BitMinter.com * Optional Custom Miner, PPLNS, Merged mining, Newbie-Friendly! *

[jamesg]

2.5 hours left before the race. Final equipment check, guys.

Would be great if we could have nrolltime by then. 

[DrHaribo]

Would be great if we could have nrolltime by then. 

16 minutes to go. I don't think I can make it! 

[DrHaribo]

New version of mining server is up and running, with rollntime support for all miners:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=27062.msg1195554#msg1195554

BitMinter client v1.3.0 is out:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=31163.msg1196221#msg1196221

[Menissalt]

Woot... I'm finally above 2Ghps spread between two rigs. One of them is just a bit warm though. May eventually add some airflow.

[gochk]

I'm new to BitMinter. Just have a couple of questions.

1) GPU load on both my 6950 is only 95-96% vs GPU load of 99% on phoenix miner. Is there a way to increase the GPU load? And will increasing it allows for higher shares of mining?
2) Is there a limit before I can withdraw? How many decimals places can I withdraw to? I have lost some btc because of the withdrawal decimals; so, I tend to stay away from those pools as much as I can.

Thanks!

[pyra-proxy]

nice looking app

Thank you, sir

   My question is does hooking them up in crossfire improve your hash rate

No, it won't help hashrate. Miners are quite happy without crossfire.

I'd like to ask if Bitminter is planning on doing some more merge mining? like DVC, LTC, or whatever , like i could trade on ViCuRex?

LTC doesn't support merged mining.

I have no immediate plans for adding LTC mining or more merged blockchains. It seems to me that namecoin is doing badly and the other alt chains are doing, well, awful. But maybe there is still a little bit extra income to be had from adding them?

LTC could be a special case after ASICs hit, if GPUs become worthless for mining bitcoins. On the other hand LTC looks like it was created for miners (to make GPU mining difficult). I don't see a point with having LTC. Why would anyone buy it? It doesn't solve any real problem. GPUs working well for bitcoin mining wasn't a problem.

But, by all means, if it makes sense for miner income I will consider it. I just don't expect the alt chains to live long (and many died already, mostly because they had no purpose other than to make rich the guy who copied the bitcoin source code and renamed it).

I would encourage at least devcoin, the concept is noble and the 1000x mint rate is attractive given the growing price on VirCurEx at a healthy steady pace.

[DrHaribo]

1) GPU load on both my 6950 is only 95-96% vs GPU load of 99% on phoenix miner. Is there a way to increase the GPU load? And will increasing it allows for higher shares of mining?

How does the hashrate compare?

Not sure why it would not push to 99%. You can try setting the work intervals longer, which makes it more aggressive (desktop will get more laggy though). You find that setting for each GPU by clicking the wrench in the GUI.

Also, other things using the GPU can slow down mining, even a youtube video that isn't even playing but loaded in the browser (it helps to switch off GPU acceleration in Flash though).

2) Is there a limit before I can withdraw? How many decimals places can I withdraw to? I have lost some btc because of the withdrawal decimals; so, I tend to stay away from those pools as much as I can.

Cashout is always the entire balance, all 8 decimals. The minimum amount for cashing out is 0.001 - that's the lowest threshold you can set.

I would encourage at least devcoin, the concept is noble and the 1000x mint rate is attractive given the growing price on VirCurEx at a healthy steady pace.

Most important right now is to get ready for ASIC mining. After that I'll have a look at other coins if they are starting to take off and have a purpose other than the "inventor" premining coins.

[DrHaribo]

Please read, two changes in BitMinter reward system: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=27062.msg1250147#msg1250147

[Menissalt]

1) GPU load on both my 6950 is only 95-96% vs GPU load of 99% on phoenix miner. Is there a way to increase the GPU load? And will increasing it allows for higher shares of mining?

I had the same issue once, I just set the bitminter client to performance mode and it cleared it up for me.

[MegaBraydn]

Hi i was reading a forum and the following question was asked

How will a massive increase in hashpower affect orphan rates?

I believe they were anticipating the upcoming ASIC release, anyways the following answer was given:

If the average time to find a block is T, and the typical time for a found block to propagate in the network is t, then the proportion of orphans among all blocks will be roughly 1/(1+T/t). As long as T>t there's not much risk for the network; however it could be a challenge for orphan-paying pools, for example If T=9t then 10% of the block rewards will need to be paid out of pocket.

