Topic: Guide to Mining LTC (ESPECIALLY FOR NVIDIA CARDS) (Read 7818 times)

That's simply not true. It's profitable, if only $1.25 a day, but hey better than nothing.

I'd like to add that mining LTC on nVidia is currently not profitable (and has not been so either), as these cards are so inefficient that they use more power than what they possibly gain in LTC.

Not to discourage any of you guys, but really, get an AMD card if you want to mine.

There's a doc out there for comparing Nvidia speeds with Cudaminer. Lots of good comparisons.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AjMqJzI7_dCvdG9fZFN1Vjd0WkFOZmtlejltd0JXbmc&usp=sharing#gid=1

I'm curious why the 570's are better than 6xx. I'd think the 6xx series would be faster but the stats in the above file as of this date don't support that thoght.

First of all, you'll need a CPU miner and a GPU miner. For CPU I highly recommend this:

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/an-even-more-optimized-version-of-cpuminer-poolers-cpuminer-cpu-only-55038

For GPU I highly reccommend this (optimized for NVIDIA)

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/ann-cudaminer-ccminer-cuda-based-mining-applications-windowslinuxmacosx-167229

 

Now, you need to actually start mining. The first thing is selecting a pool, just search online for one or you could try this: http://pool.gotgrapedrink.com

Once you have selected a pool, go to  your account and setup two miners... name them whatever you want, I usually just use 1 and 2, password is obviously your choice. Next go to their get started  page (or wherever they have the mining URL) and copy that and the port.

Now,

1. extract both the CPU miner and GPU miner into different folders

2. launch notepad and for the CPU miner copy/paste in this:

minerd -o http://pool.gotgrapedrink.com:9344 -O USERNAME:PASSWORD

3. modify the pool URL to whichever you want and put in one of your miner usernames and passwords in where USERNAME and PASSWORD are.

4. save this into your CPU miner directory as launch.bat (make sure to select all files in notepad and name it launch.bat not launch.bat.txt)

5. make a new notepad file for GPU miner and paste in this:

cudaminer -o http://pool.gotgrapedrink.com:9344 -O USER:PASS -i 1

Modify as before with pool URL and this time put in the other miner username/password.

6. Save this into your GPU miner directory as launch.bat (same as above)

7. Run the GPU miner once by double-clicking on launch.bat and let it go through the auto-tuning. You will notice that it crashes when auto-tuning completes but it shows you what it figured out (should be something like 69x2 or 100x3 or something similar)

8. open your gpu miner launch.bat again in notepad and add -l (whatever autotuning said). It should look something like:

cudaminer -o http://pool.gotgrapedrink.com:9344 -O USER:PASS -i 1 -l 69x2

You can also remove the -i 1 if you are not going to use the computer while mining and add it back in if you are.

SOLO MINING SECTION COMING SOON!

Congrats! You should now be able to mine efficiently on an NVIDIA GPU! Just launch both the CPU miner and GPU miner and you should be good to go. A few things to note:

1. READ THROUGH THE README INCLUDED WITH THE GPU MINER!!! This will be really helpful later.