Cost effective wise, if you're going to use Nvidia cards then don't attempt to mine SHA-256 coins, or even Scrypt coins above a difficulty of like 30 as your hashrates to earnings are almost likely going to be negative if factoring in Electrical and Internet costs.
If, however, you're on a flat rate tariff, whereby you pay a single rate for your electric and it doesn't increase, then mining any GPU (As long as you break even) would be well worth it on any coin.
There's no reason why that motherboard/computer cannot support an ATI card. Such person who told you otherwise either doesn't know what they're talking about or are heavily biased to certain setups and manufacturers.
As long as you have the headroom and ability to power the graphics card from your PSU, you'll be fine.
Alright thanks for the responses. If, however, you're on a flat rate tariff, whereby you pay a single rate for your electric and it doesn't increase, then mining any GPU (As long as you break even) would be well worth it on any coin.
There's no reason why that motherboard/computer cannot support an ATI card. Such person who told you otherwise either doesn't know what they're talking about or are heavily biased to certain setups and manufacturers.
As long as you have the headroom and ability to power the graphics card from your PSU, you'll be fine.
Glad to hear I can run ATI cards without any issues. What do you mean about "headroom" though?
This is very helpful and I do appreciate the comments re: my hashrate. Also, like someone said, it is something. Keep in mind though, that this is just the beginning to my mining rig with my ButterfylLabs Jalepeno 5GH/s and a few 333Mh/s ASICs. This is just going to supplement those, really.
Electrical costs and internet costs aren't really a factor for me also, as an aside. That being said, how much electricity does a 800watt PSU cost per/day?
I'm currently mining bitcoins just because I don't have any knowledge about the others although I would definitely appreciate some links so I could read up on some viable options. One of my pools also does Litecoin mining, but it's my understanding that those aren't really currency. What are some other good coins to look into?
Thanks again for all the help!