The result is that you get higher "luck"... (Well, less loss.) potential.

The catch is that you are adding more connections to maintain, and SEND/GET with.

The bottom line is this...
1: If one server goes down, without pool-hopping penalty, you continue to make uninterrupted funds. The other GPU's simply process more of the other pools shares until the down-pool comes online again.
2: You do not loose-out for pool-hopping, since you are "Still" there, when a pool comes back online.
3: If one pool has bad luck, chances are, the other pool you are in, just got that block which the other pool did not get. Thus, YOU do not loose from that bad-luck, you continue to get the same value from the other pool.
4: In the end, your gains will be more than the 3% you lost in fees, for participating in any ONE single pool. Your gains will also include, "no losses from down-time", no losses from "pool hopping decay share degrading".

(Pool luck, not the whole "pie". Only about 80% of the pie is "pools" you can join.)
Single pool luck:
If you are in a pool that is 10% of the total pools = 10% lucky, 90% unlucky

Multi-pool luck:
If you are in a pools that total 50% of the pools = 50% lucky, 50% unlucky

All-pool luck:
If you are in a pools that total 100% of the pools = 100% lucky, 0% unlucky

Thus, losses in ONE pool, are 90% of "luck". Losses in half the pools is only about 50%. If you average over time, all your losses from a single pool, they will be greater than 20% of your potential income. (That includes down-time and lost shares and fees and withholding and orphaned and stale-blocks.) If you average out your losses from multi-pools, they will be less than 5% of your potential. Thus, joining only ONE more pool, will give you back the 3% that most pools charge. But it will not give you back all the bonuses that you may loose, from splitting into pools that do not actually offer the same rewards to start-off.

EG, some give name-coins (which is a nice 5% bonus). Some give you the "transaction fees" that are being paid to process the blocks. (Others that do not, are keeping those fees, in addition to the 3% they charge you to mine for them!) Some just "have poor operating and records", seemingly loosing your "shares", or mysteriously "restart", just as shares start to rise, and the pool-hop decay knocks share-values back down for the next block being found. Thus, leaving the majority of the next blocks funds going to the pool operator. Though, when audited, they "look" like they honestly paid all "due shares", even though they are manipulating what "due" values are.

In the end, it is the best way to "reduce losses". Thus, resulting in apparent gains. It is 100% better than solo-mining, guaranteed. It is at-least 50% better than pool-mining on the largest pool. So, win-win... rather... less-loss less-loss.

Well, it was fun while it lasted... Now the pool is eating my shares and just discarding them. Valid shares, not just "stale".

Turned a 2GHs into a disturbing 250MHs, even going so far as to say I was "dead", though the machines were all still churning out hundreds of shares going into never-never land...

I am sure they were going into someones account, but they were not going into mine.

Hope you enjoyed my modest hashing-power. lol. But I think I will move those machines back over to a pool that actually pays me for my shares, instead of throwing them out, and telling me my machines are "dead".

What a rip-off. I am just glad I didn't put more machines here.

The funny thing is... when all your eggs are in one basket... it is easy to break all the eggs at once.

1.5THs is 0THs, when it can't take orders. When it is down due to ill-code. When it is "out for repairs". When it is... um... programmed to send hashing power to a "ghost account", after rebooting, and the ghost account is owned by BFL, and it looses power, due to design.

Or it is just flat-out attacked on its publicly available network location, which it has to be on, to get work. lol...

The whole bitcoin setup was made to give large-guys squashing power over the small guys who labored and actually worked to get it running in the past. FAIL.

Same will happen with scrypt based coins in the future.

Only X amount of coins are made per day. Each new machine added to the market, takes coins from those already mining coins on the market. That simple issue alone, makes all future investments in "machines" a futile investment. (Even if the slower machines drop off, the faster machines just replace the ones that drop-off the network. Eating into their own future profit. The only way to "win" is to BE the WHOLE market... or 1/3, since being 50% is too close for comfort for anyone to use the market, due to the poor system limits and ability to "alter the market transactions", with a 51% attack.)

