Edit: Primarily alt-coins, but I'm also mining bitcoins...
Well, I guess what coin you're mining should have been the first and only thing I should have asked. I don't know what you'll need for your chosen alt coin(s). Bitcoin and altcoins require different Catalyst and SDK's. So I would suggest picking one and hope for the best. But since it seems that the later Catalyst's don't seem to work I guess I would opt for using the Catalyst's that work best for Bitcoin and mine Bitcoins. For that you would want to go with Catalyst 11.x or 12.x and NOT go over SDK 2.5. Beyond that, no idea. Good Luck, Sam |
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Catalyst 13.1 - Legacy?? right  I have an AGP 4650 and it requires Catalyst 10.7. So if you can get yours to work with a later Catalyst you've done better than I ever have. Of course that may be because of the AGP bus, I don't know. What oder version did you get installed and working with the 4650? Bitcoin mining usually wants/needs Catalyst 11.x or 12.x with SDK 2.1 to 2.5? Sam Edit: Are you Bitcoin or Alt coin mining? |
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Glad you got it working. Your hash rate seems in line with the comparison chart that I sent you a link for, but that's about the base rate so yes it could be better. Catalyst 11.5 has ADL, I think, so you should be able to use CGMiner and have it over clock your GPU engine and underclock your memory. You said you need to find a pool now? Bitminter is a pool. But check the mining pools list for others. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=104664.msg1146108#msg1146108Ozcoin and BTC Guild are both good choices. So your off to the races now, Sam |
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A 4870 is a very low end card. It's only good for tinkering and getting your feet wet. So don't think your going to mine allot of BTC with it . When I was mining with my 4670 I could only get Catalyst 10.7 and OpenCL 2.1 or 2.2 to run with it. If you can get a latter 11.x Catalyst to install and work with that card I would recommend CGMiner. CGMiner has ADL support so it can overclock your engine clock, underclock your ram and keep your temperature in a safe range. If you can only use a 10.x Catalyst your probably going to have to use the old Phoenix miner and mine on a getwork pool. Also here is a good comparison chart with some suggestions https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mining_hardware_comparisonSam |
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I'm not running them on Windows. They are on Ubuntu Linux 12.10.
Doh! I did see that too. Doesn't the readme have something to say about USB drivers? If not please ignore me Sam Edit: and the crash I was talking about with 3.2.1 was a Windoze only problem too. |
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CGMiner 3.2.1 worked great with one instance but crashed with 3 different instances. Updating to 3.3.1 has resolved that issue and has been running great for me.
Did you run the Zadig utility with no erupters plugged in to install the WinUSB driver and the add the erupters and set them to use the WinUSB driver per the ASIC Readme?
I have not seen that behavior before.
Sam
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Nobody will recommend CPU mining as it will take FOREVER to find a valid share and next to impossible in the time the universe has left to solve a block at this difficulty level.
That being said if you want to tinker around with CPU mining so you can see your PC working its little CPU out, I would recommend getting the Ufasoft miner. That was a very easy miner to use and that is what I started with over 2 years ago.
The next thing is, do you have a GPU? If so what type and model?
Sam
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So other than creating more traffic than necessary (which could affect the pool servers and yourself) does being able to hash at a higher difficulty not pay off any better than at 1?
Nope, unless your using the POT payout method on Ozcoin which is bit like gambling. When I see shares accepted in cgminer and it says something other than 1/1 (for example 2/1 or 16/1) I assume I get credited for one share, correct?
Correct Is seeing things higher than 1/1 any kind of indication that a higher difficulty would be beneficial?
Not really, if you see one over 31.3M it will be a block solver. And also, what happens when too high a difficulty is chosen?
Just higher variance. It should still even out over time. Do you see your payout rates go down as you maybe aren't able to solve shares as quickly?
Your payout could vary up or down. But, again, it should even out over time. So if I have a good idea of what my combined erupters will do at diff 1 then I just need to make sure I don't see a decline in accepted shares over the same amount of time at a higher difficulty?
