Thank you, but it still leaves questions.
1. Do I need the BOINC Manager APP open and running, why would I enable CPU mining through Gridcoin if my BOINC manager is using 100% of my CPU
2. The OP explains a breakdown of 5-150 coin payouts based on utilization toward BOINC. My mining module still shows 0 utilization after making sure I followed that guide completely. How am I supposed to get those working and how am I supposed to know how to optimize my coin income? Why would I want to run 2 GPUs at full power mining this if I could be using them for something else and getting the same coins.
3. I had a couple of extremely small payments come through a short period ago (around 0.0000003 Grid) which have since vanished. These weren't immature just unconfirmed (I have it set to pool mine).. I'm still at a complete loss and the guide doesn't explain how this works.
4. Do I need coin in my wallet before this works? I read on the Gridcoin forum you need to ask somebody who will "gladly send you a coin" before you can start mining.
GPU mining secures the block chain as you are familiar with on other coins. The twist is that the block rewards are variable depending on how much BOINC utilization you have. It will take a while (week or so?) to build up to 100% utilization in the GRC wallet because you need to accumulate BOINC credits, but if you are running BOINC on your CPU you should see some utilization right away.
CPU mining as I understand it isn't actually involved in securing the block chain...it is just a compensation given out corresponding to how much BOINC processing you are doing. Yes, you do need some GRC in your wallet for CPU mining to work because part of the process involves your wallet sending out beacons.
So to answer your questions, you would want to do both CPU mining and GPU mining because you get the steady compensation for running BOINC on your CPU and additional rewards for every block that you solve with your GPU.