The reason they "took pre-orders", was because banks and investors refused to give them a loan, if they even tried to get a loan. Why get a loan, where you have to pay interest, when you can get an interest-free, and possibly not have to even pay it back, from your peers? (Because of Josh's involvement.)

The reason they would have ALSO been denied a loan, logically, if they actually applied, would be because of this...
1: Only the first few "units" would have high returns. Each subsequent unit, after they had lowered the hash-percentage of the existing network of miners, would continue to degrade the items future value. (Thus making them unable to pay future loan debit.)
2: People would instantly catch-on, if these units were actually made "all at once", and were to become "available at the _____ price", thus demanding an exponential hike in price that would cause ALL competition to be able to afford to manufacture them cheaper than any purchase price. (Thus making them unable to pay future loan debit.)
3: They would realize that the "volume of transactions", if not expanded to match the "processing speed of the units delivered/sold", would translate into the units being "offline more than they would be online, thus, earning "zero income" for those who had made a purchase... Thus, stopping all future purchases from being made. (Thus making them unable to pay future loan debit.)

Soooooo

Josh decided to just take everyone's actual money now, and stick everyone with the debit, while the "majority of manufactured machines power", would be used for themselves, to consume the majority of the market of "produced coins", while everyone watched the market turn into a pack-man pie-chart, with no ability to stop the consumption and cash-out. While waiting for everyone to simply ask for a refund, offering those who waited the longest, the refunds from money coming in for new pre-orders... until the pre-orders stop coming in...

Then he will leave town with all the cash, which I am sure he is hiding from the suckers that choose to follow him, leaving them with the legal debit that he has "worked his hand out of"...

Unless, "josh" is just the obvious scape-goat... and the other guys at BFL are simply setting him up for the fall... and THEY are the ones taking the money, and making it look like he is the one that "is going to disappear with it"... when the reality is, they are just going to make him, "disappear"... and the money will seem to do too... but josh will actually be gone, and the money will actually be in some other guys foreign bank account, with all the heat on Josh. lol....

When thieves jack thieves, it gets ugly... Double-double-double crossing. Cons work with cons. Period... Because no honest man works with a con, unless he intends to learn the con game, to use it.

I hope they are a scam... lol... I keep directing future investors there... My plan is... if they are a scam, that leaves more future hashing power for me, since everyone spent money there, and not on more GPU cards. However, if they are not, I am as screwed as they are. (Because if they are not a scam, that will turn all those 60GHs units into the equivalent of a single 7970, when everyone has one, and others have 1.5THs units. Funny thing is, they are paying $2000+ for what I only had to pay $380 for. That same 0.000001% of the market.)

Any way you cut it... those who didn't buy THs machines are going to have to mine for years to get the money they paid, except the first few dozen who get the actual units.

Looking at the hashing-power of the network, I see that the machines have about as much up-time as down-time. They will all be spending about 90% of the time sitting idle, with no transaction work to process. Not unless they start allowing smaller transactions again, and they start taking all the "free" transactions to fill a block.

The joke is on those STILL buying... The money they spend now (like a pyramid scam), is going to those who are now asking for refunds. BFL wants you to get a refund. They don't actually want to give you units. They used everyone to build themselves all the THs units. Just like Avalon and the blades... Bitcoin is going to be a corporate coin now. Thanks to many greedy investors who just couldn't say no.

LOL, until the Chinese decide they want to make the 1.5THs units for us, for $200 each... since they don't care about copyrights, and they have all these chips laying around, and us wanting to buy them to drive BFL and others under for robbing us of our value in the market. Mass-production wins every time.

For the record, I DO have an order in for one... just for the novelty of it. It CAN be programmed to crack and hash... so it does have other non-coin related potential. If it can't be used to make coins honestly, it can be used to make other funds in other ways. lol. If they can get them to stay running.

The only driver you need for ALL ATI cards is "catalyst drivers"... No special manufactures drivers required. (There is only one manufacture AMD.)

Eg, there is not a separate 7950, and 7970 and 7990 driver. They are all the same driver. (The OLDER ones for the 7950 might not identify the 7990, but the drivers for 7990 will have settings for 7950.)

