What Mining Client should a Newbie start with?

[gregyoung14]

I'm very interested and excited to begin mining for Bitcoin and possiably Litecoin alongside. What clients would you guys suggest are the most user friendly, what advantages to more difficult clients have. And are there any preliminary steps I need to take before beginning to mine, such as maybe installing Bitcoin-Qt and waiting for syncronization to complete, or can i begin mining before that. Also, I currently have a 6870, would it be in my best interest to buy the same card and have two or three identical ones, or pair it with an even higher model card. Or should I hold out for BFl's 5gh/s machine.

Thanks!

[lance4681]

I'm currently using GUIMiner with two 7950's... On Windows 8 however I'm not getting the hash rate I expected so today I'm doing a refresh and taking a hard look at what I'm using exactly.

However I found GUIMiner SUPER simple. Nothing hard to think about really even has preset settings for most of the popular cards.

[Bitflip]

When I started, I found BitMinter a very simple solution and the best way to go.

[batman, not crabman]

cgminer is pretty popular though likely a little more difficult to use.  I'm marginally computer literate and didn't have any trouble setting up a batch file to run it as there is a lot of information online (just Google cgminer + whatever coin you want to mine for setup guides).
Also there is cgwatcher which automates the process of restarting cgminer depending on variables you can set (x hours, if hash rate drops etc) so you don't lose a lot of mining time if your rig crashes.
See https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=159267.0

[spiralis]

I found cgminer pretty straight forward when I started - just plug in the info from the pool and hit enter - but it did disconnect pretty often.  I'm using Bitminter now and the client is very simple, gives better feedback and I'm getting much better hash rates.

[Drizzle]

I started with guiminer, but hash rate was low and fluctuated, so I moved to cgminer, which was pretty easy to set up and much more consistent. Haven't tried others.

[batman, not crabman]

^Careful, I think that link is a scam

edit: post above me got deleted so not relevant anymore

[EarningPeas]

I started off with GUIMiner as it is pretty much click start and go.
Once I had finished reading up on this more I currently use CUDAMiner

[Minas3d]

Guiminer is the easiest, but it's better to learn how to use cgminer directly eventually, it's far more configurable than Guiminer

[ronaldlee0917]

Guiminer, no command line, no parameters, no hassles

[gregyoung14]

Wow thanks for all the quick replies!! I played around with quite a few last night, 50miner, guiminer, cgminer ended up being my favorite though. I think the most controls/support is built into that. However I wasn't able to get just as many Mh/s mining bitcoin as I had expected. I read that a 6870 tweaked correctly should pull about 300-350 Mh/s I was only pulling in high 200's, though I tweaked some of the settings to high and crashed my computer 3 or 4 times Lol. Things got a little to hot, high 80's C is not good.

[pcrsweetness]

I wonder if it is still worth it to buy a new PC to mine with?  I don't want to with my main PC because seems like it would slow it down too much.

[Escalator21]

i like reaper, and found that it gives higher hashrates than some of the other programs i've tried

[pippobitcoin]

go to your old highschool and ask to use the computer room.

turn all the computers on, and make your own pool.

after that, it's the same what client you use..

[nightengale]

+1 for BitMinter. I could be clocking my cards a little more probably, but their java client is very stable and works the cards generally well.

[gladiatorcoin]

Will GUI miner work for Feathercoins?

[go4gonzo]

I'm faily new (4 months) to mining....and I've explained on a seprate post my rig and how I started mining.  You can check it out here:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=184958.msg1924006#msg1924006

But I love Bitminter, but I don't use their miner, I use GUIminer with special flags...I explain in my post in the link above. Hope it helps!