Bitcoin - Solo Mining Considerations

v 0.3

I had intended this to be posted in a day or two, however within minutes of me posting my last piece about Bitcoin, I had several visitors to my blog about just this subject.  Having been through the frustration of trying to get the software to work for solo mining, I can understand people eager to find what they are missing.  Before I get into my setup though, a bit more about what is involved.

First, be very clear that solo mining will produce returns very few and far between.  The payoff is a block of 50 bitcoins, and since these arrive in one go, and with the current return, you can expect a payoff only once or maybe twice a year.  To get that, you will have to use the GPU on your video card to achieve that.  As an example, I have an AMD HD 6970 video card with an Intel 8400 quad core processor.  Mining with the CPU is only 1% as effective as the GPU.

Bitcoin Hardware comparison.
Bitcoin Mining Calculator

Next, what sort of Video Card.  ATI / AMD are the only way to go.  As an example, the HD 6970 is almost half the price and more than twice as productive as an NVidia GTX 580.  The best description of why, that I've seen, is that you can consider the ATI/AMD cards to use a large number of dumb calculators to get things done, whereas the NVidia cards use a small number of very smart calculators.  Brute force wins in this case.

Next post ... how I got my setup working ..


Later .........


Update 1:
Whilst I'm really happy to have so many hits on my bitcoin posts, I'm also concerned that people look at this as an instant wealth exercise.

I'd encourage you to look at ALL my bitcoin posts.

Please.