My Noob mining so far

[maunderingcabal]

So far I have tested the waters in a few mining pools.

The first one I tried was Bitminter
bitminter.com

I chose this because it seemed the easiest. You don't have to install anything or configure anything. You just start the program from browser into a java app. Then log in your info and your good. I was making OK pay, about BTC0.03 a day from passive mining when I wasn't using the computer for gaming. You also accumulate namecoins in a merged mining opperation. I used BTC-e.com as a wallet.

Then I tried Bitparking Pool
http://mmpool.bitparking.com/pool

I wanted to see about super merged mining with devcoins, ixcoins, and namecoins. I did this for an hour or so to check out, it was cool, but I wanted more bitcoins than these other coins. I was getting very low bitcoins, like BTC0.00057000. THough it was fun to get so many devcoins without much time. I may go back to this if people can vouch for this pool.

Then I checked out Mt. Red
www.mtred.com

Their PPS (pay per share) made me interested. I was making around BTC0.00001684 per share, but it was slow. I moved on.

Then I went to Deepbit.
http://deepbit.net/

They had a lower PPS, like BTC0.00000757. They also have a proporsioned option like bitminter. I started using blockchain.info as a wallet and saw that deepbit did a lot of transactions and I wanted to see why. I didn't like their interface on their website and their legal-like explanation of fees...

Wasting time I looked at some free bitcoin scams and waste of time CPU mining.

Then I found 50btc
www.50btc.com

I love their website interface and tracking. Right now it's about BTC0.00000816 a share PPS. I get a pretty good return on passive mining. I make like BTC0.04-0.06 a day. Their transaction fees to my blockchain wallet are free.

More experienced people out there, I have heard BTCGuild is good, but haven't tried yet. I tried Litecoin mining on the side and found I only find shares about every 2-4 minutes. It would take me 30+ hours to mine a litecoin with the notroll.in pool. How do people justify litecoin mining? I seem to mine faster with bitcoin. What advise do you have for a noob? Thanks.

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[Andynerd]

If I may make a suggestion: I find slush's pool to be pretty dang decent if you're willing to give it a try as well. Also if you're looking for a more advanced miner using BFGMiner can provide some more options.

Slush's pool= http://mining.bitcoin.cz/

bfgMiner= https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=78192.0

[maunderingcabal]

If I may make a suggestion: I find slush's pool to be pretty dang decent if you're willing to give it a try as well. Also if you're looking for a more advanced miner using BFGMiner can provide some more options.

Slush's pool= http://mining.bitcoin.cz/

bfgMiner= https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=78192.0

I've heard of slush's pool, but I'm unsure about the score system. I don't dedicate anything to long term mining. It seems like this penalizes just casual miners. How much would you expect to make an hour with 260Mh? I kind of like 50btc's mining frontend, I'll have to checkout bfgminer though. Thanks for the help.

[Andynerd]

I've been running on slush's pool for almost two days now with my 150Mh/s nvidia and my 45Mh/s nvidia laptop. I've managed to scrape together about 0.051 btc. Also if you try  BFG and slush's pool you want to use his proxie software (only for bfg and rpc) and connect to local host, you get a reward bonus because it's more efficient. You can also make namecoins at the same time, they aren't work as much as bitcoins but it adds to the grand total.

Slush Proxie:http://mining.bitcoin.cz/mining-proxy-howto

[maunderingcabal]

I figured out this bfgminer and I think it had increased my mining by 20Mh! Will using this proxy method make it effect my web browsing while I mine?

[Andynerd]

I figured out this bfgminer and I think it had increased my mining by 20Mh! Will using this proxy method make it effect my web browsing while I mine?

No not at all, all it does is sniff port 8332 on the local host then when bfg miner connects to it, it connects to the server by the stratum protocol. It actually provides a minor increase in Mh/s as well.

[dbasql]

+1 for Slush, the directions seem straight forward. Not sure about the casual style though

[maunderingcabal]

I'm trying this proxy thing out and it's working, but it keeps saying:

Statum from pool 0 requested work restart.

What does that mean?

[Andynerd]

I'm trying this proxy thing out and it's working, but it keeps saying:

Statum from pool 0 requested work restart.

What does that mean?

Don't worry about it, it just means that the server is requesting bfg to process a new data set. Like saying "Hey man hold up I've got another thing for you here".

[maunderingcabal]

I'm trying this proxy thing out and it's working, but it keeps saying:

Statum from pool 0 requested work restart.

What does that mean?

Don't worry about it, it just means that the server is requesting bfg to process a new data set. Like saying "Hey man hold up I've got another thing for you here".

