Would he be better off with his cpu or his graphics card

[Spicy Dennis]

My son recently got a new PC built. He said he wanted to try mining bitcoins, but I'm not sure if any of his hardware is strong enough to do anything. At the most can someone try to get me the hash rates of his parts, because he was really looking forward to this I guess. He has an Intel i3-3220 running at 3.3ghz. Also his graphics card is an EVGA GeForce GTX 650 Ti. If no one knows that's fine.

[Rannasha]

Mining Bitcoin with regular computer hardware is completely pointless. It'll take some time before you even mine enough to have more than the dust-threshold, let alone the default fee amount. For academic reasons, while Nvidia cards are considerably worse for mining than AMD cards, your GPU should still be able to outperform your CPU.

You could look into one of the many altcoins that use a different hashing algorithm. Your best approach and the results will depend on which altcoin you pick.

[ranochigo]

You can still mine Bitcoins but not at a profit. I would really recommend you to get a few cheap block erupters to test it out. Mining would put some stress on the GPU(if you are mining on GPU) or CPU (if you are mining on CPU). This may degrade your hardware overtime. Nvidia cards isn't the best at mining, other than GTX750Ti.

[notlist3d]

Sadly you most likely would mine at a loss.  You might look at Asics if you truly want to mine.  But days of CPU/GPU are long gone for most.

[bitwarrior]

Sadly you most likely would mine at a loss.  You might look at Asics if you truly want to mine.  But days of CPU/GPU are long gone for most.

I agree to this, there is no point for quite a long  time to mine bitcoins using CPU or GPU. You will just end up burning electricity and there is no profit on getting some few satoshis unless you just want the experience or the hobby to do it. It might be better for that GPU to be used on other things like gaming or on application of  3D rendition softwares that would be more useful.

[zvs]

My son recently got a new PC built. He said he wanted to try mining bitcoins, but I'm not sure if any of his hardware is strong enough to do anything. At the most can someone try to get me the hash rates of his parts, because he was really looking forward to this I guess. He has an Intel i3-3220 running at 3.3ghz. Also his graphics card is an EVGA GeForce GTX 650 Ti. If no one knows that's fine.

hmm, i have about a dozen video cards gathering dust that I think are better than that 650 Ti.  some 7970s, 5970s and such     (point being they are useless for mining)

[odolvlobo]

Rather than mining bitcoins, he could mine alt coins and trade them for bitcoins. There are alt coins that are better suited for mining with CPU and GPU.

[legendster]

My son recently got a new PC built. He said he wanted to try mining bitcoins, but I'm not sure if any of his hardware is strong enough to do anything. At the most can someone try to get me the hash rates of his parts, because he was really looking forward to this I guess. He has an Intel i3-3220 running at 3.3ghz. Also his graphics card is an EVGA GeForce GTX 650 Ti. If no one knows that's fine.

If your son knows enough about bitcoins, he wouldnt have such hopes. Its a good thing you found out this forum, I'd suggest you ask your son to come visit the mining section of this thread he would clearly understand what kind of hardware he would need to mine coins profitably these days.

BUT if he is looking to do that just for the sake of getting the feeling of becoming a miner and making a few satoshi in like a month or two all the while deteriorating his pc hardware and increasing your electric bill, then by all means let him mine.

[Ingatqhvq]

My son recently got a new PC built. He said he wanted to try mining bitcoins, but I'm not sure if any of his hardware is strong enough to do anything. At the most can someone try to get me the hash rates of his parts, because he was really looking forward to this I guess. He has an Intel i3-3220 running at 3.3ghz. Also his graphics card is an EVGA GeForce GTX 650 Ti. If no one knows that's fine.

It's totally waste time to mine bitcoin with your computer.

[koelen3]

Go to alt section and search for not so new coins and mine them and exchange them for btc

[tss]

My son recently got a new PC built. He said he wanted to try mining bitcoins, but I'm not sure if any of his hardware is strong enough to do anything. At the most can someone try to get me the hash rates of his parts, because he was really looking forward to this I guess. He has an Intel i3-3220 running at 3.3ghz. Also his graphics card is an EVGA GeForce GTX 650 Ti. If no one knows that's fine.

If your son knows enough about bitcoins, he wouldnt have such hopes. Its a good thing you found out this forum, I'd suggest you ask your son to come visit the mining section of this thread he would clearly understand what kind of hardware he would need to mine coins profitably these days.

BUT if he is looking to do that just for the sake of getting the feeling of becoming a miner and making a few satoshi in like a month or two all the while deteriorating his pc hardware and increasing your electric bill, then by all means let him mine.

i am assuming the child may be a bit young for an internet forum full of creepy racist assholes.

[lyth0s]

Mining bitcoins with a CPU or graphics card won't be worth it at all. I'd suggest checking out Monero (XMR) which can be mined well with CPU/GPU and can get him into the mining scene and he will only be at a very small loss (due to cost of electricity). Then he can use the generated Monero to trade them for bitcoins or any other altcoin.

[ranochigo]

You better mining altcoin which cannot be mined with ASIC
Check here to see best altcoin to mine http://www.coinwarz.com/

Anyway, 650 Ti is pretty poor.
750 Ti is the best price/performance for mining altcoin

ASIC resistant coins that are profitable are already dominated by ex-Bitcoin gpu miners or CPU miner, not such a good solution.

[peligro]

None of them are any good. Its pointless to try mining anyway. Get him a graphics card and some games, he will love you

[newflesh]

You'll need dedicated hardware if you want to mine bitcoin, even then I doubt you'll get ROI.

Could try keeping an eye out for new alt releases here:  https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=159.0
Just try to avoid the scams and be careful installing new wallets

[legendster]

None of them are any good. Its pointless to try mining anyway. Get him a graphics card and some games, he will love you

Or send him to boarding school, so he will love you even more but hate you for the time being.

[Amph]

bot are useless, but gpu is better, if you want to start mining with it i suggest, a 750ti or a 970

[howtogetfreebitcoins]

I would go for it set up your miner join a bitcoin pool and chalk it up to learning how it works would be a great activity to do together.  Then after you get all setup and see if you understand  better you could buy higher dollar equipment.  I still think the knowledge would be great to have under your belt and do not forget the free faucets out there.

[dothebeats]

Better off buying bitcoins than mine it with that hardware. But if your son really wants to try hashing for his own, advice him not to use the hardware too much on mining because it will be obsolete in a little time than the usual.

There are other altcoins out there that the hardware can mine though, but if your son really wants to mine bitcoins then help him. You will not get better hashrates with that hardware but you'll definitely be hashing once the setup is done and completed. Good luck and tell your son that being a bitcoiner is fun.

[Dread Pirate Roberts]

mining bitcoin not gonna be easy again
as we know block hard to resolve