It is interesting you happened to mention that.  I just read an article this morning on the Greek banking situation, and how people were desperately trying to get their lives back in order, but the banking restrictions are so draconian as to keep people from even paying there every day bills.  The thought that occurred to me whilst reading through the article was along the lines of how a sudden "mass-adoption of crypto-currencies" throughout Greece could almost instantly render the banking restrictions null and void.  Plus, it has the potential to permanently end the bank's control over the Greek citizens.

Ah...nevermind.  I figured out that you can use a conf file in the miner directory to add any specific miner settings.  Originally I had the pool settings in the conf file, and multiminer cannot work with that.  But, if you remove the pool settings, everything else works great.

And, for clarification, the sgminer can only handle 11 commandline arguments.  The multiminer is trying to start it up with 21 arguments, several, of which, are nothing more than default values that do not need to be set.

I have been trying to run multiminer for about a week and a half now, without success.  What I have discovered is, multiminer is adding a bunch of extra commandline arguments, that I do not need, and my sgminer errors out because of it.  Is there a way to change what extra commandline arguments multiminer adds automatically?

V4 and later.  They all have the same result.

It depends on what is required for you to get started, and what you mean by "profitable".  If you already have a computer that is running 24/7, and a reasonably powerful gpu, then absolutely it is profitable.  you won't get rich doing it, but you will make money.  The trick is to find the sweet spot of efficiency.  In other words, running your gpu at maximum possible hash may not be the most profitable.  Figure out your power usage vs the amount of money you make, per day.  Look for the sweet spot between minimum power usage and maximum hash rate.

If you are considering setting up a gpu farm....then you have to factor in how long it will take to recover the equipment cost.  if you are rich, then you can just eat the equipment cost and set it up as an extra income source.  If you are not, and need to recover those costs.....then you need to seriously do some major planning.  Everyone wants to get in on coin mining.  Which means, if you don't go huge right off the bat, you can't ever recover your equipment costs.  Why?  Because as time passes, mining always becomes less and less profitable.  I have already seen a few people with gpu farms talk about shutting down until it becomes profitable again...if ever. 

It is an XFX R9 290A EDBD.  I am running on Win 8.1.  And I am using Catalyst 15.7.  The system is based on an Intel Core i7-5820K Haswell-E, and has 32GB of DDR4 RAM.  Honestly, I think I just found the sweet spot that my gpu prefers.  I just checked it, and it has been cranking on these settings for 17 hours without any issues.  Better yet, my displayed avg was slowly catching up with what xpool was reporting (> 10 Mh/s).

That is a bit of a bummer about the drop in profitability.  That said, it isn't all bad, at least for me.  This drop in profitability spurred me to switch back to xpool and do some further tweaking of my settings to try and drive up my profitability.  And wow.  Some of the stuff I have learned over the past few days, reading  and experimenting, has helped significantly.

As of right now, my 290 has been staying at, or below, 64C.  The vrm is staying at about 73C (well below the 90C I have seen in the past).  And the avg power draw is currently 172W.  I am showing a > 9,6 Mh/s in the sgminer display, but xpool is reporting my accepted avg hash rate to be 10.2 Mh/s.  I honestly did not think this was possible with a single r9 290.  Oh, and no HW errors, and 0.9% rejection over the last hour...since I started up with these most recent settings.

Looking forward to seeing what I can manage to attain with the 290x.

Well, I can't say for sure whether all the hype about the new x11 algos is definitely a thing, but I have tweaked the heck out of my settings, and am getting a really nice efficiency.  When I started last week, i was getting about 4 Mh/s on my r9 290.  Tried some of the bins floating around and managed to get 6 Mh/s while maintaining a stable 60C or less, with a power draw of 113W avg.  I continued to tweak the settings and I finally found the sweet spot for my card.

http://i1176.photobucket.com/albums/x338/fughe/7-31-2015%205-10-01%20AM_zpsxwzoou6l.png

You can see, my last round of tweaks has really squeezed the performance up.  Stable at 64C, the vrm is well below my 90C limit, no HW errors, and stable at 9.6 Mh/s....going on 40 minutes now.  And best of all, the avg power usage is only 155W, and my avg accepted hash rate with my pool (9.84 Mh/s) is higher than the rate I am showing.

Hopefully these settings will prove to be stable over long term.

Just an FYI for anyone running on dashminer... I am using BitDefender for my antivirus/firewall.  It does NOT like the dashminer version of sgminer.  I have had to make rules so BD will stop quarantining it.  And once I did that, I have continued to fight with it to allow sgminer access to the internet.  I decided to post this because I walked away for about 10 minutes, and when I came back, BD had locked the sgminer out of the network for the third time.

