About blockchain.info showing too many Bitminter blocks, let me put it this way, I have sometimes seen their site get something right, but it's not often.
I emailed them about the problem, but they didn't reply.
According to them Deepbit is still finding several blocks per day, and half of P2pool's blocks are made by Bitminter. It would be funny if it wasn't confusing so many people.
TL;DR: blockchain.info data is usually wrong. Use this instead:
http://blockorigin.pfoe.be/Not sure if it was just me or not but at 11am EST my Bitminter ran out of work. I then somehow ended up with over 1000000 work units queued up but my hash rate was halved. I let it go for about a minute but it never normalized so I just restarted Bitminter and everything seems fine now.
Sounds like a network issue. When it cleared up the client grabbed a lot of work. Wouldn't have expected quite that much though. Also I've never seen it run at half hashrate like that after a network issue. Thanks for the report.
One question I do have though is that Bitminter usually tells me I'm running at between 98-101 Ghs. When I look at the shifts they're reporting between 89-94. Any insight on the difference?
The website estimates your hashrate based only on accepted work. If you have a lot of rejected work or miscalculations (hardware errors) then that can explain the difference.
some advise will be greatly appreciated please.
Ive been looking at the possibility of BTC mining but dont really have the funds to buy expensive equipment.
Really like the easy to use interface of BitMinter so am very keen to try this but wanted to know whats the minimum hash rate I need to be outputting to see some sort of return after electricity etc?
Would starting off with say a usb block erupter at 333 be ok or should I at least go for the one that gives around 1.6? The USB miners appeal to me more due to space issues.
many thanks
You'll need ASICs of course, to beat the electricity expenses. I think block erupter can still do that, but I guess it depends on your electricity prices. They can be hard to get at a price where you have a chance to break even, though. Run some scenarios through a bitcoin mining calculator before you decide what you want to pay for one. Or if you just want to try out mining and breaking even isn't that important, a cheap device like that should fit the bill.