The title mostly explains it, is litecoin mining still worth it with a 7870? or like bitcoin, would it be a waste of electricity?
Since I'm about to get a 7870 myself, I'm interested into this question as well. Some updates would be pretty nice! :)
Could you mine with a FX 8350 and a 7950 at the same time because on the litecoin site it said that mining litecoins will work on cpus pretty well. Like what would the hash rate be on the fx 8350?
To get good Kilohash rates with GPUs you need high shader count and high RAM bandwidth. A 7870 Pitcairn will do 400 kh/s with 5,500 MHz GDDR5 which really isn't that great because of the limited overclocked GDDR5 RAM speed you are able to get with your average 7870 card. 400 kh/s will get you about 14 litecoins in one month if you ran the GPU non-stop 24/7. With the settings required to get 400 kh/s your computer will be unusable for daily tasks but it's great for overnight farming.
As far as CPUs go the FX-8350 at stock speed will get about 40-65 kh/s depending on your RAM configuration. This isn't really ideal and unless you don't pay the electricity bill I'd advise against CPU scrypt mining along with your GPU.
The 7950 is the beast of Litecoin (scrypt) mining. I suggest that card. Out of the box it will often pull 600 KH/s. You can find some great deals. Make sure you buy a reputable brand and just google questions about 7950s and which brands are good for Litecoin mining. You'll find a lot more answers on BTC forums than in here. Good luck.
Easiest way to turn LTC into fiat cash is to convert it on BTC-e from LTC to BTC then sell it on Mt. Gox and transfer to paypal. Then you're free to do what you want with it.
What about 6970? :P
Mininig LTC is always worth it as a long term investment if you can hold onto your coins. Silk Road competitor Atlantis takes LTC, and for BTC the Silk Road using BTC was a huge boost to the value and reputation on the currency. That and make sure your power is relatively cheap. Free power (all inclusive rent) is the best way to go, just make sure you have enough watts per circuit for larget rigs (more than 3 cards on the same line).
If you aren't sure go here: http://ltc.itslightness.com
Okay, so how do I mine litecoin, I have mined bitcoin a little just for the heck of it, but I can't find out how to mine litecoin.
The most popular ways to mine it are using reaper or cgminer. The way I do it is using cgminer with a .bat file although I connect to a pool so it's easier to setup that way than say mining on your own without a pool. I would start out mining on a pool to get more accustomed to setting up batch files to scrypt mine. Most pools provide guides on how to connect to their pool with reaper or cgminer. As for the flags to set for your specific GPU I would check out the bitcoin forums. They have plenty of information on litecoin farming, as well as a link or two to some GPU clock/memory settings and flags to use with your .cfg or .bat file.
Check out these Litecoin Mining Rig build guides and software setup directions. Reddit has a great sub-forum on mining Litecoins as well.
Personally- I would get the 7950 for a few extra pennies. It offers more bang for your money and will be about 30-50% faster in mining applications. I personally recommend a MSI Twin Frozr III model or a Sapphire Dual X as they allow voltage control which is very important for khash/watt. (I do 1025mV 1075 Core 1375 mem 600khash).
I was also wondering about the profitability of Lite coin mining, current I have a 7950 and a 660Ti which is about to be replaced with a 290x. I don't really want to leave my pc on 24/7 mining since I have to do work on it and it don't want a crazy power bill but half a week over night mining or while I am doing basic tasks would be nice. According to the hash rate charts a 290x can push 800Khash and a 7950 can push 650-740Khash for lite coin mining, would something like that be profitable at all if I am not mining 24/7?
With the recent price jump, just one 7950 card will generate over $175/month in Litecoins, according to the calculators in these build guides.