Bitcoin 7970
This is a very specific article meant to target a very small subset of geeks out there. Sure, there are many of us geeks, and a large number have heard of this craze the last few years called Bitcoin. After Bitcoin became popular, like tv news popular, a number of crypto-coin spinoffs have surfaced. I’m not going to go into the merits (or scams) of the various altcoins out there, but a very popular one called Litecoin is what got me started in the mining hobby.
As anyone getting into mining learns quickly, cpu mining is not very popular because quite frankly it sucks. Using your GPU is where it is at for the home user, yielding easily 10 times the speeds of the CPU. Bitcoin is now mined only using dedicated miners, so if you are planning to mine Bitcoin this late in the game, don’t bother. However, there appears to be some speculative profit in mining other scrypt-based coins, like Litecoin.
If you decide to mine with your GPU, use whatever you have until you truly know what you are doing. It is easy to think the whole thing is a slam dunk money fest, and done right, it might be, but don’t spend thousands of dollars up front for naught. For example, ATI video cards are much better at mining then nvidia, which is why they are sold out everywhere!
If you can get your hands on an ATI video card, XFX is probably the brand you will land, because they suck, haha. I have a XFX AMD HD 7970 that I got for gaming for around $300 a little while ago. I got lucky because since as of today (a day before Christmas), they are moving for $450+ on eBay. The problem with this particular brand is two fold, they run hot as hell, and they seemed crippled when you start mining, getting half the speeds of other brands with the same model of chip.
