I used the calculator you linked with the results of “bitcoin getdifficulty” and “bitcoin gethashespersec” and it reported a 95% probability of getting a block in 16 days and 4 hours. WTF? Even before you told me your estimate of “on the order of years”, I read online that it’s expected to take a few months.
What’s a typical number for “bitcoin gethashespersec”? Am I pouring electricity down the drain right now? I’m turning off Bitcoin generation until I figure out what I’m doing.
ETA: I don’t actually know the hardware of my box, as I inherited it from a non-techy person in whose basement it would be gathering dust if I didn’t want it. I do know that the box was built several years ago by a hacker-ish individual who dropped quite a bundle on it.
The difficulty factor should be correct and updated as already present on the page; if getdifficulty returns a different value, I do not know why that is. Perhaps you haven’t yet downloaded all the blocks (it’s a process that takes several hours upon first starting Bitcoin, and until it’s completed you cannot generate)?
As for the speed, a midrange AMD GPU will give 150-200khps (meaning two-three weeks per ‘win’), while most CPUs will provide at the very best a tenth of that (I have a low-range CPU and it gives ~2.5khps).
The difficulty factor is correct. I’ve got 700khps; top shows ~200% cpu usage (it’s a dual-core machine). Holy gigaherz Batman, I’ve got a monster in my spare room!
Oops, sorry, I got confused and lost a 10^3 ratio in the post above—the calculator is already in khps; a video card gives 150-200.000 kphs, and my CPU gives 2500. if you input “700” you get a 5410-day average.
Without a recent AMD GPU, it’s just not worth it to generate coin. Electricity costs alone will vastly outdo the benefits.
Here is a calculator for your expected time to hit a 50BC winning block. Without the right hardware, it’s probably going to be in the order of years.
I used the calculator you linked with the results of “bitcoin getdifficulty” and “bitcoin gethashespersec” and it reported a 95% probability of getting a block in 16 days and 4 hours. WTF? Even before you told me your estimate of “on the order of years”, I read online that it’s expected to take a few months.
What’s a typical number for “bitcoin gethashespersec”? Am I pouring electricity down the drain right now? I’m turning off Bitcoin generation until I figure out what I’m doing.
ETA: I don’t actually know the hardware of my box, as I inherited it from a non-techy person in whose basement it would be gathering dust if I didn’t want it. I do know that the box was built several years ago by a hacker-ish individual who dropped quite a bundle on it.
The normal bitcoin client can’t use your GPU anyway, you need to download something else for that.
Right. All CPU mining is, as grandparent says, pouring electricity down the drain.
The difficulty factor should be correct and updated as already present on the page; if getdifficulty returns a different value, I do not know why that is. Perhaps you haven’t yet downloaded all the blocks (it’s a process that takes several hours upon first starting Bitcoin, and until it’s completed you cannot generate)?
As for the speed, a midrange AMD GPU will give 150-200khps (meaning two-three weeks per ‘win’), while most CPUs will provide at the very best a tenth of that (I have a low-range CPU and it gives ~2.5khps).
The difficulty factor is correct. I’ve got 700khps; top shows ~200% cpu usage (it’s a dual-core machine). Holy gigaherz Batman, I’ve got a monster in my spare room!
Oops, sorry, I got confused and lost a 10^3 ratio in the post above—the calculator is already in khps; a video card gives 150-200.000 kphs, and my CPU gives 2500. if you input “700” you get a 5410-day average.
Got it.
700 hps or 700 khps?