I did some further tweaking to see what kind of speed I could safely get out of a single r9 290.  So far it isn't too bad.  I had to run a bit slow for a couple hours, and thought I would just see about pushing it to make up for lost time. 

taking my avg stats over the last 50 mins (since I started tweaking the settings for speed, I am turning up an avg rate of 111.8%.  The actual interesting part is my temps.  The gpu is staying at or below 70C, and the vrms are staying at 90C.  The power usage is 209.7W.  So, a 16% increase over stock settings with only 8 W more power usage. 

It will be interesting to see what I get from the 290x when it arrives.

Yeah sure.  I am feeling generous! 

Hmmm.  interesting development.... I spent most of today tweaking the settings in the mining software...and have discovered this sgminer behaves significantly different from other versions.  I won't get into the particulars, but suffice to say, i have discovered some quite good settings.

In short, I am now maintaining a constant 59C on the gpu, the vrm never goes above 64C, the power usage is 121.4W, and my rate has went from 64% up to 73%.  That officially puts the payout from dashminer over what I am getting from xpool.  And I am still running cool.  Looks like I may let my gpu stay pointed at dashminer, at least until I get my 290x.

Copy & pasted directly from www.dashminer.com ....
So, basically..yeah, this pool does NOT strictly mine only DASH.

With my settings I get about ~0.0025 BTC, after their 2% fee, on Xpool. 

It isn't so much that I am looking for "cool & quiet" mining.  I am factoring in electricity usage, and hardware life.  I don't ever intend to get rid of, or upgrade, any of my hardware, ever.  What I intend to do is continue adding to what I already have.  Currently I am pushing 6 Mh/s.  By the end of the year, (assuming my software release goes about as well as it did last year) I project to be running between 500 Mh/s and 1.5 Gh/s.   That will cost me a sizeable chunk of change, and i expect to eventually make it back.  But, to do so, I have to find the sweet spot.  The sweet spot being, highest payout/hash - energy & maintainence costs. 

My advantage, in this area, is my experience with programming and electronics.  I know energy efficiency degrades as heat increases.  There are four ways to deal with this, all of which have their issues. 

The first is to just let 'em rip.  The downside being drastically shortened hardware life, and higher energy bill.  The income will be high in this scenario, but short lived as the equipment will begin to wear out.  Then I have to deal with replacement costs. 

The second is what most farms seem to be doing, which is to keep the farm in a temperature regulated environment.  This helps with the equipment a lot, but running hot still shortens the life of the systems.  The major downside is the cost of cooling when the weather is warm.  Otherwise, this isn't such a terrible option, other than high power costs.  I am a bit on edge about this option because I have seen a lot of farms shut down because the power bill make sit unprofitable for them.

The third is to consider adding in an alternative energy source, such as solar power, in additional to the setup in the second scenario.  This would obviously put a large dent in the energy expenses.  The downside is solar being so expensive to setup in the first place.  Something adequate to drive a 1 Gh/s farm would run > $20k, assuming the person did most of the work themself. 

The fourth is my idea.  Focus on maximum efficiency.  Fine tune the systems to gain the highest number of hashes with the greatest energy efficiency. 

In the end, coin mining is all about sustainable-profitability.  Based on my projections, the fourth is the best way to go.  It does require the most effort, but also the smallest expense.  The effort primarily being in doing all the calculations, and making sure nothing is left out of the equation.  When I say nothing left out, I mean buying the fastest equipment, with the best on card cooling, platinum grade power supplies, low power CPUs to match the motherboards, energy efficient system RAM, and system storage drives, power regulation and battery backups, environmental controls such as air filtering and A/C, and alternative energy sources (such as solar, etc.)

I suppose for having only been into coin mining for going on 6 days now...maybe I have put an excessive amount of thought into it.  But that's how I roll!  Basically, I am testing the concept to see if it can be made sustainable.  If not, then my unused gpu power will just help offset my electric bill (since my main computer is on 24/7 anyway). 

Also, since you asked, i ran the dashminer with minimal options (intensity a @ 22, gpu-threads @ 1, no other options set).  It has been running for 9 minutes, and it is running at 95% @ 72C and drawing an avg of 199W of power.    This is what most people don't catch.  I have left it running now for 15 mins.  The rate has stayed at 95%.  The temp has creeped up to 73C, and the avg power usage is now 201.8W.  Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, the vrm1 temp was up to 92C.  The projected rate was 0.244 DASH/day.  And the fan speed was 100%.

