[4+ EH] Slush Pool (slushpool.com); Overt AsicBoost; World First Mining Pool

[T3NU0US]

I've noticed that my home rig running six USB miners (roughly 2Ghash/s) and CGMiner will show a diff setting of 3 when I restart it after a crash. It will drop back down to diff 1 after a while.

My other rig pushing 25 USB miners is set for diff 4 (recommended setting via the drop-down setting on my worker setting page for 8 Ghash/s) and if I restart it then CGMiner shows the diff set at 8 initially. Again, it drops back down to diff 4 after awhile.

This is just what I've observed recently, I'm not complaining in any way.

As you may have seen by my previous post, I only have 7 running. The diff floats between 1 and 3. Typically it runs at 2 though. Things have been running smoothly for several days now and I'm not seeing any issues thus far. I have seen my HW error frequency change based on where I point my fan though. It's been fun learning how to get this all tuned up. I may invest in some more hardware once Capitol Hill gets a more intelligble stance on digital coinage outlined. Until then, it's very amusing to have a hobby that tries to pay for itself.

[visdude]

I never bothered to understand pool difficulty before.  When I started out with GPUs last year, the default suggested difficulty on my account/worker page had always been 1.  When I switched to ASIC last month, it stayed at 1 because I didn't know any better but in spite of this, BFGMiner indicated diff at 13.  Reading the recent posts on here prompted me to edit my worker just now and picked 17-32 GHash/s range.   My account/worker page now shows a suggested difficulty of 16 and BFGMiner diff is also 16.  What exactly happened here and what is the significance?  Is this the right/optimum setting?

Edit:  BFGMiner now shows diff went down to 10 (I'm confused).  BTW, since I made the changes, my Rejects went up form .08% to .21%, if that is even significant.

[bigbeninlondon]

I never bothered to understand pool difficulty before.  When I started out with GPUs last year, the default suggested difficulty on my account/worker page had always been 1.  When I switched to ASIC last month, it stayed at 1 because I didn't know any better but in spite of this, BFGMiner indicated diff at 13.  Reading the recent posts on here prompted me to edit my worker just now and picked 17-32 GHash/s range.   My account/worker page now shows a suggested difficulty of 16 and BFGMiner diff is also 16.  What exactly happened here and what is the significance?  Is this the right/optimum setting?

Edit:  BFGMiner now shows diff went down to 10 (I'm confused).  BTW, since I made the changes, my Rejects went up form .08% to .21%, if that is even significant.

Difficulty settings dictate what level of difficulty the miner will accept and send to the pool.  Higher difficulty means higher rejects.  Diff 16 means harder hashes, but every hash counts as 16 shares.

[sheebang]

I never bothered to understand pool difficulty before.  When I started out with GPUs last year, the default suggested difficulty on my account/worker page had always been 1.  When I switched to ASIC last month, it stayed at 1 because I didn't know any better but in spite of this, BFGMiner indicated diff at 13.  Reading the recent posts on here prompted me to edit my worker just now and picked 17-32 GHash/s range.   My account/worker page now shows a suggested difficulty of 16 and BFGMiner diff is also 16.  What exactly happened here and what is the significance?  Is this the right/optimum setting?

Edit:  BFGMiner now shows diff went down to 10 (I'm confused).  BTW, since I made the changes, my Rejects went up form .08% to .21%, if that is even significant.

Difficulty settings dictate what level of difficulty the miner will accept and send to the pool.  Higher difficulty means higher rejects.  Diff 16 means harder hashes, but every hash counts as 16 shares.

If the difficulty is bigger than 1 you have less transmissions and you produce less traffic. Given the payment method and taking into consideration that some rounds last less then 1 Minute, or only few minutes, there may be a problem running on higher diff.  With all my USB cockroaches running at diff 1 I observe higher rewards in short rounds (considering similar Overall hash rates, and running 24/7). My explaination for this used to be different Internet Connections (mine is 50 Mbit/s) or higher diffs. Of course I dont complain.

[arhatsage]

If I have a couple miners each on a separate worker and then one of them goes offline, does this negatively impact my shares more than if I have all of my devices on the same worker? I had to disable one of my miners for maintenance and I'm concerned that I'm losing more than I might otherwise due to my configuration 

[digital]

If I have a couple miners each on a separate worker and then one of them goes offline, does this negatively impact my shares more than if I have all of my devices on the same worker? I had to disable one of my miners for maintenance and I'm concerned that I'm losing more than I might otherwise due to my configuration 

From my experience, it makes no difference whether you have 100 workers each with 1 device, or 100 devices all on 1 worker.  It should all work out the same at the end of a round.

