Help me pick a pool

[WEB slicer]

Thanks again to everybody for all the information. I really do appreciate it.

[WEB slicer]

After 3 hours this is what i got from eclipse.



After one hour this is what i got from BTCguild.



BTCguild earned more BTC in less time and my earnings were available immediately. Its been 4 hours since i started mining with eclipse and my BTC is still not available.

[thebrit]

Thanks to all - this is all fascinating info!

Quick question, does the hashing power of your setup affect which pool you should join? I will be bringing my 500GHs BFL mini rig online on Friday, and so it's a little more important to maximize efficiency vs my lil' 10.9 GHs ASICminer Blade right now! I'm on Slush's pool at this time.

Thanks folks.

[notme]

Thanks to all - this is all fascinating info!

Quick question, does the hashing power of your setup affect which pool you should join? I will be bringing my 500GHs BFL mini rig online on Friday, and so it's a little more important to maximize efficiency vs my lil' 10.9 GHs ASICminer Blade right now! I'm on Slush's pool at this time.

Thanks folks.

If you have the hardware to run a p2pool node, and the 30 second share time switchover has occurred by Friday you should consider that.  The switch will happen when 95% of hashpower is on the new version.  We are currently at 67%.

P2Pool can actually get you more coin than solo mining if you set it up correctly.  See here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=153232.0

[os2sam]

Thanks to all - this is all fascinating info!

Quick question, does the hashing power of your setup affect which pool you should join? I will be bringing my 500GHs BFL mini rig online on Friday, and so it's a little more important to maximize efficiency vs my lil' 10.9 GHs ASICminer Blade right now! I'm on Slush's pool at this time.

Thanks folks.

The same criteria as your blade.  Look for these

Stratum
Variable Difficulty
Reliability

Not a big deal now but will be in the future

Pay Transaction Reward.

Those are the things you should be looking for in a pool.  As always setup failover pools, always have a plan b and c at least.

[elebit]

If you have "a few" Avalons and more on the way, don't you have enough hashing power to mine on your own?

[os2sam]

If you have "a few" Avalons and more on the way, don't you have enough hashing power to mine on your own?

Solo mining with that hash rate is no trivial task.

Pointing that hash rate at a pool(s) is trivial.

[elebit]

Solo mining with that hash rate is no trivial task.

How come? If he's got four Avalons he's going to find two blocks per week on average right now. The difficulty could quadruple and he would find a block every other week. Just point, click, done. No fees, no special software to keep updated (except a regular client to mine against), couldn't be easier.

[os2sam]

Solo mining with that hash rate is no trivial task.

How come? If he's got four Avalons he's going to find two blocks per week on average right now. The difficulty could quadruple and he would find a block every other week. Just point, click, done. No fees, no special software to keep updated (except a regular client to mine against), couldn't be easier.

Because you can't point that much hashing power at your Bitcoin-QT client.  You need to setup your own private pool server.  That's above some of our heads, definitely mine.
Sam

[elebit]

Because you can't point that much hashing power at your Bitcoin-QT client.

Why is that? Sounds incredible.

[notme]

Because you can't point that much hashing power at your Bitcoin-QT client.

Why is that? Sounds incredible.

You need some lighter weight software to proxy for you.  If you don't have a proxy to throw away most of the results, you will keep bitcoind too busy to do the other things it needs to do.

[os2sam]

Because you can't point that much hashing power at your Bitcoin-QT client.

Why is that? Sounds incredible.

The Bitcoin clients were initially designed to work with CPU mining which was fairly low burden on the client.  But now we have exponentially increased the hashing power with high end GPU's, GPU clusters and now ASIC's and the Bitcoin clients don't/can't scale with that load.

That is one of the main reasons for pools.  Pool Operators have gone through the trouble/cost of developing high performance Bitcoind's and pool server software which is very vertical market type software to keep up with the load and they often have had trouble with the ASIC loads.

So if you want to solo mine with high end ASIC's download some pool software and set it up.  I don't have time for that.

Good Luck with it.
Sam

[-ck]

Because you can't point that much hashing power at your Bitcoin-QT client.

Why is that? Sounds incredible.

The Bitcoin clients were initially designed to work with CPU mining which was fairly low burden on the client.  But now we have exponentially increased the hashing power with high end GPU's, GPU clusters and now ASIC's and the Bitcoin clients don't/can't scale with that load.

That is one of the main reasons for pools.  Pool Operators have gone through the trouble/cost of developing high performance Bitcoind's and pool server software which if very vertical market type software to keep up with the load and they often have had trouble with the ASIC loads.