For contrast, I am back to my previous settings.  The projected rate is 0.166 DASH/day.  The hash rate is hovering right at 64%.  The temp is 60C  The fan speed is 85%.  The power usage is avg 121.0W.  And very importantly....the vrm1 temp is only 63C,

Based on the numbers you posted
running with the recommended settings, I would make ($1.05 * 95%) $0.99.  Now I factor in the power usage expense.  The baseline usage for normal activity is about 12W.  So, we subtract that from the avg and get 188.8W.  That give me 4.5312kW for 1 day.  That makes my power expense $0.46/day.  So, my net gain is $0.53/day running the recommended settings.

If I run with my settings-- ($1.05 * 64%) $0.67.  Power usage is 108W, or 2.592kW/day.  Power expense is $0.26.  Net profit is $0.41/day.

Seems like a clear winner, right?  Well, I didn't factor in the expense of climate control, and running A/C or central air is expensive, especially when it is >90F outside and humid.  Plus, this is also using the presumption that the computer is already on for other things (which it is).  If I was running the system for the sole purpose of mining, then I have to factor in the entire system power usage.  Instead of it being 188.8W vs 108W, it would be more like 700W vs 500W, because every part of the system would factor into it, and be affected by the heat.

And then we still haven't considered longevity.  Assuming we manage to maintain profitability over the long term, then we have to deal with equipment maintenance.  At a rate of $0.53/day it will take me 567 days (1.6 years) to pay a gpu if I have to replace it.  So, the hardware must survive longer than 1.6 years (assuming profitability does not decrease) for this to be profitable.  Heat degrades electronic equipment, so over time, the hotter I run it, the slower my hash rate will be. Granted, running slower, it will take me 732 days (2.1 years) to pay for the equipment.  But, running at the lower temperature, the hash rate will not degrade as much, and I won't have to be concerned about hardware failure, pretty much indefinitely.  Basically, running hot, I will eventually destroy the hardware.  Running cool, it will continue to perform well long after it is outdated equipment.  At which point, I can still sell it in good condition, instead of as junk for parts.

Yeah.....so anyway.  It's all about the net profit.  Whatever turns out to be the most profitable, that is what I am going to do.  And, i am hoping dashminer turns out, at least, be competitive with xpool.  I would prefer to have two good places to mine.  Better to have a back up than rely on one location entirely.

Everyone has to start somewhere.  I am in it to make money, not just burn electricity.  But, I am not rich, so I have to add to as I am able.  Matter of fact, I just recently acquired a 290x and a water cooler for it.  SHould be here in a week.  I intend to point it to the dashminer server, since I will be able to run it hard without heat becoming an issue.  And, if my upcoming software release goes well, i will have the cash to buy a few rigs full of Fury X's   So, I could potentially go from a single card miner to a small gpu farm in a couple months.  My point is, I like to plan ahead.  I need to know everything, so I don't get caught in a bad way.

And, just for the sake of giving dashminer a sensible trial, I have tweaked the settings (via the conf file), and am running my 290 at 59C-60C for at least 24 hours.  I figured I should at least give it a full run to see how the payout compares to what I am getting at Xpool.  With the settings I am using now, I am getting about 64%.  Doing it this way, i can do a direct comparison based on power consumption vs payout, since I can't do it via Mh/s. 

When I really have time to focus on it, i will probably start looking in to streamlining the mining software....since I am a programmer.

Also, while I am at it, to show I am not just trolling, I will post my bat and conf code, so anyone else wanting to run a bit cooler are able to do so easily.

My "sgminer.bat" file contains:

My "sgminer.conf" file contains:

This is what I use for my r9 290.  When I add the r9 290x in a week, I will have to change the conf file, but not the bat file.
The changes to the conf file will be to the following entries (everything else remains the same):

The reason only the temp parameters will not be changing is due to the watercooler i will be using.  The NZXT Kraken G10 and X31 unit. 
The temp should stay well below 50C, but this cooler does not water cool the vram.  That is still air cooled.  So, no OC to the memory,
and no increase in the voltage...although the voltage will be able to remain at the baseline 0 level.

Anyway, hopefully this will help someone else wanting to try out dashminer, but not wanting to let their system run hot.

