Someone please help me understand the concept of the "difficulty" setting.
So far, I get that I have 3 - s3's on antpool with a recommend difficulty setting of 512K.
Next week, when my S4 comes in, I set the difficulty for that 2THS/S machine at something bigger because it is more powerful. I forget where this is set right now, but I know it is a setting.
Would a S5's be set somewhere in between an S3 and S4?
Does this mean that the S4 is more efficient because it can take on bigger chunks of work?
Is work or shares dolled out according to the level of difficulty?
Does the higher dificulty level of a faster machine like the 2TH/s S4 mean that the machine will remain profitable to operate further in the future?
So far, I've read two "beginners" level books but they do not explain this. This is keeping me awake at 3:45 AM local time so please help put my mind to rest so I can go to bed!
Thanks,
Tom
If your mining on Antpool, then just go to sleep because the difficulty is set by the pool software with what's called a dynamic diff. You have absolutely NO CONTROL over what it TELLS your hardware is the minimum acceptable share difficulty.
I understand but is a S4 better than 4-S3's (if S3' ran at 500MH/S)? Is the S4 going to produce more/faster/better hashing at the end of the day because of the level of difficulty it can take on? I am also assuming that power is the same.
If your S3's are running at 500 MH/s you have other problems, I assume you mean 500 GH/s.
And share difficulty doesn't matter. It has absolutely no effect on your miners and no matter what they are set at, it should even out in the long run to what it should be running at. But basically, when you submit work, it could be at 1 difficulty, 2 difficulty,3 difficulty... and so on. When you submit 2 difficulty work, you get twice as much credit as when you submit 1 difficulty work. When the minimum difficulty is set by the pool, it discards anything under that to reduce load on pool servers.
Basically they all run as efficiently, but your faster gear has a greater chance of finding higher difficulty solutions before slower hardware, which is why it is recommended to use a higher minimum difficulty.