Tips for CPU-only miners? (hopefully I haven't double-posted this!)

[ArkBlitz]

Hello! I've started to mine since yesterday, and since I'm bound to relatively old hardware (my graphics card is an ATI Radeon 9600, which of course has no support for CUDA/OpenCL, but at least my processor is a dual-core Pentium 4 @3GHz), I've been trying to find the way to optimize the CPU to earn a few bit-cents. Right now I'm using the usual CPU/RPC Miner, and I've tried both with Deepbit's and Slush's mining pools. I could earn a relatively low quantity with Slush's due to a stroke of luck (around 0.0006 BTC), but no luck yet with Deepbit's. Which recommendations could you give me on:

• Number of threads to use? (Currently I've tried with 1, 2, 4 and 16, but it seems that it works better with only 1)
• Type of setup (default, 4-way, CryptoC++, VIA)?
• Minepool to use? (It doesn't matter if I earn little as long as I earn something

I don't really need to earn lots of money, I just want to recover the 0.05 BTC I got from the Faucet after I foolishly deleted my wallet file and then perhaps some more.
(Just in case: Dear admins, if I have really double-posted this one, please delete one of the posts)

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[SomeoneWeird]

Hello! I've started to mine since yesterday, and since I'm bound to relatively old hardware (my graphics card is an ATI Radeon 9600, which of course has no support for CUDA/OpenCL, but at least my processor is a dual-core Pentium 4 @3GHz), I've been trying to find the way to optimize the CPU to earn a few bit-cents. Right now I'm using the usual CPU/RPC Miner, and I've tried both with Deepbit's and Slush's mining pools. I could earn a relatively low quantity with Slush's due to a stroke of luck (around 0.0006 BTC), but no luck yet with Deepbit's. Which recommendations could you give me on:

• Number of threads to use? (Currently I've tried with 1, 2, 4 and 16, but it seems that it works better with only 1)
• Type of setup (default, 4-way, CryptoC++, VIA)?
• Minepool to use? (It doesn't matter if I earn little as long as I earn something

I don't really need to earn lots of money, I just want to recover the 0.05 BTC I got from the Faucet after I foolishly deleted my wallet file and then perhaps some more.
(Just in case: Dear admins, if I have really double-posted this one, please delete one of the posts)

Your not going to earn 0.05btc with a CPU. Especially when the difficulty is going to go up in roughly ~10 hours.

[ArkBlitz]

So, is there no way to increase my chance to get a share? I've been trying in both pools for ~6 hours a day, and I've only earned one single share (out of sheer luck I suppose).

[SomeoneWeird]

No.

[torusJKL]

So, is there no way to increase my chance to get a share? I've been trying in both pools for ~6 hours a day, and I've only earned one single share (out of sheer luck I suppose).

Lucky you!

[spyjai]

Hi,

The most efficient CPU miner if you are using an Intel CPU is ufasoft:
http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3486.0

For ease of use, I suggest you to get the latest version of GUI Miner here:
http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3878.0

In GUI Miner, click on New -> ufasoft miner. Select your preferred pool and enter your username and passwords.

I suggest you to use the following flags for ufasoft miner:

-v -t 2 -g no

This specifies that you will use 2 threads (1 for each core), and forces no gpu usage.
You should now be getting significantly higher hash rates than using CPU/RPC miner. Although, using a CPU to mine is much more inefficient than using a GPU. I recommend getting a budget ATI card (5830/5850, which is hard to come by these days) to pull in 100x more hash rates than what you would be able to achieve.

If you found my tip useful, you could donate to the following address: 1EfUBS19MnWELQ8xKgqy1ic7A4DUzZonvg  

Happy mining!

[SomeoneWeird]

Hi,

The most efficient CPU miner if you are using an Intel CPU is ufasoft:
http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3486.0

For ease of use, I suggest you to get the latest version of GUI Miner here:
http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3878.0

In GUI Miner, click on New -> ufasoft miner. Select your preferred pool and enter your username and passwords.

