
.Just looking at old threads 
Time flys, some things improve … using GH today I would say…
“I put 2x 20TB Hard drives I just got in the 'ol ThreadRipper and proceed to plot them. If there are no interruptions it will be ~30.25 hrs later or 1.26 days later @109 sec/K32 plot”. Except now, 2 drives can’t keep up, so maybe 5 drives to write to would equalize.
And that’s not really so fast these days.