Good time to get involved with Bitcoin mining?

[fb39ca4]

I would like to start small so I can show my parents that this is profitable, and am thinking of purchasing a used Radeon 5770 and putting it in the gaming machine that I already have. (It has a GTX 460 which I have heard is useless for mining). The 5770 would be mining 24/7 and I would still game on the nvidia GPU (is it possible to have both cards and drivers in a system like that?) Will this be worth it?

Also, I have seen Mhash/s and Ghash/s numbers being thrown around on here, how would I go about converting those numbers into bitcoins/day or something?

[nmat]

I would like to start small so I can show my parents that this is profitable, and am thinking of purchasing a used Radeon 5770 and putting it in the gaming machine that I already have. (It has a GTX 460 which I have heard is useless for mining). The 5770 would be mining 24/7 and I would still game on the nvidia GPU (is it possible to have both cards and drivers in a system like that?) Will this be worth it?

Also, I have seen Mhash/s and Ghash/s numbers being thrown around on here, how would I go about converting those numbers into bitcoins/day or something?

Check the Mhash/s for each card here: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mining_hardware_comparison
And write the value here: http://bitcoinma.appspot.com/

Also, I personally don't think see mining as a very profitable investment. If the prices go down or if difficulty goes up you might never earn your money back.

[Costia]

I am minig on a 5770 - its 200MHash/s
this gives ~0.16BTC/day
http://btcserv.net/bitcoin/mining-calculator/
if you buy a 5770 for 100$ and the BTC price will stay stable (which it wont) you will return your investment in ~5-6 months (dont forget to add the cost of electricity and your time needed for setting this up and maintaining it)

[grue]

I am minig on a 5770 - its 200MHash/s
this gives ~0.16BTC/day
http://btcserv.net/bitcoin/mining-calculator/
if you buy a 5770 for 100$ and the BTC price will stay stable (which it wont) you will return your investment in ~5-6 months (dont forget to add the cost of electricity and your time needed for setting this up and maintaining it)

$100 for a 5770 (even new) is a huge rip-off. get a used 5830/5850/5870. best hash/$

[Costia]

I am minig on a 5770 - its 200MHash/s
this gives ~0.16BTC/day
http://btcserv.net/bitcoin/mining-calculator/
if you buy a 5770 for 100$ and the BTC price will stay stable (which it wont) you will return your investment in ~5-6 months (dont forget to add the cost of electricity and your time needed for setting this up and maintaining it)

$100 for a 5770 (even new) is a huge rip-off. get a used 5830/5850/5870. best hash/$

I am not from the USA. 58xx are still very expensive here. more than 2 times the cost of a 5770. And i didn't take electricity bills into the calculations anyway.

[fb39ca4]

I am minig on a 5770 - its 200MHash/s
this gives ~0.16BTC/day
http://btcserv.net/bitcoin/mining-calculator/
if you buy a 5770 for 100$ and the BTC price will stay stable (which it wont) you will return your investment in ~5-6 months (dont forget to add the cost of electricity and your time needed for setting this up and maintaining it)

$100 for a 5770 (even new) is a huge rip-off. get a used 5830/5850/5870. best hash/$

I already have a gaming computer and like I said before, I would like to keep my current Nvidia GPU for playing games while mining in the background on an ATI one. The PSU is only 600w so I will not be able to get anything more than the 5770 without upgrading it, which I don't want to do as I cannot spend the money on it right now. The maximum initial investment I am willing to take is only $100 (I will stretch that to ~$120 if it is for substantial benefit). If I can make enough profit on this, I will spend more money to upgrade.

Also, the electricity rates for me are 8.4991c/KWh before 600 KWh and 10.2974 after. Is this good?

[codymanix]

Mining isn't profitable, at least if you pay money for your energy, which you surely will.
If mining is profitable for a short time, more people start mining, which automatically increases difficulty, making mining less profitable.
Mining is a service to the community and an interesting hobby, but certainly not for earning money.

