newbie questions about Bitcoin

[philm001]

Hello all,

I am new to mining Bitcoins and doing it for so for fun. I see that the ASIC is the way to go but I don't have the money to drop 400 on this. So, I am using my Radeon HD6850 card for mining.

I downloaded cg miner 3.73 from this site: http://k-dev.net/cgminer/

I was reading around and seeing that 3.7.2 is the one to go for mining on GPU. However, I can't seem to find a version of 3.7.2. And when I do, I am pointed to the link that I posted above. Would this be a correct version to mine on GPU? I am assuming so because it recognizes the GPU and it has a has rate of 171.4 Mh/sec so it looks right!

Now, I connected to slushpool and I am mining Bitcoins right now (go me!) However, my earnings is frightfully low! Like, I am getting 0.00000001 BTC. Over a period of 4 days, I have earned 0.00000017 BTC. Is this reasonable for a GPU? I understand that ASIC is the way to go and that GPU underperform ASIC by alot. But could it really be that low? Or do I really need to reconfigure my settings a little bit in cgminer? Or is it something completely unrelated? Should I switch pools and just solo this sucker? On slush pool, it will take 1611 years to reach 0.1 BTC YIKES!

At any rate, I have also read around that mining on the gpu can cause your computer to run much slower (because the gpu is being used, alot). However, I am noticing 0 change. In fact, I am able to watch 1080p 60 fps video on youtube while mining bitcoins!

I am wondering, should I create more workers and instances of cgminer to run on the gpu? OR would that break the hash speed up? Or, is there a way to create more threads on the gpu while not suffering from the drop in the hash rate speed

I have also been looking into mining other coins such as Novacoin and Litecoin because I heard that these were better for the gpu mining. And I can exchange them for bitcoins. However, I have been experiencing difficulty on mining these two with cgminer.

For example, for novacoin, when I connect to the pool, I see on the site that my hash is 3 kH/sec. And on cgminer, it is still 171.4 Mh/s. Why is there such a large discrepancy between these two numbers? I thought that mining would be "faster" then directly mining bitcoins. I have also noticed that I am not consistently getting blocks of data with cgminer. I have noticed that on the pool site, the hash rate drops to 0 every so often. I am not entirely sure why. CGMiner says that I am connected but why would the hash rate become 0? Does that mean I am not mining anything? I am assuming that I am not having a connection issue becuase I can connect to slush pool fine. But, I am not ruling out the possibility.

Also, for litecoin, I created an account on give-me-coins.com. So far, I have not been able to mine anything. Again, cgminer reports that I am connected but I am not receiving any information about getting blocks of data. I am not sure what this means??

[RodeoX]

I'm afraid you are about 4-5 years late for GPU mining.
This is what a bitcoin mine looks like now:



Pool mining may be very unprofitable also. You need to calculate your electricity cost and the cosdt to replace your GPU, which will be under heavy stress. It is more likely that you will profit from buying and spending bitcoin than mining. Still, you may learn some things about bitcoin by mining. 

[philm001]

Wow,

ok then, I think that I will not be able to compete.

Well, this is mainly for educational pruposes. Just learning about it.

So when you refer to Bitcoin, is that also including the other cyptocurrencies such as Novacoin and Litecoin?

[Jhanzo]

Wow,

ok then, I think that I will not be able to compete.

Well, this is mainly for educational pruposes. Just learning about it.

So when you refer to Bitcoin, is that also including the other cyptocurrencies such as Novacoin and Litecoin?

Those are altcoins.  Most altcoins uses different algorithm (Bitcoin uses SHA256, Litecoin and Novacoin uses scrypt).  AFAIK Scrypt already have ASICs so it's probably not profitable mining them anymore, however there are many more mining algorithm out there that still allows profitable GPU mining.  There are also some CPU-only algorithm.

[RocketSingh]

Wow,

ok then, I think that I will not be able to compete.

Well, this is mainly for educational pruposes. Just learning about it.

So when you refer to Bitcoin, is that also including the other cyptocurrencies such as Novacoin and Litecoin?

If u want to profit from GPU mining, mine ETC and hold till ETH turns into PoS.

[European Central Bank]

https://whattomine.com/

check here. this'll give you options for alt coins to mine with your gpu that you can swap for bitcoin if you want. there are a ton of them so make sure you choose a good one. you can figure that out by looking at coinmarketcap.com which tells you daily sales volumes and so on.

[philm001]

Hello,

Tahnk you all for the replies.

I do have a better question,

for mining altcoins, are the hash rates different for mining bitcoins? For example, in a bit coin mining, I ma getting has rates of 170 Mh/s. But when I mine novacoin, I am getting 3 KH/s (supposedly? That is what the network site is reporting. CGMiner says it is still 170 MH/s)

[calkob]

Stop right now GPU mining died a long time ago...............

[Jhanzo]

Hello,

Tahnk you all for the replies.

I do have a better question,

for mining altcoins, are the hash rates different for mining bitcoins? For example, in a bit coin mining, I ma getting has rates of 170 Mh/s. But when I mine novacoin, I am getting 3 KH/s (supposedly? That is what the network site is reporting. CGMiner says it is still 170 MH/s)

It's normal.  You get much lower hashrate when mining Scrypt coins than when you mine SHA256 coins.