Stupid Question - Confused Newbie

[jbgc]

Hey Everybody,

As you can see, I am still a newbie here so forgive me if this question is dumb or out of place.  I have read and searched through every article posted in this topic which was written by Atlas in order to help beginners.

I have been mining for 2 days now and I still have not received a BitCoin.  As of right now, my BTC application shows I have 128989 blocks and I am going at 1403 khash/s, with 4 connections.  I have a very good computer (Macbook Pro 2.4 GHz with 8GB RAM and a very powerful GPU as well as CPU).

Am I doing something wrong?  What does 'khash/s' mean?  Why don't I have a coin yet?  How long should it take to get one with my computer?

Sorry again if these questions are dumb.  This is the Newb forum so I figured it was the appropriate place to post.  

jbgc

[digitzero]

So you're doing about 1 Megahash per second, which is very, very low.  It would take a long time to generate a block at your current rate.  I would suggest that you join a bitcoin pool, or build a mining rig, or both.

[tokn]

At your current rate: 1Mhash/s is a losing proposition you are going to pay a lot in electricity and not get anything out of it.

CPU doesn't matter with regards to mining, you need to have a good GPU.

See the hardware comparison site and see where you GPU fits in. https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mining_hardware_comparison

[Malnilion]

With your current computer, you're going to want to join a mining pool. Read about that here:  https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Pooled_mining. You'll also want to get set up with a GPU miner. You might check this wiki article out: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/DiabloMiner.app

[jbgc]

So is the 1Mhash/s due to my slow internet connection?  Why am I mining so slowly?  Also, my graphic card is an 'NVIDIA GeForce 320M' with 256MB of VRAM.  Is that a good or bad GPU?  How long would it take to get a BTC at this rate?

[rollingreens]

theoretically you could get lucky and get a block though, i mean its just down to the odds - you increase those odds with a better rig...

Regarding this, what do mining pools say about these odds?...I have a feeling that entering any sort of mining pool completely decreases the chance of luck in ratio to a single person because if one person gets lucky then the WHOLE POOL gets lucky but the amount of people in a pool is so large that it normalizes or something. idk what im saying actually....

[jbgc]

CPU doesn't matter with regards to mining, you need to have a good GPU.

Is my graphics card very good?  (NVIDIA GeForce 320M)

At your current rate: 1Mhash/s is a losing proposition you are going to pay a lot in electricity and not get anything out of it.

Does my Mhash/s depend on internet speed?

[tokn]

CPU doesn't matter with regards to mining, you need to have a good GPU.

Is my graphics card very good?  (NVIDIA GeForce 320M)

No see the hardware link I gave.

At your current rate: 1Mhash/s is a losing proposition you are going to pay a lot in electricity and not get anything out of it.

Does my Mhash/s depend on internet speed?

mhash can come from CPU or GPU, but you will get more from the right GPU. Again see the link.

[frutza]

Mining with your current configuration is a waste of electricity. Unless you are extremely lucky, it may take years before you solve a block and get 50 BTC. Joining a pool may help you get a few fractions of a bitcoin to play with, but no more than that. Mining is pointless these days unless you can afford some pretty expensive hardware. Just buy some bitcoins with the electricity money 

[jbgc]

Mining is pointless these days unless you can afford some pretty expensive hardware.

So most of the 21mil BTCs have already been mined?  Should I even try to mine?

[frutza]

Less than 7 million bitcoins have been mined. There's still a lot of coins left  but it gets harder and harder to get them (difficulty goes up as more and more people get into the mining business).

[Meni Rosenfeld]

CPU doesn't matter with regards to mining, you need to have a good GPU.

Is my graphics card very good?  (NVIDIA GeForce 320M)

No. It's actually pathetic. It should do about 6 MHash/s, I have a computer which can do 1400 MHash/s.

At your current rate: 1Mhash/s is a losing proposition you are going to pay a lot in electricity and not get anything out of it.

Does my Mhash/s depend on internet speed?

No.

In any case it's not enough to have a GPU, you need to actually use it. The Bitcoin client software doesn't, you need a mining software like kiv's GUI mining.

theoretically you could get lucky and get a block though, i mean its just down to the odds - you increase those odds with a better rig...

Regarding this, what do mining pools say about these odds?...I have a feeling that entering any sort of mining pool completely decreases the chance of luck in ratio to a single person because if one person gets lucky then the WHOLE POOL gets lucky but the amount of people in a pool is so large that it normalizes or something. idk what im saying actually....

Without a pool, you have 0.1% chance to get 50 BTC.
With a pool, you have 100% chance to get 0.05 BTC.
(Actual numbers depend on your hashrate and time spent mining)

[Stupidpal]

Even your GPU won't be able to do much. It's Nvidia and also a mobility model.

[ts314]

jbgc, you are mining on your cpu! (which means you have a much lower hashrate than you could have)

see the already posted wiki page for instructions on how to set up GPU mining (you will need CUDA from NVidia for GPU computing)

[chungy]

Your GPU is very weak and won't get many hashes.  Like others said, it's possible you can get lucky and actually generate a block but the chances are against you for the next 5 years on that hardware.

[kudoshin]

You would have to calculate the rate at which you purchase electricity at, then calculate how many bitcoins you can mine and how much they would be worth. on the Nvidia side, if you have any card worse than a GTX 460, I think you wont even break even. AMD cards tend to be better and you would need a card that is better than a 5670. Anything less than 60 megahashes isn't worth it these days, unless if you just want to get some sample money to gamble with.

[lolcat]

See www.Bitclockers.com

http://bitclockers.com/forums/index.php?topic=3.0 <--- Step-by-step guide to hold your hand through getting you set up on a pool.

You'll make more money on a pool.