Step 1: Litecoin LTC
This guide will show you how to get started with Litecoin GPU mining. If anything is unclear in this guide please leave a comment about it. In this guide a AMD/ATI Radeon 6870 is used but settings for other AMD/ATI cards are available also. If you are looking for the most efficient card to mine with then you’ll want to get a
AMD Radeon 7950. When looking at the hash to watt ratio this is currently the most efficient card on the market.
You’ll want to start with pooled mining as solo mining is not very viable anymore. The difficulty of the network is too high to effectively solo mine with a single computer. It’ll take a very long time to get a single block of 50 LTC. I suggest you skip to step 2 for pooled mining. However, for people with access to many computers I’ll leave the basics of solo mining in this guide and you can continue reading.
If you want to solo-mine you’ll need to have the litecon client installed and configured. You can download the litecoin client
here, if you are running windows look for the latest litecoin-x.x.xx-win32-setup.exe as this is the easiest way to install the client.
After you installed the litecoin client it will have to catch up with the network first before you can start mining as you can see in the image below.
Once the client is done synchronizing with the network (this can take some time) you’ll have to setup the litecoin client.
In order for the litecoin client to support mining you’ll have to create an ini file in the %appdata%\litecoin folder. To get to this folder click your start button (start->run for Windows XP) and type in %appdata%\litecoin
Now right click in the folder (not on a file or directory) and goto New->Text Document
And rename it to litecoin.conf
Now you should get this pop-up as you’re trying to change the extension of a .txt file to .conf. Click Yes.
If you don’t get the above pop-up you’ll have to switch off “Hide extensions for known file types”. In Vista/Windows7 you can find this by pressing ALT once and then going to the Tools->Folder options menu. In Windows XP this menu should be visible without pressing ALT.
After this, remove the .txt from the filename so the full name becomes litecoin.conf.
Now open litecoin.conf and insert this information:
You should change the username and password for safety, even though you’re only allowing the localhost here trojans and mallware ect. could easily access your wallet if you have the standard username/password.
Step 2: Ltc mining software, cgminer and guiminer-scrypt
Currently I advice you to use cgminer as guiminer-scrypt is still very unstable. Cgminer is command line software and a bit harder to set up but if you follow this guide it should be no problem as we also create shortcuts on your desktop to start the mining. I won’t be covering the Reaper miner here since it is less stable than cgminer and doesn’t have any performance advantages.
Cgminer for windows, linux and the source are available
here or a backup link for the windows client
here.
Guiminer can be found
here. This one is not recommended but you can try it if you like.
Now not all graphic cards support mining but if you purchased a medium range or better one the last 1-3 years you should be able to mine. If you have an ATI/AMD card you’ll need the AMD-APP-SDK, which can download
here. Also make sure your ATI/AMD drivers are up to date.
Extract the cgminer zipfile (to make it easier to launch I extracted the files to c:\)
Step 3: Setting up the mining pool
If you are solo mining you can proceed to step 4.
In order to mine with a pool you’ll have to register an account. I will be using coinotron in this guide.
Go to
https://www.coinotron.com/coinotron/AccountServlet?action=register
Now log in with your newly created account at
https://www.coinotron.com/coinotron/AccountServlet?action=logon
Next, go to “my account” and add a worker, in this case 1 for username and password. Make sure LTC is selected under coin.
After you added it you should see the following:
Step 4: Starting with mining
Now 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:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Islands_(GPU_family)
--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.
Don’t forget to change the username and password to your own, you wouldn’t be the first one mining on my account :)
For pooled mining you have to use: c:\cgminer-2.11.3-win32\cgminer --scrypt -o http://coinotron.com:3334 -u cryptocur.1 -p 1 --thread-concurrency 8192 -I 10 -g 1 -w 256
For solo mining you have to connect to your own litecoin wallet: c:\cgminer-2.11.3-win32\cgminer --scrypt -o http://127.0.0.1:9332 -u username -p password --thread-concurrency 8192 -I 10 -g 1 -w 256
This is the result with intensity 10:
This is the result with intensity 16:
Guiminer-scrypt can be setup like this, it has some default values also but you’ll want to tweak to get the right settings. Note that guidminer-scrypt gets very different results with the same settings, I find it harder to get good hashrates with guiminer-scrypt.
If everything is running smoothly with cgminer you can create shortcuts on your desktop by just right clicking your desktop and going to New->Shortcut
Now just paste the commands in there and create the shortcut
Now you should easily be able to start mining with your gpu from your desktop.
You should be mining by now! Anything missing or any questions? Leave a comment below.
CPU mining
The fastest cpu miner out there is currently pooler’s cpu miner, you can download the appropriate version from one of the links below.
Windows 32 bits Version 2.23
Windows 64 bitsVersion 2.22
Linux 32 bits Version 2.2.3
Linux 64 bits Version 2.2.3
Macintosh 32 bits Version 2.1.2
Macintosh 64 bits Version 2.2.2
Extracting the zip file should give you the following files:
(to make it easier to launch I extracted the files to c:\ltcminer\)
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