Bitcoin Forum

Are they going to make my brand new 1.7 grand computer useless? Am I going to loose money? Should I just send back this computer and get an ASICS? I'm sorry, I'm a n00b. I don't understand bitcoin very well!  Somebody said they were going to make gpu computation obsolete or worse earnings and it scared me.

I'm freaking out ever since I seen this. Is it true?

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=99643.msg1089915

I'm still within the timeframe to send everything back. Seems like a good move and buy three of these suckers. I would keep it for gaming but crossfire freakin sucks.

Thanks!!

ASIC technology, when released will cause a difficulty jump as easy as 10x what it is now, rendering all GPU mining basically useless. The question at hand, are ASIC's really ready for release?

ASICS have significantly higher hashing power than GPUs. Orders of magnitude more hashing power.

However, ASICS cannot game or run anything other than their hash functions.

It is a trade off between hashing power and utility. Your new computer is not useless without bitcoin, but these ASICS sure will be.

Also, keep in mind that they have not been released yet, so you can currently mine for bitcoins RIGHT NOW with GPUs whereas with ASICs, you will have to wait months to mine anything.

Not enough information to answer your question.

Additional information needed:

1) How long until you could realistically receive any ASICS?
2) Would you use the current computer for anything more than mining?
3) How much BTC are you likely to mine on your current setup between now and when ASICS could have been delivered?
4) How much BTC are you likely to mine per month on your current computer after people receive ASICS?
5) If you get ASICS, how much BTC are you likely to mine per month with the ASICS?
6) How much would you spend on the purchase of the ASICS?
7) How much would you spend per month on electricity mining with the current computer?
8 How much would you spend per month on electricity mining with ASICS?

Right now I am mining with 2x7970 overclocked to 1190 core and under volted. 

My system is not a dedicated miner so mhash per watt is not very good due to having silly things like hard drives, a quad core cpu and other non-mining components.

I am mining around 1410 mhash at ~600 watts.

If difficulty jumps by 10x I will be losing ~$30 a month due to power usage.

No one knows when asic will ship, but perhaps this will help you decide. 

Hmm, seems your miner could be profitable for a few months yet given BFL's past track record.

Track record? Keep in mind I'm new. I was under the impression that none of their devices have been released yet. So how could they have a track record? Are the three ones on their main page currently available?

PLEASE elaborate.

BFL took many months longer to ship the preordered FPGA miners than expected.
BFL took more time than expected to ship Mini-Rigs
BFL is having a hard time coping with the demand for their products.

Yeap,only known thing now is that sooner or later those ASIC will arrive and make GPU's obsolete for mining.So buying these days a couple of expensive HD7970 cards just for mining is not the best idea...

that depends on a few things:

1. What the cost per GPU was at time of purchase
2. How much money (after electricity cost) was earned mining with those cards
3. how much money the GPU's were sold for afterwards

So if you buy 2 cards for $300 each, earn $200 mining with them over say 3 months and then sell them for $250 each..


-600
+200
+250
+250
____
$100 income

Whether that is worth it to someone is another question, but money can still be made if the proper research is conducted before spending the money on hardware.

Of course, the price per BTC in the market over the next few months can make a big difference as well.

I thought ASICS where shoes.

Lol.

Application Specific Integrated CircuitS I think.

Uh, yeah, the difficulty could increase by 10x, but it wouldn't be over night. It will depend on how much hashing power the ASICS from various sources add to the network.

At least you have a nice computer that you can do other things with like play games, or trade stocks with, etc.

Assuming BFL ships more than one unit (which wouldn't surprise me) then difficulty will have a huge increase very quickly. Everyone will want the ASIC to 'pay for itself' before the difficulty jumps.

(yeah bad joke)

Don´t think so. Sure - the profit will be much higher the sooner you get an ASIC (thats why they are nearly killing themselfes in the BFL thread right now just because of the plan how BFL wants to release their ASICS to preorder customers).

As soon as ASICs become more common and difficulty is raised, the $ per GHash ratio will stabilize again at ASIC level. If you are mining on a $1000 multiple GPU today and get 1BTC/day then you will get this out of an $1000 ASIC too. But today you need 2,3 GHash and then you will need 30GHash.

I thinking of ordering 1 or 2 BFC Singles to try it out, MH/s output/Watt is very tempting to me.

There is a wait time of 4-6 weeks on those, beware.  If you're looking to make some cash with it, there are FPGA alternatives that are a bit more expensive, but ship faster, thus normalizing the price difference.