Bitcoin Forum

I'm currently using CGminer and it's a HUGE improvement over the GUIminer. I was wondering if I should stick with this miner or try another for more mh/sec?

Currently:
~630 mh/sec with 2 overclocked 24/7 5830s @950mhz top and @1000mhz bottom - ~60C top and ~50C bottom

You were probably doing something wrong then. I use GUIminer and for a similar comparision, I have 2 5830's running 965/330 and 980/330 and I'm getting 635.2 mhash combined between the two.

Agreed.  I think cgminer is the best miner out there BUT

properly configured all miners should be within 1% to 5% of each other.  cgminer tends to run near perfect right out of the box so it is easier to get a "good" result.  With enough tweaking you likely could get any miner to get close to cgminer.

In my opinion what makes cgminer good is the management aspect.  A single instance that controls everything.  The ability to use config files makes automated startup & management of remote instances much easier.  Over/under clocking eliminates the need for CC & afterburner.

I still prefer to use BAT files to launch CGMiner (in Windows 7), as I am not aware of the Config file allowing CPU affinity to be set.

Using auto-login on all my Windows rigs, I run 2 BAT files on every machine: 1 that auto starts on boot up without user intervention (in case of reboots/power outages etc) and a second BAT file that is simply a connection menu that allows me to connect to any of 6 pools of my choosing, depending on what is happening in the network or where I want to mine at any given time.
Each menu entry is a different combination of Primary and Backup Pools, including all individual settings that I have found to be most effective on each pool such as Scan time, work que etc, as well as clock speeds and fan settings depending on time of day or local conditions that I have to account for.

In short, BAT files still give me the most flexibility with CGMiner.....especially my menu setup.

I agree CGMiner is wonderful for management and great 'out of the box'. I seemed to get less stales with GUIminer, but my submissions per card were faster with CGMiner right away. GUIminer's interface left a lot to be desired for me, although its got a nice gui interface it just seemed like a cluster fuck to deal with all those tabs for each card.

If you want manageability though, nothing tops BAMT. Extremely easy config files, GPUMon is a thing of beauty and one button to restart cards is a wondrous thing.

I get the best results with Phoenix Miner 1.50.  Maybe I just wasn't configuring CGMiner correctly or something.

CGminer is great for it's total control aspect, but I do think phoenix miner got better hash rates for me, although, I had greater CPU usage which led to more crashes.

This is on 5970's BTW.

I'm sticking with cgminer for the ease of use. Also Ckolivas is pretty on the ball with his support.

Phoenix is better at output stabilized hashrate.

I like cgminer's "total control" aspect, but it seems that its outputs are not as stable as phoenix. Sometimes my gpu activities are lower to 0% for, say 30 seconds. Also, the hashrate would swing between 15% and -15%.

My best approach for cgminer is to disable cgminer's ADL support (--no-adl) and control the gpu by MSI afterburner or other tools. However, its hashrates are still not so stabilized.

Now I use Phoenix 1.7.0. Its hashrate are very stable once it got configured (about 1% ~ -1%). I also use atitweak to fix the fan speed and gpu clock instead of dynamically tuning.

For folks looking for cgminer like control,with the ability to use a different miner, I suggest checking out Smartcoin (linux)  https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=16548.0. (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=16548.0.)

The author hasn't updated it in awhile, but the last release is stable and I've been using it now for several months to control 5 boxes.

Auto start, auto failover, auto reboot from freeze and great formatted screen output and control via ssh.

Personally I use phoenix, but have tried cgminer with pretty much identical results.

Also I use atitweak for overclocking ease. There is a thread on that somewhere here too.