New to mining/got some questions

[MaxLAMF]

Hi,

I discovered Bitcoin about one year, then forgot about it and just started a bit mining with my GTX 660 TI with ~100 MH/s a few days ago. I´m using 50 miner with poclbm and Eclipse pool. Some suggestions to get a bit more out of it, as I´m no computer pro ?
Since I´m new into this and ASIC´s seem to be the way to go but only Avalon shipped so far, BFL may only will ship in some months and BTCFPGA is out of the game as far as I know, is there any other BTC mining ASIC company out there or any new competitive FPGAS with multiple GH/s ?
Or are some people on here interested in selling their FPGA´s (let me know your models and the price you wanna have for it) since I want to start mining seriously ASAP to increase my income as a poor student  ; ?
Another question is what about things like dailybitcoins.org or http://www.pyramining.com/referral/bhx39dtq ?
Is it worth investing in pyramining or are there similar/better systems out there? At first glance it seems pretty attractive.
Any other way to get some free coins?

Thanks for any help!

And to piss some off  feel free to donate to: 166UJGVpWu861FajvAWGRr6dDdF3AYnMna

[hardcore-fs]

If you REALLy paid attention... you would see that the only Avalons shipped have 'disappeared'

[MaxLAMF]

yeah, I know I´m actually waiting for the new batches but I guess with my pre-order yesterday I have to wait a few months...
I know the time isn´t that good to get into the game know with the switch to ASIC´s. Therefore my other questions about other manufacturers, competiitve FPGA´s or chep used FPGA´s.

THX anyway and waiting for some other useful replies!

[lassdas]

There's no manufactor that has a ASIC product to actually order right now, you can only pre-order and pray to receive something someday.

FPGAs are pretty expensive and assuming any manufactor ships ASICs sooner or later, it's doubtful to ever get the investment of an FPGA bought today back.

With pyramining you don't really invest in mining, you only give a very cheap loan to someone else, who's running a mining-farm and pays back your loan with his mining-rewards.

Best thing todo right now is to just sit and wait to see what manufactor comes up first with a product that one can actually order and be sure to receive.
If you want to get rid of some fiat-money, just buy some bitcoins and hope for the price to rise, that's less risky than ordering non-existent products.

[MaxLAMF]

you´re probably right, as mentioned before it´s not the best time to get into the game...
is that the common opinion people?

And what about with those things like dailyfreebitcoin or so? Is there something worth the time? Or are all those services working with those tiny amounts like 0,0005 BTC ? Some recommendations?
Can I get a bit more with another miner/pool?

[lassdas]

Things like dailyfreebitcoin or so all work with such tiny amounts, yes. Where do you think the money comes from, outof thin air? Someone has to pay for it and there's not much to gain in "advertising" like that, people clicking those links and watching those sites aren't interested in the ads shown, they just want free coins.
Worth the time? Not really.

And no, you probably won't make more on other pools, or with other software, what you need is better hardware, Nvidia sucks mining.

[MaxLAMF]

Thanks so far, you´ve mentioned what I´ve already assumed.
Do you (or any other people reading this) have any opinion on the future of litecoin or sharecoin? (As I need to wait for ASIC´s until Bitcoin becomes profitable for me)  Buying FBGAS at this time with ~800MH/s for around 800-1000 will regain the investment in about one year...But what about using those with above Litecoin or Sharecoin?
And do you really advise to buy GPU´s/FBGA´s for BTC mining at this time?

PS: Someone wanna sell a GTX 660 TI?

[lassdas]

Never heard of Sharecoin
and don't really looked into Litecoin, Terracoin and all those other alt-coins.
People already complain about the very few things they can do or buy with bitcoins, but there's even less they can do with alt-coins (actually nothing, besides buying bitcoins).
Maybe one of those alt-coins gains some attention one day, but my guess is that most of them will just vanish over time, as happened to a couple already.

For mining alt-coins with FPGAs it depends on the hashing-algorithm those coins use.
Litecoins for example use Scrypt, which is pretty memory intensive. Most FPGA-Boards used for Bitcoin-mining don't come with memory, so you can't use them to mine Litecoins, but you might use them to mine some-other-coin.

No, I don't recommend to anyone to invest into GPUs or FPGAs for Bitcoin-mining at this time, it's likely that you will lose money if you do.
If you want to do it for a hobby and for the fun, go ahead, but don't if you want to make any profit.

PS: Someone wanna sell a GTX 660 TI?

I guess you do,
but no Bitcoin-miner would buy it, maybe you'll find a gamer who'd like one.

[MaxLAMF]

thx again, I´ll take some time into further investigating....

Good joke, but you misunderstood me. Since I´ve got one GTX 660 Ti running here, I´d buy at least a second cheap one...

[lassdas]

Well, then i don't get why you want a second one.
Better get an AMD card that's good enough for your gaming-needs and 10times faster mining coins than its Nvidia competitor.

[TehTDK]

MaxLAMF:

I am getting 250-260 MHash/s on a XFX 5850HD that I got well over a year ago. I am debating adding another one if I can find one cheap.