[ZipTheRip]

I have also noticed the var diff settings   I also start at 3 and then it adjusts.  I use CGminer and use the balance option under pool management, I split my shares between 2 slush pool workers nad it keeps my diff down at 1.... I know that's cheating but only running at 4.5 gh with a higher diff variance kills me! esp short rounds when its running at diff 3 or 4, I may only get a few shares in a round..

[wizard]

I have also noticed the var diff settings   I also start at 3 and then it adjusts.  I use CGminer and use the balance option under pool management, I split my shares between 2 slush pool workers nad it keeps my diff down at 1.... I know that's cheating but only running at 4.5 gh with a higher diff variance kills me! esp short rounds when its running at diff 3 or 4, I may only get a few shares in a round..

One question regarding split to more workers:
Is it possible to split workers and lower difficulty if I'm using stratum proxy on one IP address?
Link bandwidth isn't problem for me.

EDIT: mining with cgminer on Linux - running multiple processes = workers isn't problem

[sheebang]

I have also noticed the var diff settings   I also start at 3 and then it adjusts.  I use CGminer and use the balance option under pool management, I split my shares between 2 slush pool workers nad it keeps my diff down at 1.... I know that's cheating but only running at 4.5 gh with a higher diff variance kills me! esp short rounds when its running at diff 3 or 4, I may only get a few shares in a round..

One question regarding split to more workers:
Is it possible to split workers and lower difficulty if I'm using stratum proxy on one IP address?
Link bandwidth isn't problem for me.

EDIT: mining with cgminer on Linux - running multiple processes = workers isn't problem

Yes it is quite simple to run more workers. You simply run a process for every worker with one config file for every worker / process.

If have set rc file accordongly allowing automated transfer of miners on certain triggers and events.

[wizard]

I have also noticed the var diff settings   I also start at 3 and then it adjusts.  I use CGminer and use the balance option under pool management, I split my shares between 2 slush pool workers nad it keeps my diff down at 1.... I know that's cheating but only running at 4.5 gh with a higher diff variance kills me! esp short rounds when its running at diff 3 or 4, I may only get a few shares in a round..

One question regarding split to more workers:
Is it possible to split workers and lower difficulty if I'm using stratum proxy on one IP address?
Link bandwidth isn't problem for me.

EDIT: mining with cgminer on Linux - running multiple processes = workers isn't problem

Yes it is quite simple to run more workers. You simply run a process for every worker with one config file for every worker / process.

If have set rc file accordongly allowing automated transfer of miners on certain triggers and events.

I've tried to create new worker and split mining processes but difficulty is adjusted at stratum proxy.
So if two workers go outside thru one stratum proxy difficulty goes up.

Conclusion: I need to use more proxies for more workers to keep lower diff

[aurel57]

It seems to me (and I am not complaining or saying OMG anything) when I first start my 56 USB  miners using BFGMiner the 5s hash rate will fluctuate a lot above you hash rate and this is why I think I may see a very high diff but after running a while the avg hash rate levels out and stay constant and the diff does also. all this happens even tho I have my worker diff set at 1. So the manual setting seems to not mean anything anymore.
 

[dragonkid]

When will Slush pool implement Namecoin in the mining pool? I left Bitminter and I miss the namecoin which was also mined at the same time.

[-Redacted-]

Slush will not - namecoin has been turned off.

[gourmet]

They WORK at Diff1.  cgminer/bfgminer is handing them diff2 work.  There's a difference.

There is no such thing as "handing them diff 2 work".
Which diff is met by a hash can only be determined after it is computated.
The only thing happening when operating at diff 2 is that all diff one shares get dropped by your mining software instead of being sent to the pool server.

There's even nothing like work at Diff1. :-)
They just work. They calculate hashes. Most of the hashes have values that are higher than the one necessary for even Difficulty 1. Only one out of every four billion hashes (statistically, in long run) is small enough to reach "difficulty one" and potentially become a share.

And thanks for your patience, Trasla.

[gourmet]

USB miners always work at Diff 1, so I don't know why you're trying to change them...

