Topic: GPU mining Litecoins is slower than CPU (Read 11945 times)

Is there some place like coinchose that shows some of the most recent altcoins?

Hi,

I wanted to write this message because I fell into this trap too. When first starting out, people who have had experience GPU mining with bitcoin, automatically assume that ANY GPU's are better than CPU's at litecoin mining because this is the case with bitcoin mining but this is not  true.

This message pertains to the "scrypt" algorithm used by litecoin miners. The "scrypt" algorithm is optimized for CPU's not GPU's, unlike the algorithms in bitcoin, so even if you have a higher hash rate on your GPU and if your GPU is too slow you will get better performance with cpu mining (you can win the competition for solving blocks more easily on cpu's). Also make sure you have enough RAM. So the key with litecoin mining with cpu's is to increase the number of cpu cores. However the best processors today have about 100 cores (other company than Intel) which gets approximately only 294khash/s (see calculations at bottom) which makes it a slow earner. So you would about 3or4 of these to get 1Mhash/s to start making a good amount of litecoins. So if you want to use GPU's slower ones won't cut it at all if you are interested in profitable mining. With GPU's You need to use MULTIPLE graphics cards of the fastest type.

Here is an example:



2 core cpu: getting about 6kilohash/s - This gets valid shares right away every 10-15min approx.
(using minerd)

nvida geoforce 210, getting 3megahash/s - waiting along time to get even 1 share even though hash rate is higher than on the cpu's.
(using cgminer)

So you would need multiple ultrafast graphics cards to make your litecoin mining at least as profitable or more profitable as on multiple multi-core CPU's.

Here are come calculations:

On a 16 core cpu I was getting about 47khash/s on average using minerd
So on a 100 core cpu this would be about 294khash/s (100*47/16)

Besides the 100core cpu's, one potential solution to litecoin mining on CPU's might be the Intel Xeon Phi Coprocessor, the fastest one has 60 cpu cores. So (just a rough estimate). You would need about 6 of them mining at the same time to make cpu litecoin mining profitable e.g. 60/100 core ratio * 294khash/s = 176 khash/s, then 1meghash/s  / 176 khash/s = 5.6 ~ 6 devices.

Depending on the cost of Intel Xeon phi this may or may not be profitable...
 
keiichicom

This is absolutely the case. Trading alt-coins is a lot like trading penny stocks; you have to be very careful. In the specific case of MNC, a lot has been going on with it lately. Its difficulty adjustment was too slow and thus when its profitability dropped, miners moved on to the next coin in a mass exodus. This left the MNC network "stuck" with a high difficulty and a low hash rate and new coins were being minted very slowly. On May 28th a mandatory update for the MNC client was announced in order to fix the difficulty problem at block 75,000. I don't know exactly when block 75,000 was reached but it has passed and the MNC network now appears to be moving along at the proper pace. I suspect that the recent volatility of MNC may partially be in response to this, but I could be wrong. Either way, I've avoided MNC for the past few weeks as it just looks too risky for a scaredy cat like me.

Definitely take time to study the market before investing (with either your Bitcoins or your mining rig's time). Eventually you will start to recognize patterns in the markets. A few patterns that I've observed (mostly as a miner) which have served me best are these:

1. Whenever a new alt-coin is added to its first exchange, it nearly always reaches its peak price on the first day (often in the first hour(s)). This is a good time to sell out if you've already mined plenty of the coin -- even if you'd like to hold on to some. You can buy back in to the market in the subsequent days (when the coin's value is lower) and effectively double or triple your coinage if you desire. Whenever a coin that's already listed on one exchange is added to another, it usually sees a bump in price. The size of this bump depends upon the popularity of the new exchange to which the coin was added. This is another good time to sell if you need to pay your electric bill.

2. When a flash crash occurs (i.e. a coin drops to 50% of previous value in just 2 minutes time) there will nearly always be a bounce immediately afterward. If you can manage to buy in at the bottom (and it's really pretty hard to know exactly where the bottom will be) during a flash crash, you can usually sell at the bounce for a quick, pretty penny. Just be sure to sell before the bounce dissipates and the price continues its downward spiral; don't get too greedy. I usually miss these opportunities as I react too slowly and emotions (fear) get the better of me. Manage your risk. Never go all in during a crash, even if you're nearly certain higher prices will return.

3. Don't take my word for it! I'm not a professional investor but I do OK in the crypto-coin market. Observe these things on your own and make your own judgements. Checkout cryptocoincharts.info for historical charts of coin prices.

Good luck, have fun and profit!

Frequent, the more minor a currency is the more volatile the market.

Thanks. It's been a couple of years since I looked at it, a lot has changed.

I see that the profitability of mincoin has gone from one of the highest at 120 or so percent down to one of the lowest at 35 or so. Do these huge overnight jumps happen frequently or was it just that one time?

I think I might try mincoin and digitalcoin

And yes, ltc and other scrypt coins are slower than SHA-256 coins like btc, the scrypt decryption process is just much more complex.

Litecoin mining is at a lower speed than BTC mining by design. 
The drop in LTC value makes it less profitable to mine than BTC, so it is merely a diversification play now?

I too have followed Bitcoin since way back and of course regret not getting in sooner.
I started mining Litecoin in March but quickly moved to other coins. You're certainly not too late and you're still ahead of many others... just like those who were ahead of us.
Mining profits have slimmed lately but we can't know for sure what the future holds. There's always a chance that mining profits could shoot back up. Of course, they could also tumble down further such that only those with cheap or "free" power can afford to mine. I think it's safe to say that mining will always be profitable for some people, at least.

