New to BTC, looking for some direction

[cwscribner]

Hi all.

So I heard about bitcoin a while ago and just decided to download the software.  I need some direction as to where to go from here.  I have several machines (no GPU powerhouses) that spend most of their time buffering video or running some basic tasks.  I figured bitcoin would be a good thing to put them to work on.  I've read through the wiki and several threads but I'm still not quite sure what else there is to do other than just let the software run.  I've seen some about mining pools and using GPU's to mine...stuff like that.  Any advice would be a great help.

[geek-trader]

I was checking out mining yesterday in a pool on my Mac laptop.  I was getting 2000 Khashes/sec using the GPU. I also had a CPU miner going on my linux box, 3 threads at 600 Khashes/sec each. In a day and a half I think I made 0.006 BTC.

I see here: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mining_Hardware_Comparison that some ATI video cards will do over 350 Mhashes/sec (that's M, my other numbers were K).  That's 175X what I was getting on my laptop.

So, if you are going to mine, use the GPU, and use an ATI card.

[Karen Palen]

Well I am every bit as much a newbie as you are, however I suggest a good dose of caution before investing any "significant" cash in mining.

The Difficulty Factor has risen sharply together with the spike in Bitcoin prices.

If you really think that the price of Bitcoins is going to rise sharply then you are far better off buying than mining; otherwise you need to look very closely at your payback time.

While I think it is unlikely, there is no law that says Bitcoins cannot go down to US$0.05 again - making mining completely unprofitable! A price that low would not even cover electricity costs let alone pay for hardware.

My personal choice is to get things set up and running using my existing (nVidia) hardware primarily to debug things like on-peak/off peak electricity rates and sort out things like interacting with groups.

Upgrading would then depend on the then current BTC price/Difficulty Factor makes financial sense.

NEVER forget that any investment is only worth as much as the cash that it generates (Warren Buffett) - the problem is figuring out how much cash and when you will get it!
 

[ksi]

my ATI 5570 makes 60Mhs so far and i think that will be the max..wounder how long would it take to make at least 1 bt 

[Bitcoin_Silver_Supply]

my ATI 5570 makes 60Mhs so far and i think that will be the max..wounder how long would it take to make at least 1 bt 

As Pearl has mentioned, my read on mining is that the difficulty has shot up dramatically and the rewards are scheduled to dip again shortly with the price jump. It seems to be a game for enthusiasts with multiple, pricey gpus now and hardly worth getting into if you pay for your own power bill. That said, if you can mooch off a landlord...

[Karen Palen]

my ATI 5570 makes 60Mhs so far and i think that will be the max..wounder how long would it take to make at least 1 bt 

Take a look on the wiki under mining - there are calculators listed that will tell you.

In fact you would do well to read EVERY wiki article on the subject before spending a lot of time/money on this.

60Mh/s is near the "low end" and you would probably do well to join one of the mining pools where you get "partial credit" (i.e. less than 50 BTC) so you will receive it more often.