Which Pools to chose?

polanskiman

I have been reading and reading and reading... and up until now I have no clear view of why one pool is better than another apart form the obvious (fees, payouts etc) which for most of pools are similar.

So can anyone recommend what pools are preferable (for Bitcoin, Litecoin and Dogecoin) and foremost which are the safest?

Thank you.

FabulousPanda

Most established pools are pretty safe, I recommend http://FabulousPanda.tripleminer.com/ for new BTC miners and P2Pool nodes work well for a lot of Alt coins. I like P2Pool but it doesn't suit slower miners with some coins!

polanskiman

Thank you. I have been trying P2Pool since yesterday. Here is my address: LfUcGtsJVGigcyTZZuaDcMfwJRoogg7g9Z

When are the payout done since I don't see any configuration panel or way to manage an account? At present I am just testing things with my MacPro but I am considering setting up a rig in the near future if I feel satisfied with how all this works.

polanskiman

Also since I am no pro in this business, would it is possible (and advantageous) to mine Litecoins with my graphic card (GPU) instead of my CPU? If so how to configure MacMiner for that as for now I haven't been able to have a good hash rate compared to when I use my CPU for that task.

FabulousPanda

Macs are slightly crippled in the GPU zone, they never run as fast as another OS would, but you can use both CPU and CPU at the same time! With scrypt mining I find the GPU really takes off at about 10 or 11 intensity (with dynamic unchecked)

Did you switch mining pools? You're not on the graphs for the last 12hrs

polanskiman

Will try again setting GPU for litecoins and come back, but for now I only saw around 2-4kh/s with GPU while 50-60 kh/s with CPU (16 threads). Yeah sorry I turned my mac off since I was out for a few days. Only using it as a test base so not really letting it run24/7. Will turn it back on this evenenig (I live in Thailand).

OldTimer

I've not been mining for very long, but I use Slush's Pool at:

   https://mining.bitcoin.cz

Which seems ok.  However, I must say that even using a fast GPU will not result in much success.  I initially started with my GPU and got no-where and I've got an Nvidia 'EVGA GeF GTX 670 2GB GDDR5' and it was only giving me approx' 2-3MH/s, so I bought a Bit Fury 2.5GH/s unit which is much faster and much more interesting.  I have since added a couple more units and now getting approx 7.6GH/s.  I plan on adding further units.

FabulousPanda

Slush runs a good pool, these days if you want to CPU/GPU mine you should get involved in an Alt coin though!

polanskiman

Thanks. I did try Slush Pool initially and I found the system to be working fine indeed but seeing how things are going I won't be getting involved in Bitcoins. High cost, difficulties, poor delivery schedules of ASICs makes it a difficult currency to mine nowadays.

John, in order to mine Litecoins (with CPU and GPU simultaneously) which miner would I need to chose? I also saw that you have replaced BCG Miner with GPU Miner and tweaked the Miner Option window. It is indeed clearer this way.

polanskiman

I think I understand now. Each CPU core mines at ~3kh/s for a total of ~50 Kh/s for 16 cores. I assume that my GPU only has one core thus only mining at ~3kh/s. 

I have a side question though. Is it ok to mine with the same worker simultaneously on GPU and CPU?

Also when mining with CPU Miner, the total Hash rate remains at 0Kh/s with the "Starting" mention until a share is accepted. Is this a normal behaviour?

FabulousPanda

You've got it! You're right about CPU miner too, it uses how long it takes for accepted shares to judge the hash rate so it can't update before then beyond the 'Starting…' label

You can use the CPU and GPU for mining at the same time - I find the ideal intensity for Litecoin Mining tends to be around 11 - just watch those temperatures!

polanskiman

With GPU Miner at intensity 4 my Mac pro starts running slow and windows are sluggish.

Also something of concern just happened. CPU Miner had been running for a few hours. I then decided to also run GPU Miner. Strangely the GPU Miner hash rate was unusually high (~250Kh/s compared to the usual 3Kh/s). It run like that for about 20 seconds and then my Mac Pro unexpectedly shut down and rebooted without any warning! I was a bit freaked out hopping it was not the CPU or GPU who had melt down! Fortunately it rebooted normally. Damm that got me sweating!

FabulousPanda

woah! What are you GPU mining? There are several different backends for the recently renamed GPU Miner window and some of them are rather new and admittedly not up to the standard of the bfgminer it uses for SHA256 and Scrypt mining.

polanskiman

I was mining LTC with the same address I provided earlier (LfUcGtsJVGigcyTZZuaDcMfwJRoogg7g9Z). 

FabulousPanda

That's weird, it's the same backend… any more unusual behaviour? I'll look in to it!

polanskiman

Not for now. Will try tease the app again tonight see if it behaved badly!

polanskiman

What's your fee for the P2Pool LTC by the way? I've also noticed a high level of reject in the P2Pool compared to traditional pools. Why is that?

Btw you can find me at LfUcGtsJVGigcyTZZuaDcMfwJRoogg7g9Z

I am having some stability issues with my rigs reason why it went dead for a few hours...seems it wanted to sleep just like me!!

FabulousPanda

Never more than 0.5%

http://pool.fabulouspanda.co.uk:9332/fee

P2Pool includes orphaned in your dead count which many other pools don't, that's usually the high rejects, but I know some pools have different proof of work methods with very low rejects - P2Pool isn't like that, it has the more traditional round based work which expires after a little while.

polanskiman

Noted with thanks. Rig mining on your P2Pool as we are talking.