Quick Litecoin GPU Miner Setup Guide on Coinotron

[JD]

Hey guys,

Here's a quick easy guide on setting up a litecoin miner on the Coinotron pool:

1. Download the Litecoin wallet from http://www.litecoin.org/ and let that update. You don't really need it much for this but it's good to have.
2. Download cgminer 3.1 (it's what I use because 3.7.* doesn't work with GPU mining)
3. Register an account with coinotron
4. Login and create a worker
5. Setup the cgminer (Took it from this guide):

You’ll have to determine the optimum settings.

-I

Intensity, this you can set anywhere from 0 to 18 where at 18 your computer becomes unusable and might even freeze. For me the optimum setting is 12 when I’m at my computer and -16 when I’m not working on my computer. You’ll have to see what works best for you. The difference in hashrate is quite big, at 10 I only get 80Kh/s while at 16 I reach nearly 250Kh/s

--thread-concurrency

You can try any of the thread concurrencies within these ranges but it has to be a multiple of 64. Make sure you use the concurrency that fits your card model.

57xx cards: 2368-4096 (3200 is common)
58xx cards: 4096-8192 (5600, 7168, and 8000 are common)
5970 card: 4096-8192 (5632 or 8000 are common)

67xx cards: 2368-4096 (3200 is common)
68xx cards: 3008-6720 (4800 is common)
69xx cards: 4096-8192 (5600, 7168, and 8000 are common)
6990 card: 4096-8192 (5632 or 8000 are common)

7xxx cards 64 * bus_width_of_card_in_bits. So, for a 7950, that would be 64 * 384 = 24576; ideal values are 21712 or 24000. Find your bus width here: Radeon HD 7000 Series - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

--temp-cutoff

You can set a maximum temperature if you run into problems, the default is 95 which is ok for most cards.

I prefer to run it from cmd so I can see any error might it occur. Replace -u and -p with your own username and password.

6. Start your miner: For pooled mining you have to use: c:\cgminer-2.11.3-win32\cgminer --scrypt -o http://coinotron.com:3334 -u stefanjd.1 -p 1 --thread-concurrency 8192 -I 10 -g 1 -w 256

Make sure you change the info in this to yours so you don't mine on my account!

Cheers,
JD

[d3rrial]

I personally use 2x R9 290X by Sapphire and I run them with bfgminer and these settings: -I 20 -g 1 -w 512 --lookup-gap 2 --thread-concurrency 32765
I get around 1MH/s on each card

If you're having 290X or 290 cards aswell, you might want to try these settings to see if your performance increases.

The pool I use is hypernova.pw
Had no trouble so far. Payout system is CPPSRB -> Capped Pay Per Share with Recent Backpay, imitating the System of the Eligius bitcoin pool. Its reliable and preferred by many.

[Shykon]

I don't quite understand how this works. It mines a virtual currency....so it basically mines money for you? If so, where/how does it get the coins? Confused :S

[d3rrial]

Shykon: It's magical internet money. So it comes from magic.

Nah just kidding The software calculates scrypt Hashes with a specific look, for example the binary scrypt hash has to start with 20 zeros for example. How many zeros there have to be in the front is calculated from network difficulty, which adjust in a way, that solving 2016 of those scrypt hashes will take 5040 minutes. If it takes less time, difficulty will rise and the more zeros you will need. If you or your pool do manage to find a correct scrypt hash (the asked for amount of 0s or more) with a specific blockheader and nonce, you have found a block and all transactions done between the last block found (by anyone who found the last block) and the moment you found your block that payed a certain tx-fee will get included in your new block and then distributed across the network. For any found block the miner can create a new transaction that sends 50 litecoins to himself, or if you mine for the pool, sends the litecoins to the pool. (If you create a transaction higher than 50 litecoins, the block is invalid and will be rejected by all other nodes and you will have nothing).

Thats about how you get your coins. Its a reward for including transactions of other users into a new block.

[Shykon]

That's alot to take in, but thanks for the explanation d3rrial
Can you let it mine while you are doing other thing's on the Pc (such as gaming)? I read that it will damage your hardware....how badly are we talking?
Is it even worth doing if you only have 1 computer to mine with?