Cents/hour is an interesting metric... I don't usually get that granular in my calculations. I've mostly been holding rather than selling my coins lately, as I have some faith in DGC's future. I only sell small portions when the price spikes up. The price of coins and difficulty of mining are always in flux so it's hard to give a general number on income. I would guess that at the current rates DGC has netted me ~69 cents/hr or ~$16.5 per day in revenue (if I were to sell all my DGC, but I haven't). If the price goes up that number will increase; if not it'll drop. It's not stellar but it's still 250% of what mining Bitcoin/Litecoin would have gotten me. This is with a ~2Mh/s setup (2,000Kh/s) consisting of two 7970s and a 7950. I'm adding two more 7950s soon.

Wow, really? Just a month late...
I actually first heard of bitcoin last year when the price was just 5 dollars and the difficulty was low, but I just decided to start mining now, shoulda started earlier.

Anyways, if you don't mind me asking, how many cents/hour do you get with digitalcoin? Maybe I might look into that.

Yes, see here: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/list-of-all-cryptocoins-134179

It's a great resource for quickly surveying the alt-coin landscape.

Thanks for the info, http://coinchoose.com/ is a great resource. Is there a summary anywhere on the different coins, there properties, mining requirements, etc?

Thanks

There are a bunch of alt-coins that are easier to mine as in you'd get more coins per day with them. However, for the most part, their price reflects this. Check out coinchoose.com for an immediate picture of the relative profitability of various coins compared to Bitcoin. The rankings on coinchoose are very fluid and change quickly as people now use scripts that auto-target their minings rigs at whatever coin is top of the list at the particular time. It seems that lately the profitability of alt-coins relative to Bitcoin/Litecoin has dropped off steeply. There was essentially an alt-coin gold rush a little over a month ago and it was very profitable. FTC (as you described ) was at one point beyond 800% the profitability of Bitcoin for mining. That changed quickly and in the last few weeks it's very rare to see any coin reach over 150% profitability for more than 12 hours. Those who made the most on coins like FTC were those who mined them as soon as they were released while the difficulty was low.

FTC was really the first big time profitable alt-coin in recent times. I started mining it a few days after it was released (quite late to the game) and I still made a decent amount. CNC was the next gold rush and I mined it right from the start. In the end I made about half as much from it as I made from FTC (CNC peaked at about half of FTC's peak price). The next coin I did well on was YAC and there I made half as much as CNC. WDC was another good coin but still smaller profits. From there on it just continued downhill.

I still mine alt-coins exclusively though, as they're still more profitable than BTC/LTC especially if you choose the right ones and buy/sell them at the right times. At the moment I'm mining and trading Digitalcoin.

My gpu is not soldered to the motherboard, I can even swap a different gpu in.

The reason I tried ltc was because in about 6 hours of btc mining, I only made a couple cents, and although I make more than that on ltc, I still don't make much. Are there any altcoins that aren't so hard to mine? I was just looking around, and I saw some post about some guy losing 4100 FTC, which is like $1300.   would I be any more profitable with another altcoin? If that guy can make 1300 bucks, I want in.  

Yes, that's what I meant, sorry for not clarifying.

Macbooks are very expensive and because they're also particularly compact, they're susceptible to heat issues. Often the biggest point of failure for laptops with dedicated GPUs is the point where the chip is soldered to the motherboard. When the GPU produces excessive heat for prolonged periods (as when gaming or mining), this heat can actually degrade and eventually break the solder joints that attach the GPU to the motherboard. Sometimes this can be repaired through a process known as reflowing or reballing, but it of requires the full disassembly of the laptop, costs money and can never be 100% guaranteed to work.

At the current Litecoin difficulty (which will likely continue to rise), you'd be lucky to make $150 for an entire year of nonstop mining with your system and that's assuming that you don't pay for power costs. You surely wouldn't make enough to even pay for a replacement Macbook should mining destroy yours.

Nonetheless, I don't want to discourage you from mining entirely but definitely look into a dedicated rig if you can scrounge up the parts in the future.

By the way, what do you mean by "risk"? Is it just the risk of overheating my computer?

That's what I thought it stood for, but it might've been some bitcoin term or something. I actually have both an integrated and a dedicated card, and the computer automatically switches them (or I can switch them)

As for building a mining rig, I don't really want to dedicate a lot of resources into mining, I just wanted to make a quick couple of bucks, but idk, maybe I might invest some time into mining in the future.

The term IGPU in almost every context that I've ever seen it mentioned is taken to mean Integrated Graphics Processing Unit. This usually refers to a GPU that's integrated directly into either the CPU or motherboard of a system. Almost always integrated GPUs lack discrete memory meaning that the memory that they use is shared with the CPU. In your case I'd refer to your 6750M as a dedicated GPU since it has its own memory... even though the GPU itself is probably soldered to your motherboard (although some laptop GPUs use MXM slots and can be replaced).

Your 6750M is actually quite different from a regular 6750 which is a bit more powerful. See here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radeon_HD_6000_Series

Because of its clock speeds and its 440 shader units, the 6750M is more akin to a 6570. There's a single 6570 listed on the wiki as obtaining 55 Kh/s with a thread concurrency of 5760. This might be a good starting point although that number sounds a bit high. If 5760 doesn't provide good results, I'd start with a thread concurrency 4x your number of shaders (1760) and work up from there by multiples of 440.

I know it has been mentioned already and you've probably read this enough but I really really really advise you not to mine with your Macbook! The risk vs reward here just isn't worth it. You'd do much better to just build/buy yourself a dedicated mining rig.

That said, good luck

NP goodluck

Oh yeah, than it probably does stand for integrated. Yeah, my card is dedicated. I guess I'll try the recommended params tomorrow.

Once again, sorry if I came off rude.