Professional Documents
Culture Documents
====================================================
by Chris 'Kiv' MacLeod
based on:
- "poclbm" by m0mchil
- 'rpcminer' by puddinpop
- bitcoin-miner by ufasoft
What is it?
----------GUIMiner is a graphical front end for mining Bitcoins. It provides a more
convenient way to operate Bitcoin miners without having to use the command
line. It supports both NVIDIA and ATI GPUs, as well as CPU mining. It
supports both pooled mining and solo mining, with a wide list of pool
servers pre-set with the program.
What is it not?
--------------GUIMiner does not replace the standard Bitcoin client from bitcoin.org - you
still need that program to view your account balance and send transactions.
It is not a server, so it has to connect either to a mining pool, or to your
computer's 'bitcoin.exe' if mining solo.
The Latest Version
-----------------You can get the latest version on the project page at GitHub:
https://github.com/Kiv/poclbm
Features
--------
Requirements
------------ To mine using an ATI GPU, you need an OpenCL compatible card with a
working version of OpenCL installed. If you are unsure whether your GPU
supports OpenCL, try the GPU Caps Viewer:
http://www.ozone3d.net/gpu_caps_viewer/
For AMD/ATI cards, to get a version of OpenCL you need the Stream SDK which is
available here:
http://developer.amd.com/tools/heterogeneous-computing/amd-accelerated-paral
lel-processing-app-sdk/
For NVIDIA cards, you can also install OpenCL and mine that way, or you can
install CUDA and use rpcminer-CUDA which may provide slightly higher performance
since it is optimized specifically for NVIDIA cards.
For CPU mining, you don't need anything special; you can mine using rpcminer-cpu
or rpcminer-4way; try both to see which has better performance on your CPU.
Instructions for Pooled Mining
-----------------------------Pooled mining is recommended for most users, since it gives steadier payouts
than solo mining. Several pool servers are supported out of the box; you can
select one from the "Server" dropdown menu. Different servers have different
fees and features; you can visit the website for each one to learn more. Also,
the official Bitcoin forums are a good source for information:
http://www.bitcoin.org/smf/
Most servers require (free) registration; to register go to the server website
and follow their instructions.
Once you've registered, you can enter your login information in the fields of
the GUI. The "Extra flags" field is optional and can be used to fine-tune GPU
performance.
Click "Start mining!" to connect to the server. The miner should connect and sta
rt
showing your hash rate. This is the number of attempts per second to solve the
current block. After a while the miner will also show "shares" accepted
by the pool. The more shares you have, the larger your share will be of
the 50 Bitcoins when the block is solved.
To see if your hashing rate is comparable to others, you can look up your GPU on
this chart:
http://pastebin.com/AvymGnMJ
You can save your login info for next time by using File -> Save. Next time
you open the GUI your login will be remembered.
You can run multiple CPUs/GPUs in separate tabs by using File -> New and enterin
g
the new miner's login info. Remember to save your login info after it's entered.
Solo Mining
----------Solo mining is recommended for users with a lot of computing power available,
or if you can't find or connect to any pools. It doesn't give any award at
all unless you find a block (which takes weeks to months), at which point you
get 50 BTC all at once.
For solo mining, instead of connecting to a pool server you connect to your own
local machine's copy of 'bitcoin.exe'. Instead of registering with the pool
server, you put your login info in a special file called 'bitcoin.conf'.
GUIMiner has utilities to help with these tasks. To create the bitcoin.conf,
choose "Solo utilities -> Create solo password..." and create a user and
password. It should show a message saying that it was successful.
To launch bitcoin.exe in server mode, you might need to point GUIMiner to