Some mining tips for a newb..

[Trypt]

So, I setup my first mining operation yesterday after I installed my new RX 580. I am using Claymore for mining ethereum and got a blockchain.info wallet address.

I need just some beginners help and/or advice.

1. After about 24hrs of mining I do not see anything in my wallet yet, is this normal? Is there a way to check if I'm doing it correctly from the claymore site, like checking my pool and my contribution, even without seeing deposits in the wallet?

2a. I was told to expect 25Mh/s from my card, but I'm getting around 19Mh/s from the box, with no tweaks at all. Any link that is my GPU specific or my mining software specific would be appreciated (I already read the text file for all the parameters of claymore and understand most, I'm looking for tweaks to get my card to 25Mh/s)

2b. My system is so slow I can't do anything while mining. Surfing the web is slow but doable, typing lags, and forget about watching videos, even Youtube, let alone a movie. Is there a way to setup mining so that it uses less resources when I want it to, for example have one bat file for overnight full force, then quit and load a bat file which tells the mining program to only use so much of the GPU power (I just need enough to watch shows/movies, naturally I will turn it off completely if playing a game)

2c. Following from above, I'm scared of stopping the mining. Is it ok to stop mining and starting again? Anything I mine will be paid out right, even if I stop and start again, there is a record of that? I just want to make sure I can stop/start the mining any time without worrying about losing the payday. As of now I am pausing the mining, but this is not always the way I want to go.

3. Finally, now that I have computer setup the way I want, what is the best way to check, say, weekly, to see which currency is most profitable at the time? I am trying to get into it but find that it is quite different from stock or commodity trading.

4. Lastly, I have a secondary computer that just sits around, also an AM3, but with the dual 580s Nvidia with 1.5GB VRAM each. I don't pay electricity at all, are there any coins I can mine with these cards? I read that it is minimum 2GB to mine ethereum so that's a no go. Also, could I put one of these EVGA 580s into my current rig and use the NVIDIA card to run graphics while I'm mining (I only need the RX580 for gaming so for everything else I would like to be able to mine full while watching movies with the NVIDIA card, is this possible)?

Sorry for all the questions, I hope someone can take the time to try to answer the above and help this noob, I'll be grateful and will not bother after I get into this, and I will get into this.

 

[mackerel]

1, are you using a pool? If so, look at what their payment policy is. I'm using ethermine, and they can be configured to payout at 0.05 or once a week if you do at least 0.01. There should be a place on the pool site to enter your address to see your contribution and configure if necessary. Also for payment indication, I'm running around 200 MH/s (variable as I turn off on main system when I use it) and get somewhere around 0.1 every 6 days. You should be able to meet the threshold for payout every 7 days if you run continuously on ethermine, getting somewhere just over 0.01.

2a, in the AMD drivers, you need to switch from graphic setting to compute setting. It's somewhere in the gaming section, and you should see a nice boost from that alone.

2c, stop and start as you like. Check the policy of your pool, if you're inactive for a very long time they may take any unpaid credit. I've not seen ethermine state anything to this effect, but do check. Even if they do this, it will be a long period, you don't have to worry even if you stop for days.

4, you might consider nicehash, paid into their internal wallet, and transfer to coinbase asap on payout (free), then out again to your personal wallet. Their client makes it easy as it aims to work out what is profitable and switch for you. Note ethereum needs close to 3GB now, so 3GB cards wont last long.

You can put a gtx580 in with the rx580, but it'll possibly get complicated to get the right output so I'm not sure about that.

 

[deathman20]

1) I can add to this at least using https://ethermine.org/ recently when I was mining they do payouts every 7 days, even if you have a high threshold on your payout. I believe I mined for 12 days so I got a full 7 day payout and then only a 5 day payout the following 7 day period. Though at least the old method they had for the pool was you set a threshold it gets paid out when you hit it. I think they changed their policy so they weren't sitting on all the ETH incase something happened to it, and really can't blame them. That being said I know there is other currencies you could get quicker payouts but might not be priced as competatively as ETH. With that mining currencies some are good on AMD, others are better on Nvidia so got to take that into account. Its something to look at the more you get familiar with what to do

2a) Yes you should be able to get higher speeds. Tweaking the card is where its at and figuring that sweet spot. Using the blockchain drivers is a start! Increasing clocks, dropping the TDP of the card can all help the performance of the card with mining. Though got to say try to keep the card cool. 60-70C would be ideal, don't let it up near 80C as its just going to kill the life of the card in the long run.

