@DeathAndTaxes I think what his friend meant is after a day the pool will have found and verified a block, so he'd get his first payment.
@OP, As for the returns, if it was as profitable as printing money, everyone would do it
. The reality is, its not profitable (anymore) unless you have cheap electricity. It doesnt matter if you have 1 card or 1000. The revenue scales linearly but so do the electricity costs. You can calculate it fairly precisely here:
http://bitcoinx.com/profit/All that said, these days are the worst days in bitcoin mining history; the price is down by a lot and difficulty has not come down yet to match the lower global hashrate. There is a delay. Its coming down, and who knows, with some luck price will go up a bit, but even so, its never going to be lucrative if you have expensive electricity.
