Testing profitability pools - which one is the best?

[Red- Beard]

TL;DR - Testing profitability pools with 1 card on each in hopes of finding the most profitable of them all!

Hi all,

I'm a small-time miner who's recently discovered profitability pools.  Thus far, I've been using Middlecoin, and have had some great days in the past.  My biggest (for ~3.2 MHashes) was ~0.118 BTC, and that was sometime in Dec.

Although MiddleCoin has been good to me, the ~4% fees are discouraging.  Because of this, I've been searching for someone who's really done some side-by-side testing of the various profitability pools, but so far have only really found opinions, and never any proper tests of identical rigs being split between them for a good chunk of time, at the same time, and tracking the difference.

The profitability pools I've heard of: (please comment and let me know about any I've missed!)

-MiddleCoin
-LTCRabbit
-MultiPool
-UltimateCoinPool
-SwitcherCoin
-HashCows
-HashBros
-WafflePool
-TradeMyBit
-CoinSolver
-CleverMining
-CoinMine

Being that I only have 1 rig and a laptop, I'm going to attempt to test with a single 7950 card on each of 4 different profitability pools.

They are:
Test Name - Pool Name - Bitref address (for your monitoring pleasure, pls no donations to these. )
ProfitTest0 - UltimateCoinPool - http://bitref.com/1NCAe4j6gxtAiEEJVeyaus7nmfCbE2gPZ6
ProfitTest1 - SwitcherCoin - http://bitref.com/1GQMbYRxSNpG4WFz6BqzB5WqGDfapR4WWd
ProfitTest2 - MultiPool - http://bitref.com/1APTjt8vR3QU7ubLddXVacWBJMqeVGnG7C
ProfitTest3 - MiddleCoin - http://bitref.com/1QEbYHbh8bBvhTGEoNLYnAAWexXpfprSK1

MiddleCoin automatically pays out in BTC, so it was easy enough.  The other three however, I needed to create a Cryptsy account for each (requiring an e-mail address for each), and manually configure each supported coin with addresses from Cryptsy into the pools configurations, and setup auto-sell in Cryptsy.    

I'll likely have to babysit each of these Cryptsy accounts, and it'll take a few days to start seeing the results in the BTC wallets, but I'll do my best to start them at the same time, stop them at the same time, and push balances out to wallets at the same time.

I should note a few things here:
-I wanted to include Hash Bros, but unfortunately their site was down at the time I was setting all of this up.  
-Although the cards are identical, and are OC'd with all of the same settings, there is a bit of a variance -- they generally range from 655-675 KHashes each (with card 0 being the lowest usually)
-For Cryptsy's auto-sell, I chose the 3rd option - 'Sell at 2nd highest sell bid' (highest price).
-I set configurable difficulties in pools to 256
-Auto-withdraw thresholds I did the minimums without incurring additional fees
-I'd love to do more pools, but unfortunately I'm just a lowly 1-rig miner with <2 BTC.  Other pools will have to wait, but I'm open to suggestions on which pools people want to see tested.
-I'm working towards a 2nd rig to add to the tests
-I unfortunately can't promise how long I'll test any given pool, but I'll try to give every pool I test a good run before deciding to drop it.

If you like what I'm doing, then please consider donating.  
( It'll help me test more pools.   )

BTC - 1E6RudZFarBZn34f6bg6jwxhqt44djzbE3
LTC - LaUeyDzDgah6qHRKmCF77dyYMUJrZELkav
Other - PST and I'll provide you with an address for the (hopefully Cryptsy supported) coin of your choosing

I'm also open to suggestions on how I can do this better, or more accurately.

https://i.imgur.com/fL9oa9G.jpg

[Prolifik]

0.118BTC in one day with 3MH/s!?

Glad I have my 3MH/s pointed there...

[Red- Beard]

Oh, I really can't complain about my experience with MiddleCoin, but I'm on a quest to discover the best.   

So far, UltimateCoinPool has been the quickest to cash out, as I've got 3 6 different currencies in that Cryptsy account already, and nothing in the others.   Might end up costing more in tx fees though, we'll see.

As for MiddleCoin, it normally goes straight to the BTC wallet at ~6:30pm PST (8:30 Eastern).

Here's some info, not sure if the other pools have public resources like this, anyone?

http://www.bfpcoin.com/middle-coin-web.php?w=1QEbYHbh8bBvhTGEoNLYnAAWexXpfprSK1&c=CAD

http://www.middlecoin.com/reports/1QEbYHbh8bBvhTGEoNLYnAAWexXpfprSK1.html (not up yet?)

Finally, can anyone with more experience with Cryptsy comment on the auto-sell choice I made?  Should I be using the sell instantly option?

[chilin_dude]

Looking forward to updates.

[zneww]

You need to add  www.coinsolver.com

[Red- Beard]

An unfortunate update.

So after about a day, I ended up having some hardware issues.  I went to make an adjustment, and apparently damaged a riser.  This caused things to go out of whack a little, and currently I'm running on 3 cards (just mining as normal).

Having said that, I've got some extra risers on the way, so once things are stable again, I will start them all back up.

The only one that truly paid out was Middlecoin so far:

0.01743666 BTC
http://www.middlecoin.com/reports/1QEbYHbh8bBvhTGEoNLYnAAWexXpfprSK1.html

For the others, it's a little harder to tell as there's a threshold before it pays out from the pool to cryptsy, and another threshold before cryptsy trades, trades getting stuck, etc.  Here's the "Estimated" Cryptsy balances after that first day:

UltimateCoinPool - 0.00849061 BTC
SwitcherCoin - 0.00768456 BTC
MultiPool - 0.00072981 BTC

Of course I'd like to get at least a week into solid mining on all four cards before making any real judgement, as I'm sure the pools are holding some value and it takes time to get a correct read from profit pools, so please hold off on speculation until then. 