One brand being MSI, one being HIS, one being PowerColor, one being AMD... has nothing to do with the actual card, other then bios-settings which have nothing to do with drivers, or specific hardware components, which also have nothing to do with drivers. (Unless they added a "special" chip to the board, which none have done... Or they have "tweaked" the original drivers for some "game" special performance... than there are only one set of drivers you need... catalyst drivers.)

Drivers are just command-lines, which windows or linux uses to talk to the card, and get info out, or tell it to do something. Drivers don't actually control the cards, the bios does that, and controllers. Drivers just tell the programs where to listen for output, and what to say to suggest commands. The catalyst drivers simply give the user additional controlling suggestions, for how the card should run, but the card does most of the "telling you what it wants to do". (They give us super constrained limits that don't normally do much damage, if pushed to a limit. "Normally". lol, we don't run these cards "normal".)

You should be fine with the latest catalyst drivers, and latest afterburner-beta.

The "extra" pins are both ground... (-12v). They are there for "legal reasons", no other real reason. 6-pin = 3x+12, 3x-12 [8-pin = 3x+12, 5x-12v] The "theory", is that if you don't have a 6+2 pin connection, then your PSU MAY not be designed to handle the power. The reality is, connectors has nothing to do with "available power". Some PSU's have 25A, some have only 14A, some have up to 75A available on those same pins, or more, or less.

You also have to "know" what your computer draws, before adding the card to the system. When the CPU and RAM is "loaded" by 80%, as that is what will give you the "base-line" to subtract from your "wall wattage" of a "running and loaded" video-card. (You can't just "not use the card", because if it is plugged-in, it is consuming power, and that is NOT the baseline. If you subtract that value from the loaded GPU tests, you will wrongly be measuring the GPU consumption.)

Also, your wall-wattage is the consumption of the whole system, including all inefficiencies. Unless you have a "platinum 95%" running on 240v, then assume you are showing 20-30% more power use at the wall, than the system is actually using inside. Most PSU's are about 75-85%, at best, running on a 120v power line. Even platinum-95's.

But I digress... saying it is NOT good, "in your crappy setup", should be elaborated to state...

"In my crappy closed-case, poorly vented, poorly exhausted, under-powered, and horrible unmanaged card-setup settings... The card was not good for mining."

Yes, the design of the card requires special care, as you mentioned. It is power-hungry... but you never even stated a power/hash rate, nor did you mention any actual adjustments to "control power", you just poured-in what your PSU fed it. You failed to mention PSU model, rail-power, or your system-consumption... Thus, I assume you have a shoddy PSU and severely way over-powered CPU that is sucking up a good 100w when it runs. (My whole system uses 34W max, running at 100% load, but mining, it runs below 20% and 18W total.)

As for the card... did you even TRY mining? Did you even try scrypt? Or are you just guessing, based off some useless stats that someone spouted-off?

I can run 3x 7970 cards, easily off 550w @ 1.5Ghps, and 650w @ 1.9GHs, and 720w @ 2.1Ghs (My 750w PSU doesn't even crank-up the fan. But my GPU's run about 50%-80% fan-speed, respectively.) Of those wattages, 18w is the system, and about 20-25% is the losses from the PSU itself.

You say 1 runs at 450w... that is like two 7970's running at 225w each... so you are obviously underpowered, and it is having to slow-down to keep a "constant voltage", or has to slow-down due to your crappy venting of heat. You do realize that 2x 7970's would consume 4-slots, and the 7990 consumes only 2.5 (Which is a GAIN of 1.5 slots.)

Running 4x 7990's as opposed to 8x 7970's (Which is impossible), is better in more ways than you imagine. However, the price needs to drop to $800, to make it even remotely viable to use for mining. $1000-$1300 for a 7990 is NOT reasonable for getting the power of 2x of a $400 7970 card. That, I will agree with...

P.S. They all come with 4 free games now. If you don't get them, it is because someone took the cards for themselves, and sold them.

Yes, if one is nVidia, and one is ATI... or one is intel... (or some other compatible GPU.)

No, if you are suggesting using two ATI cards... one using v12 drivers, and one using v11 drivers... (Both would have to use v12 or v11 drivers.)