If you want to earn money with bitcoin you should trade, buy low, sell high. But beware not to play away your allowance

[Costia]

I am minig on a 5770 - its 200MHash/s
this gives ~0.16BTC/day
http://btcserv.net/bitcoin/mining-calculator/
if you buy a 5770 for 100$ and the BTC price will stay stable (which it wont) you will return your investment in ~5-6 months (dont forget to add the cost of electricity and your time needed for setting this up and maintaining it)

$100 for a 5770 (even new) is a huge rip-off. get a used 5830/5850/5870. best hash/$

I already have a gaming computer and like I said before, I would like to keep my current Nvidia GPU for playing games while mining in the background on an ATI one. The PSU is only 600w so I will not be able to get anything more than the 5770 without upgrading it, which I don't want to do as I cannot spend the money on it right now. The maximum initial investment I am willing to take is only $100 (I will stretch that to ~$120 if it is for substantial benefit). If I can make enough profit on this, I will spend more money to upgrade.

Also, the electricity rates for me are 8.4991c/KWh before 600 KWh and 10.2974 after. Is this good?

newer cards will give you a better Mhash/J perfornance
if the PSU cant keep up - you can underclock the card - and you will still get a better performance\hashrate from a 58xx than a 5770
the only reason i use the 5770 is because thats what i bought for gaming a year ago

[fb39ca4]

Power consumption and frequency is linear right? So if I take the card down from 800 to 600mhz, it will consume (roughly) 3/4 of the power?

[Costia]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_frequency_scaling
The dynamic power (switching power) dissipated by a chip is C·V2·f, where C is the capacitance being switched per clock cycle, V is voltage, and f is the switching frequency (as a unitless quantity)

but there is also static power that doesnt change with frequency (but does with voltage)

[BitshireHashaway]

This is a late reply, but an interesting topic, since there is several people I know in your situation, so I thought this could be useful.

While the idea might be simple, bit coin mining is not that easy to do anymore, and gets harder as the time goes. I personally believe that there is not too much money to be made in bit coins anymore, and soon will not be really worth your time anymore. Instead, I recommend, working and finding the next thing that will be like the bit coin, and work on that, rather than focusing too much on the bit coin.

[Scrappy Do]

This is a late reply, but an interesting topic, since there is several people I know in your situation, so I thought this could be useful.

While the idea might be simple, bit coin mining is not that easy to do anymore, and gets harder as the time goes. I personally believe that there is not too much money to be made in bit coins anymore, and soon will not be really worth your time anymore. Instead, I recommend, working and finding the next thing that will be like the bit coin, and work on that, rather than focusing too much on the bit coin.

 So LTC is what your telling the kid right?

[TRiMBY]

Let's put it this way: getting involved now will be better than getting involved in a couple of months, or a year, or never. At the moment it's generally profitable with the right hardware, but depending on your power cost:performance ratio the margins can be very small. I have cheap power, so that might be poisoning my opinion somewhat 

I personally recommend the Radeon 5870 as having the best performance/cost ratio right now. 5850s and 5830s are cheaper, but not enough cheaper considering their performance. The main advantage of the later generations of cards (6xxx, 7xxx) so far has been a decrease in power consumption (particularly when idle), but you won't be picking up anything recent that can pump out 400MH for a mere $120 on eBay!

[Silverwolf_Ru]

Welcome and best of luck OP! GTX 460 isn't completely useless if you use the new NVIDIA CUDA miner that can be found here https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=167229.0  Give it a go mining Litecoins I am sure a few added khashes would probably not hurt at all. Judging by the Excel spreadsheet available online here https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AjMqJzI7_dCvdG9fZFN1Vjd0WkFOZmtlejltd0JXbmc#gid=2 a GTX 460 get 100-115 khash/s which isn't half bad for pooled Litecoin mining. Most of all, enjoy the mining, even if it won't get you much, enjoying things in life is important I've heard.