Couple of quick questions!

[Cypher236]

Hey guys so I just started this morning, I'm currently mining using GUIminer in the BTC shared pool. I've tried to read up as much as I can on bitcoins but there are a couple of things I'm still unsure about -


1. So I'm using a shared pool. How will my money earned vs electricity costs look? I have no idea how to monitor my electricity usage (I'm using a laptop) so is this actually profitable for me to run in a shared pool? I don't know how much electricity I'm using so if anyone could give me general advice that would be great. My graphics card is a GT 540M.
2. According to GUIminer my Mhash/s is about 8.7-9.1. Is this good or bad or what? I have no idea what a good or average value would be.
3. I know that mining uses GPU's to perform calculations or something, as I'm using a laptop is there any chance that mining will overheat my graphics card or ruin it?

Thanks a lot for any replies, sorry for any stupid questions

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[swissmate]

You got a very very low hashrate
and using a laptop may be dangerous due to the overheating
don't mine with a laptop and if you want to mine don't use nvidia use cards like Ati 5850 or 5830.

With my rig, resting the electricity cost, it becomes efficient over 600Mhash/s.

[Cypher236]

You got a very very low hashrate
and using a laptop may be dangerous due to the overheating
don't mine with a laptop and if you want to mine don't use nvidia use cards like Ati 5850 or 5830.

With my rig, resting the electricity cost, it becomes efficient over 600Mhash/s.

Wow ok so I'd really have to buy a proper mining rig for this to work out? I was kinda worried about overheating as well...

Hmm may have to rethink this then, thanks for your help!

[Toby]

I get 11 mhash from a laptop and uses about 40 watts using the GPU and 100 khash using the cpu at 18 watts. These are very low figures.
for an efficient GPU, you could get about 4 to 5 times the mhash as the GPU uses in watts (KWH). Here in the Netherlands, this is too low, as I pay € 0,22 per KWH (or about $ 0,30).
FPGA gets 10 (BFL bitforce single) to 20 times the mhash for the watts used.

So using the laptop with an FPGA is accually very efficient, as the total system doesn't use many watts, but better not use it's intergrated GPU.

[Cypher236]

Hmmm ok thanks for all the replies, I'm giving up on trying to mine with this laptop for now I'll have to see what I do next

[Toby]

you may order a BFL single and connect that to the USB port of the pc. Cost about $ 599 (ex. VAT and shipping) and you have to wait 9 tot 12 weeks for receiving it. but it's about 830 mhash/s @ 80 watts.
If you want GPU mining, you have to buy a pc, monitor etc...

[matthewh3]

If your concerned about electricity costs you may want to look into Sparten6 boards especially as there is a new bitstream coming out for them to increase there hashrate by 25% up to ~250MH/s@~13W per chip.  They are quad chip Sparten6's boards out now so they should give ~1GH/s@~55W with the new bitstream.  If it's all too expensive or too difficult you may want to look into micro-investing in mining company's listed on the GLBSE most pay a weekly dividend.