Bitcoin Forum

What's the general consensus on solo vs pooled mining in regards to rigs that have a high hashing capacity?

I've been mining as part of Slush's pool for 26 hours now and I'm currently £1.90 above the cost of electricity (£4.10), but if my machine stands a good chance of regularly hitting the 50BTC jackpot every day or two, wouldn't this be a much better way to mine?

I'm very new to mining so any insights you have a very much appreciated  ::)

In the medium to long term, results will be very similar on both options.

In long term, it will be the same. It depends only on your personality if you prefer steady payouts or gambling :). I know that some people here were lucky and earned much more than expected (for example 7 blocks per day). But on the other hand, you can mine week or two without a block. Probability is a bitch :).

With pool, you can be sure that you will have expected amount on your account every day; no more, no less.

I almost never mined solo; I did pool 14 days after I bought my first card. But during those 14 days I was on 60% of expected payout. Few days ago I checked my results on the pool. I found 80th block for the pool and my total reward was 4017 BTC, so it is really very constant.

Did I read that right, and you got 4017BTC to yourself? Or was that the total amount to be distributed across the pool?

Vladimir, great info. Would you say that 1.1Ghash/s was a reasonable value to begin solo mining at? Once I get back into a job again I will probably buy some more 5970's and some low power systems to increase my capacity to around 3Ghash/s which judging from the scarce info I can find around the forum should be enough to net a good profit (Above electricity costs) each week.

Yes (http://mining.bitcoin.cz/stats/hall-of-fame/)

Does that go for all users of your pool if they find the block?  ;D

Slush is taking rewards from the pool in the exact same manner that every other user of the pool does. In this way, he had earned 4017 BTC.

If he were solo mining, the 80 blocks he found would have been worth 4000 BTC.

This shows that the pool is within expected variance levels of solo mining rewards expectations.

@Slush
How much BitCoins you get per day?

If this is not a secret. ;D

You are not going to have a good chance at finding a block every day or 2 unless you have somewhere around 2.5Gh/s et this difficulty level

if you like gampling, then give a low MH (like 150-250MH) to solo mining and the rest to the pool.
the you can compine gampling with some steady earnings ;)

4x 5970 with current difficulty is slightly above 30BTC per day.

how many MH?
i have 5970+6970 (1000MH) and give me 15-16BTC per day!

I think that you have your 'b' and 'p' keys swabbed.

One point not yet mentioned is that mining solo gains one any transaction fees present in the blocks. The tx fees do not amount to very much (seem to average about BTC0.03/block) but, as the supermarket chain says, every little helps!

When mining in a pool, the tx fees go to the pool.

I had 3 blocks so far, only one has 0,03 extra, rest two are 50,00

about those 0,03, do they count towards that total 21M bitcoins?

No.  The fees come from the person who sent the transaction, and they are already-existing coins.

For example, if you send 1BTC to someone and include a 0.01BTC fee, 1.01BTC will be spent.  1BTC goes to the recipient, and 0.01BTC goes to whoever solves the block your transaction is in.  (So if you solve the block yourself, you get your fee back. :))

The best I ever got was 0.30, http://blockexplorer.com/b/114470 (http://blockexplorer.com/b/114470)

best I got was 0,02 :(

Good to know who is receiving my fees (the block is full of pool payouts, it was before I started to use sendmany :).