What "speed" should I be mining bitcoins? It seems slow. What am I doing wrong

[Shadow Wizard]

I have just started with bitcoins and bitcoin mining.  I have set up GUI miner on 2 systems, one with dual GeForce 9600's and one with a GeForce 350m  I have both machines connected to deepbit, and running CUDA miners.  I am getting about 14-15 Mhash/s.  But I have seen screenshots of people getting 10X that.  Is my machine really that "Crapy" for mining?  Or are there some settings that need to be adjusted, and what are they?

[1714024633]

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[haydent]

NVIDIA, forget it, you need ATI theres no point otherwise....

[hmblm1245]

That sounds about right. take a look - https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mining_hardware_comparison Nvidia is just worth the the power used to mine at the current difficulty,

[tc2606]

what's the average speed that people can mine bitcoins?

[jdebunt]

Nvidia isnt great for mining really.

however, if you upgrade your drivers to the latest version, install GUIMiner and have it set up a CUDA miner, you might get an improvement.

[Gabi]

You are using Nvidia, they don't mine very well

You should get ATI cards to have good speeds

[Rob P.]

what's the average speed that people can mine bitcoins?

There is no average.  It all depends on the cards you're using.

My personal average is 308 Mhash/sec/card.  I'm using ATI 5830s.

[Shadow Wizard]

what's the average speed that people can mine bitcoins?

Thanks.  Will even help me is deciding on a new video card.
God I hate ATI

[xurious]

Thanks.  Will even help me is deciding on a new video card.
God I hate ATI

How much do you want to spend?
Dollar for dollar the best cards I can think of that come to mind...
Hd 5770: less than $100. Generates 200mh/s easily enough.
hd 5830: Between 100 and 200. Generates 300mh/s or more.
Hd 5870: If purchased for less than $200. Generates 360+ mh/s.
The hd 6950's are around 200 dollars after rebates from XFX, those put out about the same hashes at 5830's

Now, if like me, you find a 5850 or 5870 for less than 200, pick it up asap.

You should overclock them all. Even a bit. It gets you more for your money.

[Shadow Wizard]

Thanks.  Will even help me is deciding on a new video card.
God I hate ATI

How much do you want to spend?
Dollar for dollar the best cards I can think of that come to mind...
Hd 5770: less than $100. Generates 200mh/s easily enough.
hd 5830: Between 100 and 200. Generates 300mh/s or more.
Hd 5870: If purchased for less than $200. Generates 360+ mh/s.
The hd 6950's are around 200 dollars after rebates from XFX, those put out about the same hashes at 5830's

Now, if like me, you find a 5850 or 5870 for less than 200, pick it up asap.

You should overclock them all. Even a bit. It gets you more for your money.

I am glad you asked.  Been looking for one.  The issue is I can only take a single width card.  So the question is, what can I get in single width, that will give me 150+, for under $150?
Oh yes, it also has to be a current production card.

[Whoorin]

Don't you have the mandatory fifty-three Radeon GPUs, water-cooled in an open case, with the fourteen 5.6 Ghz Core I7?
And don't you have to balance it all on your boobs/moobs?

[Rob P.]

I am glad you asked.  Been looking for one.  The issue is I can only take a single width card.  So the question is, what can I get in single width, that will give me 150+, for under $150?
Oh yes, it also has to be a current production card.

Why can you only take single-width?  Just buy a PCI-E extender cable and mount the card somewhere else in the case.

If you're going to force single-width, then just keep mining on nVidia.  The double width cards are double-width because the heat generated by the GPU(s) requires additional cooling that a single-width card cannot accommodate.  So the only single-width cards you're going to get are going to perform as poorly as your nVidia.

Better yet, just don't bother mining.  You'd be better off taking your $150 and buying 10 BTC immediately at the exchange.  It would take you months and months of mining on a single-width card to generate 10 BTC (probably closer to a year).  Then wait for the price to go to $30 again, sell them, and then buy a nice rig.