VLC increasing hashrate + other questions

[Asiketeisc]

1. I've been considering switching to solo mining for a while now (I've done the math and know what I'm getting myself into).
While doing some research, I found out that the standard bitcoind doesn't do long polling.
This isn't really that much of a problem if you tweak the ask rate, but I was wondering if anyone had any numbers on just how much of a stale % increase you would get if you did neither of the above.

Is there any reason to set up a solo "pool" just for the LP?

2. If I eventually decide to set up a small private pool (me and maybe 2 others), what would be the easiest pool software to set up and run?
We'd just need the basics, stat-wise. % of shares submitted by each person. I can even do the payout manually if need be, since we're not likely to find blocks all that often.

3. Is there any particular reason why phoenix would show my hashrate as 20-30Mh/s higher whenever I'm watching anything using VLC?
It drops back to where it was as soon as I pause the video or exit VLC.
Hashrate:
agg5 305 no interface lag
agg5+vlc 330 no interface lag
agg12 330 interface lag
agg12+vlc 330 interface lag

4. If I run phoenix or gcminer right after starting my computer, the screen goes black and it reboots. If I start and exit a game first, it works.
Any ideas?

[blandead]

your memory speed might be too low, and while watching a video it would go from idle to a higher clock. Probably the higher clock is giving you a better hashrate. Try raising your memory clock 50-100 Mhz. Also, most pools seem to use pushpoold, and if configured decently stales are usually less than 1%. Good luck on figuring out how to configure it though. If you're going to manually set the askrate, I'd suggest setting it to 100 and the queue to 4.

Also, I thought with solo mining you don't get any stale rates since it's solo..

[Asiketeisc]

your memory speed might be too low, and while watching a video it would go from idle to a higher clock. Probably the higher clock is giving you a better hashrate. Try raising your memory clock 50-100 Mhz. Also, most pools seem to use pushpoold, and if configured decently stales are usually less than 1%. Good luck on figuring out how to configure it though. If you're going to manually set the askrate, I'd suggest setting it to 100 and the queue to 4.

I'll try that, thanks.

Also, I thought with solo mining you don't get any stale rates since it's solo..

Well, if the server/daemon doesn't tell the mining software that a new block was found, it'll be working on stale data.