No, if you set your difficulty to 2 you will submit half the number of shares but they will be converted to diff1 shares by the pool and you will be paid on that estimate. If you set your difficulty to 4 you will submit 1/4th the number of shares and so on. Whew, that must be a record number of questions in such a short space. Hope it helps, Sam |
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or would you choose a difficulty setting based on the cumulative speed?
It's a cumulative hash rate per worker that matters. So select the base difficulty rate of all your erupters added together on each worker. I selected a base difficulty of 2 for a worker with 5 Block Erupters even though Diff1 would have been fine too. It's a bit of a subjective thing too. If you want to use less bandwidth on your internet connection increase your base difficulty. Sam |
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I think it was around 22 to 24 THs. GPU Mining had increased dramatically as well at first too because the Bitcoin price skyrocketed too.
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Could someone tell me what the POT payout method is that's mentioned on the site?
Pay On Target It pays on the difficulty target of your share. The higher the difficulty of that particularly share the higher amount you get paid. |
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Do all those rejects count as paid orphans?
No, your not paid for rejects, because they were rejected. Orphans are when a block is found that is not part of the main blockchain and would create a forked chain if they were to be continued to be mined on. This is cause, I think, mainly when two pools find a solution to the same block in a very close time frame. Only one can be the real block solver and the other one is orphaned. Sam |
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Eleuthria,
Have you thought about applying notifications on a per worker basis?
A worker was throwing spurious work at BTC Guild and I got about 10 notifications emails for that worker while it was mining another pool.
Sam
It's something I'll consider. If it's a big annoyance, one current workaround is hiding that worker. Hidden workers will not generate idle notification emails. Idle miner code is something I have been meaning to rewrite the script for to find a more efficient way to scan through the last share times of workers, so once I get to that (right now my focus is DDoS mitigation + new colocation), I will likely fit in the per-worker notification settings. If I hide it will it still mine? Yes, hidden workers will still mine. They just won't be visible on your charts (if you unhide it, they will show up again). That sounds like a workable solution. If you get around to doing per worker notifications that would be great. Thanks, Sam |
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I'm embarrassed to write this but will do so because it may help someone else in a bonehead situation.
This is a new machine with a newly installed OS, and the date and time were set incorrectly.
As soon as I set the correct D&T, problem solved.
Thanks for the responses.
I have noticed now in Windoze that if your date and time are out of a range Windows will not update it. Which is really annoying. I would like to have it updated regardless. Some of my machines may not run for a while or the CMOS will reset because of a low battery or whatever. Good catch though. Sam |
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Eleuthria,
Have you thought about applying notifications on a per worker basis?
A worker was throwing spurious work at BTC Guild and I got about 10 notifications emails for that worker while it was mining another pool.
Sam
It's something I'll consider. If it's a big annoyance, one current workaround is hiding that worker. Hidden workers will not generate idle notification emails. Idle miner code is something I have been meaning to rewrite the script for to find a more efficient way to scan through the last share times of workers, so once I get to that (right now my focus is DDoS mitigation + new colocation), I will likely fit in the per-worker notification settings. If I hide it will it still mine? |
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Eleuthria,
Have you thought about applying notifications on a per worker basis?
A worker was throwing spurious work at BTC Guild and I got about 10 notifications emails for that worker while it was mining another pool.
Sam
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For crying out loud don't drop your firewall on a Windoze box. Also make sure you disable uPnP.
If your using M$ Security Essentials you need to make sure you put in an exception for Bitcoin-QT.exe in M$$E and the firewall, per the readme.
Sam
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What is rejects/stale/dupe/other on BTCguild dashboard?
Those are the shares that you submit that get rejected for those reasons. Stale is work submitted for previous blocks or possibly after a certain timeout, Dupe is duplicate work and Other are rejects that don't fall into the first two categories. |
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Ozcoin, Deepbit and BTC Guild with Block Erupters.
May I ask why you choose Deepbit? Or more likely: why you still use Deepbit? Because it's a pool I've always used and have an account with. And the obvious, that its a very stable and reliable pool. But, being that its still getwork only I couldn't recommend it for more than a low end ASIC such as block erupters. Sam |
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