2b) Yeah that can happen. There are some things depending on the mining program, you can tweak the intensity. So if you start using the system it will still let the miner go in the background it should just lower its performance with most programs. I know some people actually are able to game and mine at the same time from 1 card! They just set the intensity for the mining program low, so when your gaming you might see a slight hit on FPS but it still goes in the background mining and returns to normal when you exit the game, no config changes required.

Another Example at least with system lag I know on my old 2500k I was trying to make it efficient and cool, since mining doesn't really take much CPU power I was down clocking it to 1.5Ghz.... big mistake. While it did drop power consumption very little, there was major issues trying to do anything on the PC when the miner was running. I eventually increased the max core clock back up and all was well again. I didn't have a intensity config for the mining program so just had to figure out my CPU issue which wasn't using its C-States and that fixed my CPU being at full speed all the time, and ended up using less power. Even with the CPU you have it shouldn't be interfering with mining / doing normal tasks.

2c) No problem starting and stopping. If anything you might loose a few seconds of the mining if you shut it down.

3) Market fluxs all the time. Hard to say what really is the best or worst time to look at the trading aspect. There are many sites that check current states of the market. Though note currency price can change site by site, as much as 10% difference as what I've seen. I know in Japan and South Korea there was a few sites that had prices really out of whack with the rest of the world (extremely high). Though look at and understand the trading aspect and fees associated with it. Most importantly watch out for coins that look too good to be true when there is a huge spike... these could be a pump and dump scheme.

4) As for the nVidia cards. I know the newer ones are typically good with at mining ZEC, might look into that. It doesn't take much ram to run so the 1.5GB of VRAM shouldn't be an issue. Though running the cards might be more costly electricity wise than mining so I'd look into that a little before spending time trying to figure out how to setup the rig with the cards.

 

[Trypt]

Guys, first of all, thank you so much, I can't believe what a difference the compute settings makes, I went from 19Mh/s to 29Mh/s with no overclocking, 30Mh/s with med OC on mem and mild on clock.

I am not getting anywhere near 80C, the highest I have seen it is in a game at 70C and that's only with the fan at 50%, while mining at full it gets 64C with fan at 34% (my settings, I can put it to 50% up to 70C maybe, I'll see)

As far as skipping in videos etc, I started using Win10 exclusively and I no longer get lag while surfing the web, youtube, or even watching movies, the only time I have to turn the mining off (besides gaming, which I do but don't have to, I started a game accidentally once without turning mining off and it worked fine, but card was set to graphics) is when watching videos with MadVR enabled, which I did exclusively before, but now I only use for non 1080P videos (madVR does wonders for increasing quality of videos but a 1080 looks pretty much the same and very little is done so I just use EVR for that)

I will consider nicehash, ethermine and all that after I get my first payout from dwarfpool. I know now that it takes a while to get to 0.05, less time now that I'll be at 30Mh/s, but still. It was set to 1ETH but I set it to .05 (there is a setting for .01 but it says something in brackets so I didn't want to choose that). I did mine at Ethermine for a while, have like 0.001ETH there before I moved to drarfpool, so I don't know if that will be lost when I get back. A friend of mine also recommended nicehash but has since moved to awesome miner, and also said that claymore is known to be good.

As far as running two video cards I am not sure anymore if you can do that, since they output to a monitor, not just compute right? I mean even if I put the nvidia in here and run drivers, as long as the monitors are connected to the RX580 I can't do much with the NVIDIA except in the background (like physx for example), not even sure if I could use the card to decode stuff if it is not outputting and I'm using the ATI for output on the monitor, I don't think it works that way, at least it didn't when I was heavy into computer stuff.

Very helpful guys I'll keep this thread around it will help me in the near future when I get my second RX580 and do whatever.