That doesn't really put it into perspective, what would a high end AMD card do and how much does the pool realistically need to achieve for it to not be pointless? Sorry you know it's measured in Kh/s so you know a lot more than me!
:huh: JR
The basics are as follows.
There's a thing called a block chain. This is basically a record of every transaction every done for a particular currency. Mining programs are like math equations, processing this chain. Everyone runs calculations with their GPUs or CPUs (usually GPUs) to mine a block. If you successfully find/mine/win a block, you get the coins. (25BTC per block, but it differs between coin).
Some currencies have blocks that take longer/are harder to mine, some have ones that are fast but worth a lot less.
Hash rate can be explained like a lottery ticket. Every 1 hash is like having a lottery ticket. Everyone mining a particular block gets them at their own rate (better based on your setup). Winning a block means you get the payout.
Once a block is mined, if you are a solo miner and you win the block, you get all the coins. If you are in a "pool" (what I'm suggesting), you get a share that is equal to the amount of work you did (i.e your hashrate and time mined) to mine the block. Because you pool your resources, you have a much better chance of winning blocks together, so you get payouts more often, split with the rest of the group.
So if you manage to win a block by yourself, you get the whole payout, but the payouts are a lot rarer/take a lot more time.
That doesn't really put it into perspective, what would a high end AMD card do and how much does the pool realistically need to achieve for it to not be pointless? Sorry you know it's measured in Kh/s so you know a lot more than me!
:huh: JR
AMD 280x-290x hashrate is usually around 900-1100 kH/s
nVidia 780Ti hashrates are around 400 kH/s.
So yes, AMD is massively superior for mining.
On certain coin types, like BTC, you can dedicated miners which can do 500GH/s no problem.
Also remember that hash rates are different card to card, software to software, and the coin type you are mining affects it too.
Either way, AMD, whether low or high end, is the way to go.
PS: These are values for litecoin mining.
We would have to mine a weak currency, like feathercoin or namecoin. To make it worthwhile we would have to have at least 100MH/s between us so we would need to make a list and set up a server to allocate blocks and manage peoples shares. If everyone who wanted to get involved posted the hashrate of their hardware we could take a list of names and hashrate and when it adds up to 100MH/s we could start it. I dont know how many people would know how to set it up on the server side though.
Agreed, weak currency with a potential to rise in value is a good call. Dogecoin is surprisingly really good atm. Litecoin is crossing the boundary to being inefficient. I'll ask around and do some research & number-crunching, and see what's going on with the value/difficulties of some of the newer coins, and hopefully come up with a good choice and hashrate target.
Any help is appreciated!