I'll post again when I'm confident that my rig is stable.

[chilin_dude]

Thanks for updates, look forward to more stable ones, hope you get the riser fixed, gutting when something like that goes wrong (one of my psu cables melted into my gpu, that was gutting).

[actudoran]

I'm testing coinsolver vs WafflePool on a single card too ....

24 h of 310 khs generated 0.002 BTC on coinsolver

12 h on wafflepool 0.00078 BTC ...

thing is on waffle I get only 1% rejected share whereas in coinsolver is way high ... about 15% or more varying ... maybe due to no vardiff on coinsolver

[phzi]

I'm testing coinsolver vs WafflePool on a single card too ....

24 h of 310 khs generated 0.002 BTC on coinsolver

12 h on wafflepool 0.00078 BTC ...

thing is on waffle I get only 1% rejected share whereas in coinsolver is way high ... about 15% or more varying ... maybe due to no vardiff on coinsolver

This is because wafflepool accepts "stale" shares that are one block behind, just not two blocks behind.  Also, you'll have a hard time comparing wafflepool over a short period of time, because they mine the most profitable coins like dogecoin that other profitswitchers won't because their hash rate isn't high enough.  This causes larger day-to-day variance on wafflepool, but based on the law of averages will equate to higher income over time.

[MrJay]

Thanks for doing this test but do you not think it is practically impossible to compare multipools, especially middlecoin to anything else.

Middlecoin has such a large hashrate now that not many can compete with it.  It can mine doge which has been the most profitable coin for quite a few weeks now and most of the other multipools have taken it out of their rotations due to the chance of mining it for a period of time and either hitting 0 blocks or a block with a low payout.

Payouts from multipools depends on the market price for certain coins, most alts are not performing very well at present so the ability of mulitpools that can mine doge are going to have an advantage.

[maardein]

I think it is great that you are trying to make a comparison of the pools. But I would focus more on things like share/reject ratio, ease of use, speed of payouts etc. So more practical/performance based, not profit based.

Why? Because profit varies a lot. When doge suddenly went to the moon, it was very profitable. If you compare that day with another day on another pool, you will conclude the last pool worked best. If I look at my middlecoin stats (with ~750kh/s) for example, my lowest daily profit is something like 0.007, and the highest 0.02. The only way to really test profitability is by having multiple similar rigs pointed at different pools at the same time.

[niceman]

Try www.coinmine.pw

[greatwolf]

Any new updates on the profitability testing so far?

[Clayce]

Great thread!! I just threw 7mh on coinsolver and haven't been that impressed so far, I received my first payout quick albeit was only for about 12-14hours but it was barley .021...

EDIT: If you need a riser quick, I would be happy to send you one 

[Sw|ft]

Heres some testing that might enlightn your eyes a little bit more when chosing pools and counting profitability
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=450271.0
enjoy

[zneww]

Great thread!! I just threw 7mh on coinsolver and haven't been that impressed so far, I received my first payout quick albeit was only for about 12-14hours but it was barley .021...

EDIT: If you need a riser quick, I would be happy to send you one 

Hey Clayce. Coinsolver had exchange issues, reason for the low profit. Some of the coins didn't show up to this morning apparently and VT said its gunna be added on.

[Clayce]

Great thread!! I just threw 7mh on coinsolver and haven't been that impressed so far, I received my first payout quick albeit was only for about 12-14hours but it was barley .021...

EDIT: If you need a riser quick, I would be happy to send you one 

Hey Clayce. Coinsolver had exchange issues, reason for the low profit. Some of the coins didn't show up to this morning apparently and VT said its gunna be added on.

Oh ok cool thanks for letting me know, I guess I should check their thread a little more lol

[Red- Beard]

I'm testing coinsolver vs WafflePool on a single card too ....

24 h of 310 khs generated 0.002 BTC on coinsolver

12 h on wafflepool 0.00078 BTC ...

thing is on waffle I get only 1% rejected share whereas in coinsolver is way high ... about 15% or more varying ... maybe due to no vardiff on coinsolver

Same card or different cards?  The hard part is leaving it there, stable, long enough to get a good reading (1-2 weeks I'd say).

Some of the profit switching pools will actually count rejects (usually only 1 round old rejects though).  Because of this, you might want to ensure that you don't use the --no-submit-stale flag.

[Red- Beard]

Heres some testing that might enlightn your eyes a little bit more when chosing pools and counting profitability
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=450271.0
enjoy

Thanks, I'll read through this.

After considerations, I think once I start back up, I think I'll re-choose the pools based on 2 things, 1) auto-exchange to BTC (that way were' measuring apple-to-apples), and 2) feedback from people here.

Suggestions on the best auto-exchanging-to-BTC pools?  I'll start collecting that list separate from my profit-pools list as above.

-MiddleCoin
-CleverMining
-CoinSolver
-??? (I'll have to check to see which pools currently do this)

[chirale]

Red-Beard,
thank you for sharing your tests with the community! this is great!
I have tested hashco.ws with three 5850 (around 900Kh/s) for 6 days. payed 0.04188 BTC
I thought it wasn't too bad...
I'll try only pools that offer auto-exchange and I will start with either Coinsolver or clevermining next!

P.S.
I have listed all the profit-switching pools here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=455835.0