Can you be more specific about the "two cards", and which "two drivers" you are talking about?

I would just like to say thank-you,
JD

I propose that you encourage users of the pool to "add another pool" using "load-balance", and for those users, optionally allow them to select "Connect as load-balanced".

The purpose of this setup is so you can "limit" those "load-balanced" workers to auto-adjust their work, based on worker names. Thus, in times where the pool seems too large, you give us less work, on purpose. This WILL NOT affect us with logins on multiple pools, and will allow you to keep any users who do not use load-balanced setups to maintain a constant rate of work.

You should encourage load-balanced setups, stating the obvious. Having a connection to multiple pools increases your average PPLNS "Luck" to the percentage of pools which you are actively connected to. EG, connecting to one pool, your luck may be 10% one day, 50% another, 90% another... Connected to 50% of the active pools, that same work would bring you 50%/75%/90%, since you have the luck of the other pools PPLNS, in addition to the work done on your pool.

EG, you are playing 6 hands of cards in a 10 hand card game, instead of only having 1 hand of good luck.

That also helps to keep the entire network stable, as your processing just rises on the active connections more, without being hindered by the lower work coming from the other connections. Also, you don't loose "credit" from PPLNS, and are not "pool-hopping", which looses critical processing time in the hops.

In the event that your servers do go down, due to an attack, or just too many incoming work-connections... We loose nothing, and you get all the fastest connections available. (Since it is balancing based off "the most efficient connections" on our side.)

NOTE: The option in CGMiner is (BAT-File: --load-balance) or (CONF-File: "load-balance" : true,), Only works when multiple pools are loaded or "enabled". NOTE: You can solo-mine this way also, while participating in a pool, with your wallet running in "-server" mode. (For those who did not know that was a possibility.)

P.S. I encourage YOU to encourage THEM/US to assist pools who have smaller portions of the pool. That will greatly help-out everyone on the network, more than joining only the top pools. FYI: if we all did this, that would ensure and maintain that no one pool ever dominates over 33% of the network. Might also help to directly talk to other pool operators, and setup a "load-balance monitor that you all share, behind the scenes, with each-other. If one is a little over-burdened, they can let you know, and you can lighten your load balancing limits for that time.

Thank-you, waldohoover

That reply actually led me to the error in my settings. Though it didn't completely resolve the issue I was looking for resolve on. It did fix half of the issue.

The point of an equal split, is to have an equal share at any found block, instead of a majority in one pool, thus, still leading to potentially less, based on luck of the hunt.

It is like playing cards, 12 hands, and you are also the dealer. Instead of playing one hand, and the other guys always win. Now to setup all my machines like this. All servers can't be down all the time, but one being down will no longer set me back in my earnings.

I got it working, sort-of...

It does log-in to both pools now... It is running shares on both pools, but one "the more efficient one", is running about 80% of the thread-work.

I just watched the pool stall, and the other pool got all 100% of my work, for a few minutes. Until the other pool came back online. (It was not doing this before. It was treating the setup as "fallover", I guess.)

I just wish I could manually set the "load", or have load-options, so it continues to maintain a "full distributed load", when available. As it is now, it decides, somehow, that one pool is more efficient, and gives that pool the majority of the work. (Share-size seems to impact that. One server has fixed-share-difficulty of 1, the other I set to 4, so it had less network traffic. That one that was at 4 was the inefficient one. I simply reduced the share-value of that pool back to 1. It is like trying to twist my other pools arm, to convince them to let us set share-size.)

NOTE, I just had to put "--load-balance" prior to the logins, in my bat file. Before it was in the config file as "load_balance" : "true"... didn't seem to work for me. (CgMiner 3.1.0beta)

But that makes it worse... (That is like just placing one machine on one pool, and another on the other pool.) If pool A is dead, that is 1 card/machine/rig not doing anything until the pool comes back online, or it has to hop... thus. loosing out. (That is what it is doing now.) lol

Which is why I want the other card to be used for the alive pool, until that other pool comes back online. Thus, the other pool just shows more shares of work, from having more processing being done.

