New to Mining

[fyrebryan]

So a buddy of mine have been doing some researching and proof of concepts to make sure that we could actually generate bitcoins and take it all the way through cashing out.  We were successful, but it took quite a while (neither of us have decent mining hardware).

Since all off the "best" mining cards (5830, 5850, 6990, etc) are tough to get... my question is what is my next best option?

I was looking at possibly running 2x 6950's (new non-reference 1gb ones).

at the moment i'm only looking to run 2 cards (maybe a 3rd in a pci-e 1x slot later).

Here is what i'm currently looking to purchase with an ~$600 budget:
Case   http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811119227
MB      http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157226
Cards  http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150523
PS      http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817339002

I'm also guessing that this would get me somewhere around 700 Mhash/sec

since I already have an older AM2 socket processor and 4gb of DDR2 memory and 500gb HD i'd like to reuse those (from a slimline case... which i can toss)

Are there better options that I'm not seeing? 

[1715210005]

1715210005

[1715210005]

1715210005

[1715210005]

1715210005

[Shad3dOne]

Yes.

You're not seeing that mining for profit is beginning to yield less and less benefit at xxx Mh/s.  With the difficulty increases we've seen lately soon you'll need x Gh/s capacity to get a decent daily return. Pool mining returns are also beginning to decline.

Perhaps trading bitcoins or being a bitcoin accepting vendor may yield more profit.  Either way I wish you the best.

-Shad3d