Bitcoin Forum

As a newbie casual miner, what type of pool works out best (ie., PPS, PPLMNOP, whatever)?

"Casual" in this case means a single GPU only running a portion of the day - not 24/7. I know pools are sensitive to hopping. I don't intend to hop, but I assume that there is no way to distinguish between someone not going 24/7 and someone hopping. Just looking for the best way to optimize the meager mining I'd be able to do.

I've had good experience with slush's pool.

http://mining.bitcoin.cz/

Note that I wasn't really asking for a _specific_ pool, but rather what _type_ of pool (based on payout scheme) based on the fact I wouldn't be mining 24/7, or with any high-powered equipment. It could be that it is a totally meaningless question, and pool payout scheme has no bearing on the fact that I'm not always in or not :)

Please share some more information about it . I am interested in this topic .

Well, you get what you put into it is the answer. Each pools has their pros and cons and it's really a matter of opinion and what that user is cool with. Here are some pool specs and the next one explains their business set up.

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Comparison_of_mining_pools
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Pooled_mining

What's the GPU's hashrate? IMO casual mining with a single low-med end card isn't worth the hassle. In your case I think a PPS with the lowest fee should be fine

If you're a casual miner, you want the least variance, so go for PPS or PPLNS. The fee will be higher but if you are working all day for a single share it won't be very rewarding.

Two other things you need:
Low Payout Threshold
Low Payout Fees

I also recommend cgminer with intensity "d" for a computer you use normally. It will move out of the way of other applications so your desktop is usable while giving a decent hash rate.

If you are going to be mining intermittently, PPS is probably the easiest.

You may want to consider Litecoin mining. It uses the Scrypt algo so it should be harder for a company to design an ASIC that can manage to hash litecoin. As a result, GPUs are more profitable.

PPS is the way you want to go with casual mining for sure.

I fit a casual miner description, On PPS but, to make even 1 BTC takes aroun 1000+ 24mining days. So choose ur Coin wisely.
BTC guild has imposed higher fees for new users, 51% attack mitigation plan.

Exactly. GPUs are more profitable mining most of the altcoins with respect to btc so it's an option for op

Its also worth mentioning about the altcoins, that due to their currently low worth, it would be a poor investment for a company to fund the developement of an FPGA or an ASIC to mine them.

Should they do so anyway, they would end up as the only ones with ALOT of coins, flooding the market and decreasing their overall value anyway. Until the coin is more widely adopted it would be detrimental for someone to design specialised hardware to mine it, as the success of cryptocurrency relies on the community behind it.

As for LTC in particular, scrypt was designed to be intensive on the in-processor memory. FPGA's are not cheap anyway, and afaik FPGA's wont have enough memory on board to accommodate a processor designed for scrypt.

Having said this - i'm not completely familiar with this type of hardware, so feel free to speak up if i'm talking out my arse :D

Thanks all. I do actually do LTC right now, for the reasons mentioned above. That, and I'm only doing 224Kh/s so it isn't like I'm going to make any serious money from this. I just wasn't sure if there was a reason to go with PPS over PPLS or vice-versa.

I recently got into all this too, but I agree with your conclusions. Anyone with a lower hash-rate is better off doing altcoins (like LTC). As for payment, PPS seems to more fairly treat someone doing low hash-rates not 24/7.

If you can work your hashing power up to around 1200-1500 MHs you can make out well (about .1btc /day on PPS) .1 a day isnt bad when the price usd per btc is over $100..that'a $10/day --$300/month. by the way.. its back up to $130USD as i write this, so it looks promising that Bitcoin may stay around or above $100.

btcguild all the way

all the way to 51% + and ...

PPS is best in my opinion, especially since there's downtimes with pools occasionally, or you might want to try another coin and jump to another pool. A lot less hassle too and you know what you have instantly.