If a PPS pool pays B/D per share, it is in fact using an artificially low difficulty - the difficulty metric measures how hard it is to find a block (orphan or not), when in fact what is relevant for calculating the due reward is how difficult it is to find a valid block.

If the network hashrate increases by a factor of X, then until difficulty catches up the average time for finding a block is (10 min)/X. I doubt the transition to ASIC will cause a discrepancy by a factor of over 10; this would give T = 1 min. With a conservative value of t=5 sec you will get about 7.7% loss for paying orphans. The actual numbers for both X and t will likely be much less (especially since concentrated hashrate lowers t), so I don't think the loss during the transition period will be prohibitive.

i was wondering if the operator or anyone else has given this outcome any thought and whether the current policy on payout for orphaned blocks will changed

link: http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/4953/how-will-a-massive-increase-in-hashpower-affect-orphan-rates

tl;dr
ASICs may make the orphaned block rate go up... temporarily

[DrHaribo]

i was wondering if the operator or anyone else has given this outcome any thought and whether the current policy on payout for orphaned blocks will changed

link: http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/4953/how-will-a-massive-increase-in-hashpower-affect-orphan-rates

Actually it's me asking that question on the bitcoin stackexchange. So yes I am thinking about it. 

I'm guessing orphan rate will go over 2% and the pool will lose some coins. But it shouldn't be that bad, and I will be doing what I can to keep the orphans at bay.

[lumberjack]

If all else fails, you could always bump the donation percentage required for the unconfirmed payout perk again. Hopefully, though, even at 2% you'll get enough in the coffers to cover for those.

Do you get enough in NMC donations to actually do much of anything with them since they trade so low against BTC? I have about 40 NMC in my bitminter account that I'm honestly not sure what to do with aside from just donate them back to the pool. Haven't read up enough on namecoin to know what I'm missing.

[DrHaribo]

Thanks for the donations, guys. They are much appreciated. And yes, namecoin donations help, they're worth much less than bitcoins but they're not worthless.

If all else fails, you could always bump the donation percentage required for the unconfirmed payout perk again. Hopefully, though, even at 2% you'll get enough in the coffers to cover for those.

I can't really turn off people's perks or raise their donations without giving advance notice. I don't think that would be good form.

If orphans go up to 5% or whatever for a short time the pool can survive that. Might need a backup plan if the orphans get completely out of hand, though. Maybe announce ahead of ASICS that prepay may get disabled if orphans get too high? I think most likely the orphans will be manageable, though.

[SRG]

Dr. H,

I know you commented on this back on 28 Aug. but I'd like to offer some rationale for adding Litecoin.

First, BitMinter is just amazing.  I am totally new to BitCoin and I got it working with no trouble on OS X.  Of course, I was only getting BTC.0005 per day, but hey, I was MINING and that is pretty awesome to a noob.

While LTC has a miner still built into its base client, it's a CPU miner and pretty pointless.

I do not know how many LTC I could get with BitMinter but unlike Bitcoin, LTC does not have a lot of ways for new users to get a few coins to play with.  This is important as I think just comfort with the idea of crypto-cyber currencies can help adoption, e.g. the lessons and experiences I have with LTC would transfer to BTC.

Obviously, I have no idea how hard it would be to replicate BitMinter for LTC, but I think you might get quite a few interested people, especially given the impending arrival of ASIC technology and the halving of the blockchain reward.

Finally, LTC is one year old today!

Thanks for even considering it - and for BitMinter!

[lumberjack]

I can't really turn off people's perks or raise their donations without giving advance notice. I don't think that would be good form.

If orphans go up to 5% or whatever for a short time the pool can survive that. Might need a backup plan if the orphans get completely out of hand, though. Maybe announce ahead of ASICS that prepay may get disabled if orphans get too high? I think most likely the orphans will be manageable, though.

Oh, no, I wasn't suggesting you do it without notice. I apologize if it sounded like that.

I do have a bfl ASIC on order (yay order 6000+) so I'm looking forward to trying the client with it once it arrives. I'd understand completely if prepay was shut down (temporarily, hopefully) due to mass orphaning depleting the pool reserves.

[somken]

Good work!

[DrHaribo]

17 blocks already today. We could break the record!

[lumberjack]

You have no idea how annoyed I am that I took today of all days to test returns on p2pool 

[jamesg]

17 blocks already today. We could break the record!

WOW!!!! 20 blocks so far today. 

Is this a new record?

[DrHaribo]

WOW!!!! 20 blocks so far today. 

Is this a new record?

Yeah, the old record was 18. Very lucky day.