In case you are not aware, you can add the --power-tune option in the conf file.  By setting a negative value, you can force the card to run at a lower voltage, so it won't run as hot.  The down side is, you won't come anywhere near hitting the 100% rating.  When I did it, and brought my card down to about 63C, I was only rating in barely above 50% on my r9 290.   This is using --power-tune -38.  With my normal setup, that gets me a stable >6 Mh/s (with x11), and no HW....24 hours a day.  It actually is a quite large power difference too.  Running hot, my 290 will draw a steady 200W.  Running the way I normally do, it stays around 113W.  May not seem like much, but multiply that 87W difference over 24 hours....and you have burned an extra 2.088kW.  Assuming $0.10/kW, I would be losing $0.21 right off the top.  So -0.000714 BTC from whatever I could mine.

Basically, I know my card is capable of running well above the 100% rating, but something is not set right with the dashminer software.  Honestly, as hot as it ran during my testing, and knowing what I get with my normal setup, I should have been pushing a 200% rating. 

A thought has occurred to me, though, which I have been considering for a couple days.  If the dashminer software actually is getting the speed it claims, maybe the miners aren't actually getting full credit for their hash rate.  Using my setup as a reference example, pushing it as hard as the software did, theoretically, I should have been ticking in right around 9 Mh/s.  The software said I was hitting ~92%.  The baseline reference for x11 was 4.84Mh/s.  Double that would be 9.68Mh/s.  Based on this info, my card was running at approximately 93% of that.  That puts a situation where everyone is mining, and only getting partial credit for their hashes. 

Granted, it is a reasonable business model, and it would also explain why the payout is so good.  When you are getting half of what everyone mines....you can afford to be generous in the payouts.  I am just not keen on the secrecy.  If that is what the business model is, I would rather know up front.  Yeah, there would be people who are all ticked off cause they aren't getting full credit.  But, if the payout is better, then it doesn't matter quite so much. 

My only real issue is, I know what I am getting with my normal setup.  I will not run my rig that hot.  It is more expensive because of the power consumption and inefficiency (due to heat).  Plus, it is VERY bad for the equipment.  Personally, I would rather have the option of having to setup a multi-address pool (similar to the way NiceHash does it), and use my own setup.  For people that don't want to deal with the technical stuff, they can use the plug-n-play software. 

Anyway, that is my two cents.

Yeah, my issue is that I am making a good rate hashing at Xpool.  My energy consumption is low, and hash rates high.  If I try and run on dashminer, my r9 290 won't even run a full 100%, and the power consumption goes way up.  So, until this issue can be sorted out, I am making more coin there.

Good point.  It would be very difficult, if not impossible, to make enough money selling it, before some jerk decided it needed to be free to everyone, and post it forums for everyone to have.  Being a programmer, I completely sympathize with that.  And I don't have a fat wad of cash sitting around to pay for something like that.  It is looking more and more like I am going to have to add mining software development to my to-do list.

I have a bit of a problem.  Hopefully we can get this issue sorted out.

So here is the deal.  I run sgminer 4.2.2.  Just open source stuff that I have found via forum crawling.  I have a single r9 290.  I read that dashminer uses x11 as one of its algorithms.  The reference given was found here http://dashminer.com/stats/.  As it states, the reference r9 290 card crunched out 4.84Mh/s, and they are using this as a sort of baseline reference for their % value scale.  No problems so far?

Okay, here is where my problem kicks in.  When I mine on x11, I maintain a stable 6.1 Mh/s.  The issue is, the dashminer software is overworking my card, and getting worse performance.

When I am hashing x11, maintaining a stable 6.1 Mh/s, my temp never reaches 60c, because I set the power limit to -38 (yes, that is negative 38).  I am using much less power, and increasing efficiency by running cooler.  Yet, my hash rate is about 25% higher.  I snapped a couple screenshots just for a quick reference.
My normal mining on x11:
http://i1176.photobucket.com/albums/x338/fughe/good_sgminer_zps8szekijk.png

My mining with dashminer:
http://i1176.photobucket.com/albums/x338/fughe/dash_sgminer_zpsnqzwmx7w.png

As you can see, I normally run at a cool ~58c.  When I run the dashmining, I was pushing 73c, and still only hitting 92.74%.  So, I am burning more power, and dropping efficiency from heat...plus I am running a lot slower in MH/s.  I tried dropping the power limit down to -38, like I normally do.  When I did that, my % value droped to about 50%-55%, and the heat problem still did not completely go away (stayed around 63c-65c).  Obviously that is not realistic.  If I were fine with running my card hot (>70c), I could set my powerlimit back to 0, and then my normal x11 hash rate goes up to around 8 Mh/s.

What gives?  I want to try out the dashminer pool, but I need to figure out why I am having this issue to make it worth the switch.