Bitcoin Forum

Hello, I've just barely started using Bitcoins, got a tiny trickle from a site that gives a little away every day.  Yay! :)  But when I tell the Bitcoin program to start generating coins, it very quickly chews up all processing power, and the computer slows to a crawl, then basically won't let me do much of anything.  Nothing I do helps.  I can shut down everything else, basically, then tell bitcoin to generate coins, and blam, I can barely do anything at all with the computer till I finally tell it to stop generating bitcoins.

Is there any way to make this darn thing not chew up system resources, or cpu cycles, or whatever?  You know, a little background trickle of work that doesn't freaking shut down everything else?

Thanks.

- Krepta.

Mining is very hard now, but that's a good thing because it means the attack of spending and rewriting the chain to allow a double spend is very very hard.

You can still earn a little by joining a mining pool. You'll get a little payment that is proportional to your efforts each time your poll finds a block.

Generating is supposed to be hard.

Also, generating is not really the point of Bitcoin. Trading is.

You can join a pooled mining effort, but with a CPU you can currently expect to generate appox. 0.02 - 0.06 BTC per day. That is if you keep your CPU running 24/7 at full power.  A background trickle process will generate a lot less and expect this number to go down in the next few weeks. 

In my opinion, mining is something for enthusiasts/professionals, not for casual/newbie users.

If you are really enthusiastic about mining then be prepared to invest at least a few hundred dollars and several hours of your time. Otherwise it's not really worth it.

To put it in the background, open up Task Manager to the Processes tab and give it a lower priority.  Nevertheless, CPU mining is more than likely not going to happen for you.  Use http://www.alloscomp.com/bitcoin/calculator.php with the "khash/s" value you see in the client when mining to see the average time it would take you to successfully generate 50 bitcoins at the current difficulty level, keeping in mind that up until now difficulty has only ever increased rather than decreasing.

Using a pool you can get a few cents at a time rather than attempting to wait for a full 50, but the best way for you to get Bitcoins would be to buy them from someone.

Weird that your use of the computer gets affected... normally the generating thread runs with low priority, so everything else gets ahead of it.

Now, about generating with your CPU, forget about it. Difficulty is way too high. You need GPUs to generate.

I don't really care that it's supposed to be hard, I don't mind reducing my coin generation to 1 coin per week, or something, all I care about is contributing to this thing without killing the computer.  I'm primarily a Gift Economist, I don't mind giving what I can to others.  But when that giving becomes so detrimental that I basically can't do anything else, I have to stop it.  For instance, I am on Freenet, TOR and I2P all the time, I'm glad to allow some part of my system's resources to be given and shared.  But not if it slows things down so much that nothing else works, then I have to shut something down.  Like I'll frequently shut down Freenet, because it sometimes likes to absolutely HOG things.  I have absolutely no idea how to join a mining coop or pool.  I need more help than the instructions I read when I looked at one of the pool sites.

I downloaded some bitcoin screensavers, and have no idea how to set them up.  The readme file was no help.  Can I use one of them to join a pool, and use the GPU rather than the CPU?

If you are using GPU for mining, there are some options to make it less agressive. But depends on miner which you use. I have to issues on my box with m0mchil or Diablo miners and higher -f (say 300-1000).

Unless you have a GPU with CUDA or OpenCL on it, you'll likely earn about 0.01 per week if you left it on 24/7. There's a ton of power on the network now, but that is a good thing for the safety and security of the Bitcoin infrastructure.

Just means you can't get free money  >:(

bullshit, Bitcoin mining is around 10 to 100 times too easy.  :D  It is overly profitable atm!

Heh, you think that's bad? I have two $400 GPUs and all I get get out of them is 0.00003 BTC per day. Things have changed, my friend.

Terrible necro. -_-

Possibly if you already have made the investment in the hardware, especially FPGA or ASIC already invested and with investment returned a while back. Existing GPU is becoming tough. GPU and FPGA,  are a no go for brand new investment.

You realize you're replying to comments from 2011 in this thread right?

So who was the genius that brought this thread back from the graveyard?

I dont want to point with finger to someone :D