Mining BTC?

[Rogue]

Look i know a lot about BTC now because of this community but im still trying to figure out how to mine BTC. I know you need a program or to be part of a pool. Im just lost on which pool i should join and the program that i need to mine. Im running a 2.54GHz intel Core Duo processor, 4 Gbs of RAM and 1 GB of video RAM. Can someone give me answers on how this whole mining thing works? the way i see it the faster we reach the 21mil the better for the whole BTC community.

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[DannyHamilton]

Look i know a lot about BTC now because of this community . . . the way i see it the faster we reach the 21mil the better for the whole BTC community.

Clearly you don't know enough yet.  Increased mining increases the security of the network, it does not significantly decrease the amount of time that it takes to mine all the bitcoins that will ever be available.  The more mining that is done, the higher the network sets the difficulty for mining, adjusting to attempt to keep the mining rate near 300 BTC per hour.

Also note, that the equipment you describe is unlikely to mine profitably unless you have access to free (or extremely cheap) electricity.

[amigaman]

@Rogue:
- You need powerfuls GPU, AMD HD6 or HD7 preferred.
- You need a mining software, i personally use CGMiner, but there are others, also dependent of which OS you use.
- You should use a pool, BTCGuild is my favorite. But depending on your location, other pools may be better because of lower load, better speed. No need to push all the data around the globe...
- You need time, electricity and a lot of GPUs.

One single GPU can just mine for fun. It will never ever be profitable, at least if you didn't steal them and (!) have to pay for electricity.

[Gleamwar]

Start by reading everything in the newbie guide.

Covers just about everything you've asked.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=9430.0

Your video card is the most important part of the equation ( the gpu anyways )
Ati is heads above Nvidia for mining.

GUIminer is probably the easiest program to start with.

You'll certainly want to read the above mentioned guide, while you might be able to just run the miner and it works,
most of the time there will be additional changes you need to make to see it all come together.

[Rogue]

Start by reading everything in the newbie guide.

Covers just about everything you've asked.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=9430.0

Your video card is the most important part of the equation ( the gpu anyways )
Ati is heads above Nvidia for mining.

GUIminer is probably the easiest program to start with.

You'll certainly want to read the above mentioned guide, while you might be able to just run the miner and it works,
most of the time there will be additional changes you need to make to see it all come together.

Thanks! i will read up on it. I only know a lot about BTC and how it functions and since i know a couple of miners i'll ask them some questions

[cambda]

With CPU, you will not mine much bitcoins but for quick reference how much MHash/s your GPU is capable of look at

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mining_hardware_comparison#Graphics_cards

To calculate profitability, you can use

http://allchains.info/calc.html

[SRG]

I found BitMinter to be a great way to get up and running with mining.  There is a lot more advanced information out there, but if you just want to check out what your current hardware can do (mine could do virtually nothing, but it was still nice to know) and get mining just to see what all the talk is about, I don't think you can go wrong there as a start.  Good Luck!

[legolouman]

With CPU, you will not mine much bitcoins but for quick reference how much MHash/s your GPU is capable of look at

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mining_hardware_comparison#Graphics_cards

To calculate profitability, you can use

http://allchains.info/calc.html

This and read the wiki a bit. It's the easiest way to answer any and all questions.