longest time for a block?

[dellnull]

I'm e mining-newbie but I've minded for a couple of weeks now. I've noticed that some blocks takes hours and hours to solve. Right now I'm with Slush's pool and this round is almost 4,5 hours now. Whats the longest round-time possible?

What's considered as a short, medium and  a long round time? 

[os2sam]

I'm e mining-newbie but I've minded for a couple of weeks now. I've noticed that some blocks takes hours and hours to solve. Right now I'm with Slush's pool and this round is almost 4,5 hours now. Whats the longest round-time possible?

What's considered as a short, medium and  a long round time? 

A block is solved approx every 10 minutes, that's the target anyway.

A round on a pool is NOT the time it takes to solve a block but the time it takes that particular pool to find a block.  Blocks are being found by others on the network during that time.  It sometimes takes days or weeks for smaller pools to find blocks.
Sam

[dellnull]

Aha, thank you for clearing things out. This is the best part with beeing new, there is a lot to learn :-) I guess I got confused (and also frustated) when it took a round like 5 hours to finish.

[os2sam]

Aha, thank you for clearing things out. This is the best part with beeing new, there is a lot to learn :-) I guess I got confused (and also frustated) when it took a round like 5 hours to finish.

With difficulty over 10M and going higher that is now very common.  It is not uncommon for larger pools to even go 8 or 9 hours.  It's all in the luck.
Sam

[dellnull]

Yeah, I now understand that ASIC is the only option here if you are in for the money. Lucky me that I don't do it for the money in the first place. I really wish I jumped the train a couple of years ago....

[os2sam]

Yeah, I now understand that ASIC is the only option here if you are in for the money. Lucky me that I don't do it for the money in the first place. I really wish I jumped the train a couple of years ago....

I found out about Bitcoin in Feb of 2011 and started in May and lost big because of that procrastination.

But depending on your GPU hardware it could be viable for a while.  Also you can get a BFL Jalapeno for $250 now which isn't bad in my opinion.  Don't make the mistake I did by paying in Bitcoin.
Sam

[mc_lovin]

TripleMining has been working on this block for a few days lol.. haaaaalp we need ASIC support!!

[dellnull]

I've ordered a jalapeno, but it's like 45 000 others waiting before me :-( I've had bought used radeons just to keep up in the meanwhile and I should be in the 750MH/s with those. I haven't had the time to set them up (only one of three are running now). And I can also crack ordinary pw-hashes with my GPU:s if needed. As I mention before, I don't do this for the money in the first place but money certainly talks :-)

Can I ask how much for a bfl-jalapeno in BTC? I paid with paypal in USD so it was less than one 7979

[os2sam]

Can I ask how much for a bfl-jalapeno in BTC? I paid with paypal in USD so it was less than one 7979

They are $250 whether you pay in USD or BTC.  I paid in BTC when the jalapeno was $150 and that was equal to 13.48 BTC.  At the current $115 per BTC it has cost me $1,550.  What a deal .  And I'm still waiting too.
Sam

[dellnull]

TripleMining has been working on this block for a few days lol.. haaaaalp we need ASIC support!!

OMG, a few days!! I was worried when it took more than four hours

[dellnull]

Can I ask how much for a bfl-jalapeno in BTC? I paid with paypal in USD so it was less than one 7979

They are $250 whether you pay in USD or BTC.  I paid in BTC when the jalapeno was $150 and that was equal to 13.48 BTC.  At the current $115 per BTC it has cost me $1,550.  What a deal .  And I'm still waiting too.
Sam

Ops! Any hint when you will have yours? Do you know if the order number equals units reordered? (if you cut away the leading 1000) 

[os2sam]

Can I ask how much for a bfl-jalapeno in BTC? I paid with paypal in USD so it was less than one 7979

They are $250 whether you pay in USD or BTC.  I paid in BTC when the jalapeno was $150 and that was equal to 13.48 BTC.  At the current $115 per BTC it has cost me $1,550.  What a deal .  And I'm still waiting too.
Sam

Ops! Any hint when you will have yours? Do you know if the order number equals units reordered? (if you cut away the leading 1000) 

No idea.  It will be whatever it will be.  I'll be mining my GPU's until it shows up.  1/3 of the preorders are supposed to be chosen at random so there's a chance it may show up sooner rather than later.  But I'm not going to hold my breath.  I don't usually have the best of luck.
Sam

[crazyates]

Sounds like some clarification is needed:

The BTC network adjusts the difficulty so that the entire network will find a block on average of 10 minutes.

Pools will not find blocks every 10 minutes. http://blockorigin.pfoe.be/top.php shows the distribution of pools over the last 2016 blocks (~2 weeks).

Some of the faster pools will find a block about every hour, or some faster. Some pools will find one every few hours, and some of the slower pools will take days to find out.

The more important number is luck. A pools luck is what I think you're looking for. Ozcoin recently had a block that was >900% luck, which means it took us 9x longer than average to find a block. For BTCGuild to take 4 hours to find a block would be an extremely long time, but for HHTT, 4 hours would be amazing luck.

[dellnull]

Thank you so much, that really is a great explanation!
Thumbs up for learning newbies like me :-)