OK, sweet. Looks like it's working then. It's kind of gay that the minimum payout limit is BTC0.05 at Slush. 50BTC is BTC0.01. I don't think it really matters in the long run though. I can't figure out if there is a transfer fee from their website. Is there one, when you cash out?

[DPony13]

Bitminter, is indeed pretty good.

Especially if you have a pretty okay rig

[Andynerd]

I'm trying this proxy thing out and it's working, but it keeps saying:

Statum from pool 0 requested work restart.

What does that mean?

Don't worry about it, it just means that the server is requesting bfg to process a new data set. Like saying "Hey man hold up I've got another thing for you here".

OK, sweet. Looks like it's working then. It's kind of gay that the minimum payout limit is BTC0.05 at Slush. 50BTC is BTC0.01. I don't think it really matters in the long run though. I can't figure out if there is a transfer fee from their website. Is there one, when you cash out?

I have no clue I haven't transferred anything yet.

[maunderingcabal]

Sorry for the thousands of questions.

When does Slush give you namecoins, after a shift? and what exactly does the score number mean. for example my score right now is 66.8751?

[Moshi]

Sorry for the thousands of questions.

When does Slush give you namecoins, after a shift? and what exactly does the score number mean. for example my score right now is 66.8751?

The score is part of distributing the reward each round. The scoring scales exponentially, so shares later in a round are worth more than those near the start. The reward is simply ((Your score)/(Total pool score)*(25+(transaction fees)))

[maunderingcabal]

Sorry for the thousands of questions.

When does Slush give you namecoins, after a shift? and what exactly does the score number mean. for example my score right now is 66.8751?

The score is part of distributing the reward each round. The scoring scales exponentially, so shares later in a round are worth more than those near the start. The reward is simply ((Your score)/(Total pool score)*(25+(transaction fees)))

Ah, OK. how do you find the total pool score?

[Moshi]

It's on the statistics page ( http://mining.bitcoin.cz/stats/ ), "total score of current round". Or you could just look at "estimated reward" on your account page, which does the math for you (Just remembered this; I haven't used Slush in awhile  )

[RHCwebhosting]

I have used my web hosting rig to pool mine with Deepbit and Slush for months at a time, for nice results. Payouts deviated less than 0.4% of my calculated expected earnings, which is negligible.

I have tried other pools, but I still prefer Deepbit and Slush.

[maunderingcabal]

I don't know how I feel about this pool... I have let it run for about 3 hours (at work now) and it only shows 0.00248134 estimated, 0 confirmed... 0.00123154 estimated. So nothing is confirmed after 3 hours... I'm going to let this run for the full 8 hours I'm at work, one of my mining shifts, but if this isn't as good as 50BTC I'm going back to PPS, it's more consistant. Here is the math why this can't be faster than PPS in my mind.

After 3 hours, lets hypothesize this amount is even confirmed, I have 0.00248134.

24/3 = 8, if this ran 8 (3 hour) cycles I would make 0.00248134 X 8 = 0.01985072 a day...

That's less than .02 I was making about 0.04-0.06 a day not running 24/7 with 50BTC.

The namecoins are not worth much for exchange.

Is there some kind of bonus you make I don't know about that makes this worthwhile?

Any feedback from Slush Pool users would be helpful

[organofcorti]

You know, there's a whole thread listing mining pools with hashrate, fees and other variables:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=104664.0

On the whole, you'll earn on average 25btc/(current difficulty)*(share*difficulty at which share was submitted)*(1-fee), unless you're at a pool which pays proportionally (Slush's pool and DeepBit) where you'll earn a bit less due to pool hopping.

There's a bunch of information you might find handy at http://organofcorti.blogspot.com

[maunderingcabal]

You know, there's a whole thread listing mining pools with hashrate, fees and other variables:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=104664.0

On the whole, you'll earn on average 25btc/(current difficulty)*(share*difficulty at which share was submitted)*(1-fee), unless you're at a pool which pays proportionally (Slush's pool and DeepBit) where you'll earn a bit less due to pool hopping.

There's a bunch of information you might find handy at http://organofcorti.blogspot.com

I've seen similar comparisons, I'm just learning all the terms and math involved. Though, on a layman's term level, I'm looking for a rough estimate of bitcoin per 8 hours. Is this hard to determine with the randomness of the system, such as the luck factor? I would like to know this because I am planning on running my miner(s) when I am asleep (8 hours) or at work (8 hours). So that would be my real world shift. Right now, from the last week 50BTC was giving me somewhere around BTC.01-BTC.02 a real world shift (8 hours). This was done on my crossfire 2x Redwood 5xxx cards. I have a Radeon 7970 in the mail (finally an excuse to upgrade my 3 year old graphics cards). When that comes in the mail I want to have the perfect setup to mine. Thanks.