This guide is based on Windows OS (32-bit and 64-bit).
You have to install the graphics card’s drivers, the Bitcoin client and a Miner.
All the software can be downloaded for FREE.
• Graphics card’s drivers
For AMD (ATI) cards – DOWNLOAD LINK. Download the biggest package, which should include Catalyst driver with OpenCL Driver and Stream SDK.
For Nvidia cards – DOWNLOAD LINK. It should include OpenCL Driver and CUDA.
• Bitcoin client – DOWNLOAD LINK (previous versions can be found here).
The address near “Your Bitcoin Address” (e.g.: 1yR1bEDbF5YJAfwJSyi7vDm8S9Af9KA6) is like your wallet, and is the one you’ll be using to receive Bitcoins every time you are sent any amount. Whenever the address listed in "Your Bitcoin Address" receives a transaction, Bitcoin replaces it with a new address. This is meant to encourage you to use a new address for every transaction, which enhances anonymity. However, all of your old addresses are still perfectly usable and can help you determine where your different incomes come from. You can see all your previous addresses by clicking “Settings”, then “Your Receiving Addresses”.
If by mistake your Bitcoin client is not opened whenever a certain amount of BTC is transferred to your address, don’t worry: it will keep on hold and be confirmed by the time you open it.
If you ever want to format your computer where you have your Bitcoin client installed you could send the money to another BTC account or instead, you can back up your BTC balance and keep the records of transactions doing the following. First, close your Bitcoin client, ensure it is closed. Then open the file browser and go to:
“C:\Users\Your-User\AppData\Roaming\Bitcoin\”. There should be a file named wallet.dat. Back that file up (copy it to your USB storage for example) and when finished formatting and reinstalling again the Bitcoin client, close the Bitcoin client, copy your backed up wallet.dat to the same directory and finally open the Bitcoin client again. Your transaction records and BTC balance will be restored.
• GUIMiner – DOWNLOAD LINK (previous versions can be found here)
To start mining with GUIMiner, you should know this guide is based on pooled mining (multiple users work together to mine Bitcoins, and share the benefits fairly). The other alternative, solo mining, has become pretty useless since the Bitcoin network has been growing so much (for more info visit the wiki) .
In this case, we will be mining with the Deepbit pool which is the most popular and one of the very first ones. However you could mine with any of the other existing pools… rates and interfaces might change a bit but it’s always the same.
Here are the most popular pools:
Deepbit
Slush
BTC Guild
BTC Mine
Bitcoins.lc
Eligius
Swepool
BitcoinPool
Simplecoins
First go your preferred pool’s website (e.g.: deepbit website) and register with an email address of your own and choose a password to login. If you’re asked to choose between the two payment modes PPS (Pay Per Share) or Proportional, choose Proportional for better long-time mining results. If you want to read more about payment modes follow this link.
Your account should be created. Remember to fill in “Your bitcoin address for receiving rewards” (Bitcoins) with any of your own addresses which can be found inside the Bitcoin client, next to “Your Bitcoin Address”. Choose any amount as the minimum value for automatic payment. Let’s say you enter 0.5, like in the above picture… every 24 hours, if you have more than 0.5 BTCs in your pool’s account balance, the payment will be automatically sent to your Bitcoin address. You can also manually send any amount you have by clicking the “payment” link.
You start with one worker, but you should add as many workers as graphic cards you have and want to mine with. In the previous example there are 3 workers, that means 3 mining graphic cards.
That’s all you have to know about the pool.
Then, back to GUIMiner.
Select deepbit (or your chosen pool) as the Server. Fill in the Email and Password you registered at the site. Under Device you will probably find your CPU and your GPU, in this case “[0] Cypress” is the GPU and that is which we are using to mine.
Under Extra flags enter:
“-f40” This flag will set the GUIMiner priority to 40/100. 0 means higher priority which will make your computer to lag a bit and your desktop to respond slowly; 100 means lowest. Change the value and play with it according to your needs.
For AMD HD 4XXX series don’t add anything.
For AMD HD 5XXX and HD 6XXX series add: “-v -w128”
For Nvidia cards add: ”-w 256”
It’s completely safe to change the values and the flags to see if you get a better mining speed.
To add more workers just click “File” and then “New OpenCL miner”.
If you have good CPU (at least Dual Core CPU) you’ll want to disable Adobe Flash Hardware Acceleration to make the CPU do the flash-rendering work so the GPU dedicates to mining.
Point your browser a web page with flash content, for example http://www.youtube.com/.
Right click on the flash content (e.g.: any YouTube video).
Click “Settings”.
Make sure the “Enable hardware acceleration” box is unchecked.
Finally click “Close” to save the settings.
Are you done with the configuration? Click “Start mining” and let the GPU do the job!