So if you want to solo mine with high end ASIC's download some pool software and set it up.  I don't have time for that.

Good Luck with it.
Sam

Not only that, but the bitcoin developers have tried to distance themselves from mining entirely, not adopting the efficient forms of the high performance mining protocols that have evolved around high mining hash rate speeds, instead dissociating the work of mining to others (indirectly pools). While this may seem crazy, it is also indirectly accepting that it is virtually impossible for solo mining to make any sort of reasonable sense any more. I lament this fact, for I still think that all miners should have solo mining as their final backup should all pools fail, as a way to guarantee the bitcoin network remains secure, if not necessarily smoothly/consistently profitable for its miners.

[notme]

Because you can't point that much hashing power at your Bitcoin-QT client.

Why is that? Sounds incredible.

The Bitcoin clients were initially designed to work with CPU mining which was fairly low burden on the client.  But now we have exponentially increased the hashing power with high end GPU's, GPU clusters and now ASIC's and the Bitcoin clients don't/can't scale with that load.

That is one of the main reasons for pools.  Pool Operators have gone through the trouble/cost of developing high performance Bitcoind's and pool server software which if very vertical market type software to keep up with the load and they often have had trouble with the ASIC loads.

So if you want to solo mine with high end ASIC's download some pool software and set it up.  I don't have time for that.

Good Luck with it.
Sam

Not only that, but the bitcoin developers have tried to distance themselves from mining entirely, not adopting the efficient forms of the high performance mining protocols that have evolved around high mining hash rate speeds, instead dissociating the work of mining to others (indirectly pools). While this may seem crazy, it is also indirectly accepting that it is virtually impossible for solo mining to make any sort of reasonable sense any more. I lament this fact, for I still think that all miners should have solo mining as their final backup should all pools fail, as a way to guarantee the bitcoin network remains secure, if not necessarily smoothly/consistently profitable for its miners.

Hmm... it's almost like we need a distributed way of breaking up block rewards.

Oh wait, that's p2pool.

[-ck]

Hmm... it's almost like we need a distributed way of breaking up block rewards.

Oh wait, that's p2pool.

Indeed, though it's still not quite ASIC ready, but getting there.

[notme]

Hmm... it's almost like we need a distributed way of breaking up block rewards.

Oh wait, that's p2pool.

Indeed, though it's still not quite ASIC ready, but getting there.

Please don't make blanket statements like that.  People keep repeating them and using you as a source.

Several ASICs do have problems with p2pool, but others do not.  For example, I am mining with 20GH/s of AM USB just fine on p2pool.  With the new 30 second share time, there have been some reports of BFL hardware reaching p2pool efficiency over 100%.

[PatMan]

I thought I was the source........

[-ck]

Hmm... it's almost like we need a distributed way of breaking up block rewards.

Oh wait, that's p2pool.

Indeed, though it's still not quite ASIC ready, but getting there.

Please don't make blanket statements like that.  People keep repeating them and using you as a source.

Several ASICs do have problems with p2pool, but others do not.  For example, I am mining with 20GH/s of AM USB just fine on p2pool.  With the new 30 second share time, there have been some reports of BFL hardware reaching p2pool efficiency over 100%.

Fine, it's ASIC ready up to a point, just not Avalon ready, though gmaxwell tells me some newer patches may have finally nailed it.

Too much weight is put on the efficiency value from p2pool on its own. On an Avalon I could get 100% efficiency... but at an effective hashrate of 6GH when the device was supposed to be hashing at 80GH.

[notme]

Hmm... it's almost like we need a distributed way of breaking up block rewards.

Oh wait, that's p2pool.

Indeed, though it's still not quite ASIC ready, but getting there.

Please don't make blanket statements like that.  People keep repeating them and using you as a source.

Several ASICs do have problems with p2pool, but others do not.  For example, I am mining with 20GH/s of AM USB just fine on p2pool.  With the new 30 second share time, there have been some reports of BFL hardware reaching p2pool efficiency over 100%.

Fine, it's ASIC ready up to a point, just not Avalon ready, though gmaxwell tells me some newer patches may have finally nailed it.

Too much weight is put on the efficiency value from p2pool on its own. On an Avalon I could get 100% efficiency... but at an effective hashrate of 6GH when the device was supposed to be hashing at 80GH.

Thank you.  And now that the "avalon fix" for p2pool is released, does it solve the issue in your opinion?

[WEB slicer]

What is rejects/stale/dupe/other on BTCguild dashboard?