So then I am correct, that CGMiner does not actually "load-balance" anything, with the load-balance setting?

Then should I should make this a formal request?

I know the program has the ability to switch pools, but I am trying to log-in to multiple pools at the same time.
EG...
Pool A, logged in, doing 50% work
Pool B, logged in, doing 50% work...

So that in the event pool A stops responding, the program will do this...
Pool A, dead, doing 0%
Pool B, logged in, doing 100%

Until the pools is restored, then it would return to a split-load... (Or whatever proportion I have set for that pool.)

(As opposed to using a separate machine on each pool, which has to constantly pool-hop... thus, loosing out of actual earnings.)

Because having a foot in every pool, keeps you closer to 100% luck. (Well, about 80%, because 20% of the pools will not let you in.)

I thought this was how load-balance worked, but I am not seeing it do that. It is still only picking one pool in my setup. Am I doing it wrong?

You do realize that luck has little to do with the process of "winnings", as we are all essentially rolling 20-sided dice, thousands of times...

The "illusion" of luck comes from the fact that all encryption uses at-least ONE long-ass prime-number... That number, with consideration for your "wallet-key/ID", of the pool operators... determines how "easy" it is to hit your target of x-zeros.

EG, crypt any number by 3, and you will never have a zero. crypt any number by 13, and you will have a few zeros. crypt any number by 101, and you get a lot of zeros easily... The "number" is the result of the block-data. The crypt, is essentially the pool operators "wallet-key/ID" we are all using as the base-line to find the "solution" to the block. (The leading 00000's for the win.)

If you look at any pools results, it is exactly the same results of prime-number intersections, as seen in perlin-noise-waves. Highly predictable by the way. I can almost guess with about a 80% accuracy, when our next block will be, and how long our next hot-run will be, and how long it will take us to find that next slow-block. (The luck part, which is little to do with it, has to do with someone-else's "noise" taking our win, at that intersection of our divisor-prime, versus their divisor prime.)

EG... If you are a pool operator, you should be trying a new wallet every day. If the wallet has poorer results than your best wallet, scrap it. (Easy test is to see how fast and how close to a difficulty of 32 the shares come. If most are 32/32 that is a hot wallet. If they bounce all around like 487/32, 32/32, 14k/32, 87/32, 99/32... then it is a messy wallet with little chance of "good luck"... that wallet-key/ID is a "3" or a "7", with few results leading to a trailing zero result.)

Do your pool-joiners a favor, and give them a fighting chance... use a wallet that has the actual ability to create a difficulty 18,000,000 block. Or you will see most of your times lengthen to hours and hours, and others will quickly find blocks that could have been yours, because you were crunching away with a dirty key.

Plot your pool-wallet-key/ID results... you can visually see the better ones that way. (You need more than one users results to see what needs to be seen.)

The "value" of bitcoins is in "losses" that must be "regained". Nothing more. Just like with any other item of value.

I pay you a dollar to do work, that I also had to work for, to get that dollar. (Almost redundant, paying you for work with a token that represents the work I just did. It is like a race torch... Here take this, now go do what I just did, but do a little more than I did!)

There is a large supply of coins now, and only moderate demand. When you buy a coin, you are buying some person's "losses" that were collected as overhead of processing or holding or theft or trade. EG, if I lost $100 making 1BTC, I NEED at-least $100 back, but I MIGHT accept $90 or $80, if I am pressed for cash... Or, I may decide, my losses of time, holding the loss, justifies another +$20, thus, now demand $120, because I am sure my future coins will be less, my future losses will be greater, or I am just greedy like that.

You will notice the price rising now, but a lot less people "buying" the losses/coins. So it is safe to say that $110 is the "true value", as of now. However, to the new ASIC's, who operate faster, and with less loss, they will be able to sell for less, and make more. Since they do not have actual "losses", after cashing-in on our losses. Thus, leaving a lot less people needing/wanting to buy, thus, further driving the price down as they drive us (the ones with the real losses), out for a "true realized loss".

Unless they do some heavy promoting of bitcoins to increase "other people buying them", they will be holding a dust-coin. Because those of us who leave (the ones with the loss), will not have anything to purchase coins with. And we already have a large supply in our hands that can't be sold for what we lost.

