Stupid Question

[curry301]

I have been running two GPUs over 24 hours now averaging about 4000000 khash on each GPU.  I do get a lot of "warning:  job finished, miner is idle" messages.  I currently have 52 connections.

How do I get any Bitcoins that I generate?  Will they just show up in my balance?  Do I need to do something else to collect bitcoins from my GPUs?

Thanks,

Jeff.

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[fpgaminer]

What miner are you using? Are you mining "solo" (connected to a bitcoin/bitcoind client on your local network) or are you mining as part of a pool?

How do I get any Bitcoins that I generate?

If you've told your miners to connect to your local bitcoin/bitcoind client, then you should eventually see a "Generated" transaction show up, of the amount 50BTC or more. Those take 120 confirmations before they fully mature and show their final balance (may appear as a 0.00 transaction until then).

averaging about 4000000 khash on each GPU

Do you mean 400,000 khash? I don't think there are any GPUs that get 4Ghash each.

A 400 Mhash/s GPU will generate a new block on average every 13 days, at the current difficulty. Divide that by the number of GPUs mining at 400 Mhash/s and you'll know the average time until you get your victorious 50 BTC.

[curry301]

Thanks for your response.

What miner are you using? Are you mining "solo" (connected to a bitcoin/bitcoind client on your local network) or are you mining as part of a pool?


I am mining solo on a bitcoin client on a Windows 7 64-bit box with two NVidia Quadro FX580 display adapters.  Xeon processor.



How do I get any Bitcoins that I generate?
If you've told your miners to connect to your local bitcoin/bitcoind client, then you should eventually see a "Generated" transaction show up, of the amount 50BTC or more. Those take 120 confirmations before they fully mature and show their final balance (may appear as a 0.00 transaction until then).

I guess I have to sit back and wait for that first transaction.  Nothing yet after about 28 hours.


Do you mean 400,000 khash? I don't think there are any GPUs that get 4Ghash each.

No, when the GPUs fire up they count upwards of 5000000 khash and then they seems to average between 2500000 and 5000000 khash when they process.  However, every second I get the "warning: job finished, miner is idle" message.  I can see a number between 2500000 and 5000000 khash flashing up occasionally on each GPU status screen.

Should I look to join a "mining pool"?

Thanks,

Jeff.

[error]

You absolutely should join a pool if you intend to use those cards. They get very little in the way of hash rate.

[bitcoin_ent]

you should definitely join a pool

[tomcollins]

You should join one of the small pools.

Big/Small, doesn't really matter.  Unless the big ones rip you off worse with fees.

[keybaud]

The Quadro FX-580 gets a hash rate of 5.7 MH/s according to https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mining_hardware_comparison, which is less then most of the new, cheap CPUs. You may find that you are paying more for the electricity than you will get for the coins.

At the current difficulty, according to http://www.alloscomp.com/bitcoin/calculator.php it will take an average of 1009 days, 14 hours and 17 minutes to generate a 50 BTC block. I think your electric costs for the 3 years will outweigh the value of the bitcoins you eventually get.

Using my simple spreadsheet that calculates profitability,  if the bitcoin price stays at $3.50 you will have an annual income of $60 and an annual electric bill of $300.

[curry301]

Thanks for the info.  Maybe this system is not good for mining after all.


Just for clarification - if I run the command


start /DC:\bitcoinx\poclbm_py2exe_20110428 poclbm.exe --user=user1 --pass=password --device=1

I do see hash rates of ~5.7 MH/s


When I run the command


start /DC:\bitcoinx\poclbm_py2exe_20110428 poclbm.exe --user=user1 --pass=password --device=1 -w 512

I see hash rates of ~ 4000000 kh/s, which I assume equals 4000 MH/s or 4 GH/s.  However, I get a ton of "warning, job finished, miner idle" messages.


If you can shed some light on this, that would be appreciated.

Thanks.

The Quadro FX-580 gets a hash rate of 5.7 MH/s according to https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mining_hardware_comparison, which is less then most of the new, cheap CPUs. You may find that you are paying more for the electricity than you will get for the coins.

At the current difficulty, according to http://www.alloscomp.com/bitcoin/calculator.php it will take an average of 1009 days, 14 hours and 17 minutes to generate a 50 BTC block. I think your electric costs for the 3 years will outweigh the value of the bitcoins you eventually get.

Using my simple spreadsheet that calculates profitability,  if the bitcoin price stays at $3.50 you will have an annual income of $60 and an annual electric bill of $300.

[keybaud]

Just setting the workload size (the -w switch) will not increase your hash rate by 1,000 and I seriously doubt you are getting a hash rate 5 times faster than the fastest GPU card in use elsewhere (HD5970), so it looks like a bug.

[BookLover]

You should join one of the small pools.

Big/Small, doesn't really matter.  Unless the big ones rip you off worse with fees.

Has anyone done a substantial amount research on which pools are best?  I'm considering mining in a pool with a low end graphics card but I am extremely against fees and loss of profit from a pool. Could someone point out a good pool and list why it is better?   

[trumpetx]

You should join one of the small pools.

Big/Small, doesn't really matter.  Unless the big ones rip you off worse with fees.

Has anyone done a substantial amount research on which pools are best?  I'm considering mining in a pool with a low end graphics card but I am extremely against fees and loss of profit from a pool. Could someone point out a good pool and list why it is better?   

bitcoinpool.com charges no fees, but they keep the transaction fees collected for expenses so miners split the 50 btc pot each find.

[[Tycho]]

Should I look to join a "mining pool"?

Welcome to my pool at http://deepbit.net
It's the biggest pool, so your income variance will be low :)