[MaxLAMF]

I haven´t looked up rices now, but if my memory is right both (the GTX 660 Ti and 58509 ) were in about the same price and quality range...and your hashrate surprises me, that when it comes mining  there´s such a difference...

Anyone here into alternate e-currencies Litecoin, Sharecoin ixcoin etc... ? I mean they could have a potential in the future when all BTC mining gear beside ASIC´s or newly developped FPGA´s come out.
Since I haven´t read enough about there programming and therefore there hardware needs one chip the RaspberryPi litecoin CPU and GPU miner bounty sounds interesting with an price of 25-35$ but I don´t know anything about there hashrate. And as newb I can´t make questions in the other forums.
Anybody knows the hashrate for whatever currency of such an raspberry???

Has someone on here invested in Pyraming (I still don´t fully understand ém but it seems interesting that you invest and they buy mining hardware with it + plus this more or less shitty Pyramind /Snowball system) I think for the beginning I´d just invest a few hundre bucks there supposed to GPU´s for BTC mining. If you do the math the time is almost over for BTC GPU mining...

Would be cool if some of them reading this would just register for free at pyramining so I´m not absolutely on the floor. Because with every referral I get my payout rises.

And for the other newbs to make a tiny bit of money, check out my signature.

But thanks guys, comfortable atmosphere here so far.

[TehTDK]

Max,

I am up to ~310 now with overclocking, CGMiner and a few flags

[lassdas]

Would be cool if some of them reading this would just register for free at pyramining so I´m not absolutely on the floor. Because with every referral I get my payout rises.

No, you're not getting anything of people signing up for free,
you'd only get something when people "invest" some bitcoins.

I can't really recommend that service anyway. Basicly you're just giving a loan (and a very cheap one) to someone who's running a mining-farm on and for his own. It's not you who's mining and it's not you who owns anything.
You just give a loan and don't even have a vote on what is done with your money, or how much time he gets to pay it back, you simply have to wait for as long as it takes his farm (or that part of his farm he's willing to setup for pyramining) to mine it.
10% in 20months or probably more, I guess there's better ways to invest your money.

[MaxLAMF]

until I get my own ASIC´s I´d like to invest there. Is there something comparable to pyramining out there?

And I wanna check out those RaspberryPi (or is something similiar around?) for LTC mining anyone know their Hashrates?

[lassdas]

until I get my own ASIC´s I´d like to invest there. Is there something comparable to pyramining out there?

As said, you can compare it to any other "loan-investment".
If you want to give people a loan, you might want to check out https://btcjam.com ,
interest varies from 1-8% per month, which seems quite good compared to pyraminings 10% per 20+months.

And I wanna check out those RaspberryPi (or is something similiar around?) for LTC mining anyone know their Hashrates?

I doubt they're any good mining anything,
even LTCs are mined on GPUs these days due to their better efficiency compared to common desktop-CPUs.

RaspberryPis might be a good choice to run your ASICs once you get them, but don't bother mining on the Pi-unit itself, no matter what alt-coin.

[MaxLAMF]

danke lassdas ,
gonna check out this link.

what I´ve read about the raspberries is that they have for their cost of something like 35$ a pretty decent GPU plus RAM which seems to be important opposed to BTC (AFAIK FPGA´s would be worse then raspberries because LTC mining needs a lot of memory). And maybe the best plus is you could buy hundreds or thousands at once!
Further I think the future for Litecoin looks good. Once ASIC´s are common, all the GPU miners are looking forward to mine something else...
Nobody here having raspberries or at least does know their hashrate?

I suppose after I´m done with decision investing in pyramining or not I´m going to the litecoin boards...


Enough for now, am sick and need some rest...
Maybe later I can gather some helpful replies to my questions...

[lassdas]

Further I think the future for Litecoin looks good. Once ASIC´s are common, all the GPU miners are looking forward to mine something else...

No, not all of them.
I for example have completely stopped mining on GPUs some months ago, sure, I could still use them to mine LTC, but I would still lose money mining LTC on them. If I wanted LTC I could simply buy them way cheaper than mining them myself.

I suppose after I´m done with decision investing in pyramining or not..

After reading your posts and threads about it, it seems to me that you already made that decision.

Whatever your choice is, I wish you good luck.

[MaxLAMF]

thanks for being around lass das,
with pyramining I´m done (fully rewarded in 20+ months ). I´m now checking out btcjam, looks at least, like you said much better than pyramining. I wanna invest for the start around 1000€ so whether btcjam or  alternative crypto currencies (bitcoin mining myself is done for me till I could get an ASIC and maybe even then it´s too late for bitcoin mining already).
I don´t know much about the other currencies with their required hardware differences/ software and algorythm differences compared to BTC. Therefore I´m pretty clueless which hardware to buy right now. Like everyone, I wanna get ASAP the most out of my money and I only got a few days left to get into this materia until because I got a lot to do for university next weeks.

regards to everyone!

PS: Lassdas what are you doing with your GPU´s? Are you FBGA BTC mining?

[lassdas]

My GPUs are just dust-collectors now. 
FPGAs are happily mining bitcoins and will do for as long as i can afford to.