The future for bitcoins is near an effective end. The volume just isn't there to support it anymore, and the losses are reaching the point of no return for those who invested. However, other alt-coins have a potential that will suffer that same fate in time, but are on the upward path, nearing the value of bitcoins. This will continue until the "issues" can be worked-out, and those issues do not seem to be looked at, just accepted as, "the way it is". If that never changes, then the markets will continue to rise and fall, and consume one-another, and us in the process. The market itself has no losses, it is only us. Which is why the market exists and thrives in the first place.

$3000 for a Jalipino that does 5GHs!

You do realize you could have spent that same money on 7970's, and still have to wait 1 year before you earn your money back.

5GHs, now, will earn you about $600 a month, if NO MORE jalipinos, or other devices get added to the network, other than yours. That is 5 months there. Now, when the rest come in a month, two months, three months... That 5GHs toy will only be 50% of what it is now, in hashing power of the network. Thus, it will only earn you $300 a month, then $150 a month, then $75 a month... That is if the price REMAINS at $120 per BTC. Thus, it will take a year, at that price.

There is always alt-coins! Just not Scrypt alt-coins for your jalipino... but if you had 5GHs in a video-card rig... You would only suffer a slight loss of $20 a month, which will be nullified by the majority of card-miners switching to the alt-coins and raising the value of them, since they/we are the ones with the "value", and bulk of the BTC. You really think we are going to PAY cash for BTC in the future? Better hope BFL is going to buy your BTC... No wait, they already have your money, and now they also want your BTC. lol. It's a loose-loose situation.

Enjoy your purchase. (I am just butt-hurt cause I didn't get to bid before they were won. lol.)

It doesn't hurt to ask. It also doesn't hurt to be prepared. Nor does it hurt to get this confirmed by other sources.

I do not work for AMD, but I spoke in length, with a representative of AMD, who handles this specific issue.

Seriously though, you never heard of a key generator? They have them for every game that is ever made. (Even online activation games.)

Generating a valid key is not like generating a "real" key. That is what most people selling OEM versions are doing. Selling keys generated with a key generator. AND/or a crack that "validates" the key, without calling home to see if it is "real".

lol, you usually end-up loosing the game in a week or two, or you get stuck with a buggy hacked pre-release, or old release that can't ever be updated to function correctly. (That is part of the reason they purposely leave bugs in games, then patch the legally purchased ones on day-1, then follow-up with more patches, as you progress into the game.)

But I digress... It is frustrating having to wait for a week or two, for each one of these sold games to be "validated" manually by AMD. (The purchases of the cards were from newegg.com for those who want to know where the cards came from. It was not like I got them from ebay or a shady private listing on amazon.)

The irony of purchasing shredded US currency, for bitcoins is sooooo ironic... lol.

Since you plan to throw your money away... why not buy worthless money to "symbolically" throw it away, while keeping it as a collectible!

Here is what I use to decide my days...

http://dustcoin.com/mining

Lists all major/minor coins. Just add your two hashrates below, and the wattage you consume, and your KWh rate, and you can clearly compare your expended efforts for the day/month/year...

Best to spend a day doing each one. They can't all crash, and ONE will surely go through a 10x-50x-100x jump in due time. Best way to get more from mining is simply to convince others to use the coins for transactions. Forums, web-shops, friends, game-clans...

If no-one buys and sells, other than us... then we are just trading baseball cards. Eventually everyone will have the cards they want, and stop trading. You have to PROMOTE the coin you like best. Simply ask an admin/website/shop... "Do you take ____coins?" Say nothing more. That will peak thier curiosity, and let them make their own decision. Do it a bunch of times, to different places. It is like a spreading virus. Curiosity will make them come to you.

NOTE: BBQ and Terra coins values are NOT steady at the moment. They are not actually 300% more valuable than mining bitcoins at any time. That is a fluxuation in the formula, as it drops to a low, and then everyone goes there to mine, and makes it look like it is 300% or 150% more than it actually is. Both those are AVERAGE about 25-75% of a bitcoin value.