I beg to differ there sir. While they start out at 1, mine auto adjust to 2.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 (5s):2.480G (avg):2.338Gh/s | A:43015  R:25  HW:400  WU:32.6/m
 ST: 3  SS: 0  NB: 165  LW: 88420  GF: 1  RF: 0
 Connected to stratum.bitcoin.cz diff 2 with stratum as user *snipped*
 Block: *snipped*...  Diff:86.9M  Started: [22:47:05]  Best share: 24.9K
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Pool management Settings Display options Quit
 AMU 0:                | 333.8M/334.1Mh/s | A:6229 R:2 HW:61 WU:4.7/m
 AMU 1:                | 333.8M/334.1Mh/s | A:6113 R:4 HW:58 WU:4.6/m
 AMU 2:                | 333.8M/334.3Mh/s | A:6137 R:2 HW:66 WU:4.7/m
 AMU 3:                | 334.1M/334.2Mh/s | A:6230 R:3 HW:60 WU:4.7/m
 AMU 4:                | 333.9M/334.1Mh/s | A:6117 R:7 HW:56 WU:4.6/m
 AMU 5:                | 334.3M/334.1Mh/s | A:6134 R:7 HW:58 WU:4.6/m
 AMU 6:                | 334.1M/334.1Mh/s | A:6055 R:0 HW:41 WU:4.7/m
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 [2013-09-10 22:53:58] Accepted 680475fe Diff 2/2 AMU 0
 [2013-09-10 22:53:59] Accepted 243a23f4 Diff 7/2 AMU 0
 [2013-09-10 22:54:00] Accepted 367a7e3a Diff 4/2 AMU 3
 [2013-09-10 22:54:18] Accepted 11e8f5f0 Diff 14/2 AMU 1
 [2013-09-10 22:54:22] Accepted 619cc0c7 Diff 2/2 AMU 3
 [2013-09-10 22:54:24] Accepted 6b2efba6 Diff 2/2 AMU 5
 [2013-09-10 22:54:27] Accepted 25019fd2 Diff 6/2 AMU 3
 [2013-09-10 22:54:31] Accepted 1f31c325 Diff 8/2 AMU 5
 [2013-09-10 22:54:33] Accepted 2198509f Diff 7/2 AMU 6
 [2013-09-10 22:54:37] Accepted 385ccca1 Diff 4/2 AMU 5
 [2013-09-10 22:54:39] Accepted 32e1a6f6 Diff 5/2 AMU 4
 [2013-09-10 22:54:44] Accepted 2526a1d3 Diff 6/2 AMU 0
 [2013-09-10 22:54:49] Accepted 3959480a Diff 4/2 AMU 4
 [2013-09-10 22:54:52] Accepted 26836b95 Diff 6/2 AMU 5

"They", i.e. the usb miners, don't work at either diff 1 or diff 2.
They compute hashes. Your seven pieces have cumulative hashing power of about 2.4 ghps, thus the pool sets your mining program to submit only hashes of difficulty at least 2.

[gourmet]

Difficulty settings dictate what level of difficulty the miner will accept and send to the pool.  Higher difficulty means higher rejects.  Diff 16 means harder hashes, but every hash counts as 16 shares.

Why does higher difficulty mean higher rejects? (Does it really?)

[aurel57]

Difficulty settings dictate what level of difficulty the miner will accept and send to the pool.  Higher difficulty means higher rejects.  Diff 16 means harder hashes, but every hash counts as 16 shares.

Why does higher difficulty mean higher rejects? (Does it really?)

I think what he means is with the higher worker diff rate it just appears they have a higher rejection rate only because you need to take your accepted shares x worker diff then divide by your rejects to see what the rejected % is.

[visdude]

I never bothered to understand pool difficulty before.  When I started out with GPUs last year, the default suggested difficulty on my account/worker page had always been 1.  When I switched to ASIC last month, it stayed at 1 because I didn't know any better but in spite of this, BFGMiner indicated diff at 13.  Reading the recent posts on here prompted me to edit my worker just now and picked 17-32 GHash/s range.   My account/worker page now shows a suggested difficulty of 16 and BFGMiner diff is also 16.  What exactly happened here and what is the significance?  Is this the right/optimum setting?

Edit:  BFGMiner now shows diff went down to 10 (I'm confused).  BTW, since I made the changes, my Rejects went up form .08% to .21%, if that is even significant.

Difficulty settings dictate what level of difficulty the miner will accept and send to the pool.  Higher difficulty means higher rejects.  Diff 16 means harder hashes, but every hash counts as 16 shares.

Thanks for the explanation.

[mdopro1]

I have 3 GPU miners each with a single 7950 card. One of the cards suddenly is going extremely high in temperature reaching cutoff within a minute. Fan speed shows as if it's spinning at normal rate. This is my first GPU issue since I started mining a couple of months ago. Can anyone tell me what I should look for?

I have since turned it down too  750MHz GPU speed and temps are steady at 87C - and this thing is doing as much hash rate as a USB block erupter, which is a shame.

Any help is appreciated.

[Guybrush01]

Slush will not - namecoin has been turned off.

Did he say why?  Just curious.