I suggest you to use the following flags for ufasoft miner:

-v -t 2 -g no

This specifies that you will use 2 threads (1 for each core), and forces no gpu usage.
You should now be getting significantly higher hash rates than using CPU/RPC miner. Although, using a CPU to mine is much more inefficient than using a GPU. I recommend getting a budget ATI card (5830/5850, which is hard to come by these days) to pull in 100x more hash rates than what you would be able to achieve.

If you found my tip useful, you could donate to the following address: 1EfUBS19MnWELQ8xKgqy1ic7A4DUzZonvg  

Happy mining!

This won't help you get 0.05btc. Don't even bother trying.

[gigitrix]

Look into obtaining some better, more appropriate hardware ~nudge nudge wink wink~ 


No but seriously, CPU mining will cost more than your electricity costs (a lot more). It might be worth doing for a couple of weeks to play around with the system and get a small amount of coins, but anything further than that is pretty much false economy, I'm sorry to say.

[spyjai]

I've been running ufasoft on my work laptop for 6.5M/s over the last few days and I've mined a few hundred shares with it. Depending on which pool (eg deepbit with pay per share), you are guaranteed at least some pay. The way I see it is that any pay is better than no pay.

I think as a moderator of this board you should better inform the new posters, rather than just slamming them down with a simple answer.

[SomeoneWeird]

I've been running ufasoft on my work laptop for 6.5M/s over the last few days and I've mined a few hundred shares with it. Depending on which pool (eg deepbit with pay per share), you are guaranteed at least some pay. The way I see it is that any pay is better than no pay.

I think as a moderator of this board you should better inform the new posters, rather than just slamming them down with a simple answer.

You might get a few hundred shares, but I doubt that's anything near 0.05btc. And as far as getting them with a cpu goes, the difficulty is now going to go up in around ~9 hours. Then it will be twice as hard to make bitcoins.

[dabest1]

I don't think he/she has any money to donate yet, so don't ask for donations.

Mining with CPU is not advised as it would likely use up more in electricity costs than the amount of bitcoins you would get out of it. I would recommend buying some bitcoins instead. You can buy them at mtgox.com, tradehill.com, or many other bitcoin trading places. If you can afford a decent video card and bigger power supply (if needed), then buy one.

[ArkBlitz]

Look into obtaining some better, more appropriate hardware ~nudge nudge wink wink~ 

I'd love to get a new computer. If I do, I'll get sure that 1. it has CUDA and/or OpenCL and 2. can run in Linux without using proprietary drivers.

No but seriously, CPU mining will cost more than your electricity costs (a lot more). It might be worth doing for a couple of weeks to play around with the system and get a small amount of coins, but anything further than that is pretty much false economy, I'm sorry to say.

Of course I won't earn a fortune with this, but luckily electricity is cheap in my country (and also clean, mainly hydroelectrical-based) so that's no problem for me. I can also leave it running in the background on little-used college PCs and switch user so everybody uses it and I gain a few microcoins in the meanwhile *wink wink*.

[Skeenz]

On one of my cabinet shelves sits three CPU-only miners who, have brought in 0.2 bitcoins after mining 24/7 for (somewhere in the region of) 2 weeks.
While this isn't much at all and my electricity costs are far higher than the bitcoin worth, I would have these systems powered-on regardless of whether they are mining or not.
[When not mining, they form part of my beowulf]

Having said this, users need to be aware that CPU miners will not deliver them a fortune. However, if they are looking for a place to start (until they buy decent hardware) then CPU mining is fine to bring in the 0.001 (and smaller) bitcoins.

Quite frankly, I'd rather see more patient CPU miners than beggars on the forums.

By immediately shooting down all thoughts (even remote ones) over the use of CPU miners, we are simply left with non-GPU users that feel obligated to beg (or make a nuisance of themselves) on the bitcoin forums.

[AWOLRanger]

I've been cpu mining for about three weeks, and it has been useful just for me to see how it works, what gets done, and help me decide to possibly build a rig.  You won't get rich, for sure, but it is a useful learning experience.