[d3rrial]

You can do it while gaming, but you have to set the intensity down by a lot which decreases mining performance drastically and your gaming performance won't be very smooth either. But it works perfectly well with 2D applications (like watching YouTube, or browsing OC etc.)

Mining doesn't really damage your hardware, but it wears it out, because when you mine, the GPU runs at 100% utilization generating a lot of heat continously which is in general bad for hardware. Your GPU will still survive well beyond the manufacturer warranty time, if your case has good airflow and you can keep the card relatively cool.

I will soon buy another 2 R9 290s just for mining, so I would hope that it pays out

[meathelix]

I personally use 2x R9 290X by Sapphire and I run them with bfgminer and these settings: -I 20 -g 1 -w 512 --lookup-gap 2 --thread-concurrency 32765
I get around 1MH/s on each card

If you're having 290X or 290 cards aswell, you might want to try these settings to see if your performance increases.

The pool I use is hypernova.pw
Had no trouble so far. Payout system is CPPSRB -> Capped Pay Per Share with Recent Backpay, imitating the System of the Eligius bitcoin pool. Its reliable and preferred by many.

Hey man I was wondering how do you go about setting up bfgminer. I am new too this and I have my self a 290x on watercooling

Here are my settings with cgminer

setx GPU_MAX_ALLOC_PERCENT 100
setx GPU_USE_SYNC_OBJECTS 1
"C:\Users\user\Desktop\liteCoin Mining\cgminer-3.1.0-windows\cgminer.exe" --scrypt -o stratum+tcp://global.wemineltc.com:3334 -u user -p 1234 -I 20 --worksize 512 -g 1 --thread-concurrency 29786 --lookup-gap 2 --temp-cutoff 66 --gpu-engine 948 --gpu-powertune 10 --gpu-memclock 1450

I dont have a config file that is my bat file and with that setting I am only getting like 200kh/s dont know why

Thanks!

[d3rrial]

tep-cutoff 66? I have a temp-cutoff of 100°C, overheat temp of 96°C and temp-target of 93°C

I guess temp-target is unecessary in your case, as the GPU doesn't have control over your WC loop, but I would still recommend setting the temp-cutoff higher than 66°C and have an overheat temp set

gpu-engine isn't that important and gpu-memclock 1500 worked best for me. I did kill both of my cards yesterday tho, probably by setting powertune to 20, which is unhealthy apparently. also try a higher thread-concurrency.

Hope this helps

Also an interesting pool was recommended to me: http://cryptologik.com/ its a scrypt pool that mines various scrypt currencies, whichever is most profitable at the moment and automatically sells them for bitcoin and sends you those bitcoins. At the moment this is more profitable than litecoin mining. You might want to take a look into it

[letsgivethisatry]

I personally use 2x R9 290X by Sapphire and I run them with bfgminer and these settings: -I 20 -g 1 -w 512 --lookup-gap 2 --thread-concurrency 32765
I get around 1MH/s on each card

If you're having 290X or 290 cards aswell, you might want to try these settings to see if your performance increases.

The pool I use is hypernova.pw
Had no trouble so far. Payout system is CPPSRB -> Capped Pay Per Share with Recent Backpay, imitating the System of the Eligius bitcoin pool. Its reliable and preferred by many.

I am trying to get a couple of R9 290s (not 290X) working but am having a heck of a time. What OS are you using (I have tried both Win 7 and XUBUNTU)? Also do you have suggestions for me?

Thanks!

[d3rrial]

I'm using Windows 8.1

You'll have a problem the first time you try it.

write this in a .bat file and execute it:

setx GPU_MAX_ALLOC_PERCENT 100
setx GPU_USE_SYNC_OBJECTS 1

then restart your computer

if you are unsure about these commands look them up. What they do is basically allow a single program to access 100% of the GPUs memory, this will let you use high thread concurrencies.

Currently I would also recommend to not mine Litecoin, but go on the pool " Cryptologik " this pool is mining several different currencies and automatically sells them for bitcoin once you have reached a threshold you set. This is usually more profitable than just mining Litecoins.

If you have any more trouble, pm me your skype name.