Bitcoin Forum

Which Card Has The Fastest ROI?

LOL, never...


No seriously. If ASICS don't come online in October you might possibly pay it off in 6 months. Thats my armchair math though.

I also assume you have a spare comp with an open pci-e slot that runs 24/7 and that your electricity is cheap($0.08 kwh).

But if you are going to use it for gaming you can pay a good $120 off atleast after 3 months of mining.

5870's are going pretty cheap now, awesome performance.

from where can i get them cheap its $225 on amazon?

and in how many day will i get back ROI?

5870s are what, 150 here on the forums? Ebay has similar prices. If you can pick up a 5970 for ~250, however, I'd say that's your best bet.

I dont believe any card will fully pay for itself without selling it in december. All my models show once you factor in power usage, increasing difficulty, drop in reward and the cost of card depreciation, somewhere between december and feb is the point to dispose of your card unless your avg cost of power is very low.

Perhaps a couple of new 6770's ($89 refurb, $99 new at newegg) overclocked to 1010mhz should give you about 450mhash.  Safter than rolling the dice on used cards.

isn't there a way to make at least 1.5 BTC per day with a 7970

No. 1.5btc/day is about 4GH. Watercooled 7970 might do 750MH.

Nope. My 7970 runs at 1080MHz, and I get 695Mh/s.

Very likely that you never recoup your cost if you buy a GPU now.

so is there any way to get back my ROI on a 7970 in 2 month's?

Extremely unlikely. Look at the difficulty graph: http://bitcoin.sipa.be/speed-small-lin-ever.png

Dude. No.
Even with Free power, Not gonna happen.

so is it a good or bad idea to buy a 7970 now?

i don't want to use it for gaming only mining..

I got a single 7970, and I put all my money into ASICs. I hate only mining at 700Mh/s, but I also game, so I love (LOVE) the 7970.

If I didn't game, I prolly wouldn't of even gotten the card. 6 months ago, you could have made your money back, but not now.

If you wanna buy a used one now, I think they're going for like $350. You could pick up a used one, mine for 2-3 months (maybe make 20BTC), and then sell it around Christmas time for ~300. Still a net profit in a 3 month timespan.

If its mining only, then it is a bad idea. Full stop.

Just to make sure it's repeated enough times.

If you are not a gamer (you stated this). Don't invest in GPU's now, it's too late, difficulty is rising to levels that only ASIC's and only for a short period FPGA's are affordable and will give any decent ROI.

A GPU's only ROI is what you can resell it for, not for mining over the next 2 months. Considering any GPU bought now will only lower in price when it comes to reselling it, it's going to be a either going to be a lose overall or break even even after 2 months of mining.

I can only see one way to possibly make any money with GPUs in a 2 month time span:

I just bought a bunch of 7950s to mine.  As soon as the difficulty goes high enough they will be switched from BTC to LTC.  I'm not worried.

this. And no one knows a) what the halving will do to price; and b) when ASIC will come on the scene.

If the great halving makes price = price * .5 AND asic enter in January.... Well, the answer to your question is summarized here:

LTC <-> BTC market is very illiquid.

It really doesn't look like the right moment to get a 7970 exclusively for mining right now, unless you can get it for very cheap.

Will you get your money back JUST from mining.. NOPE

Will you get your money back from mining AND from selling the card again in a few months for almost what you paid for it with a few extra dollars on the side.. probably..

did Satoshi Nakomoto predict companies customizing hardware that will outhash the average person's GPU and thus turn the people holding bitcoin into large capital surplused institutions?

He'd be pretty naive if he didn't foresee a future where people would strive for better performance and faster hash rates, or at the least improvements in efficiency.
After all FPGA's and ASIC have been used for exactly that in many other similar industries since they were first designed, to do relatively simple tasks ridiculously fast, that were once done by CPU's, sometimes even entire server farms of computers.
I doubt anyone expected it to happen this fast of course, from it's early days around when he disappeared.

It has enough liquidity for someone only mining a couple hundred LTC a day... large scale operations will probably find it hard not to disrupt the market price.

If halving+ASIC causes GPUs to be infeasible for BTC, this market can be brought to its knees easily. If you have a "solution", you may just coincide with many others.

My GPUs will likely stop mining BTC, so maybe we will meet there :D or maybe not.

Every single GPU right now has a ROI time period that does not calculate, as it will never reach the baseline.  ASIC and splitting compared to electricity means it's just not going to happen, as the power will cost more than you make approx 2-3 months from now :P But if you got a used 5830, it would come the closest at like 15% paid off before it start losing you money.

you and 10,000 other motherfuckers, what do you think is going to happen to litecoin difficulty?   ::)

I am more interested in what will happen to LTC price...any predictions ?

(just bought an additionally 7970)

What do you expect? 10K odd GPU mofos selling every LTC they mine for BTC. That's a downward pressure. If a number of them decide to hoard, that's an upward pressure. But as a general rule, short-term minded miners who would be expected to flock to LTC are likely to bring the price down. LTC are simply not traded almost anywhere and they don't offer any big advantages over BTC. Basically the core of LTC who just wanted a GPU free environment will see that goal definitively destroyed.

GPU have very little future as mining equipment. The whole project would be pointless now with a GPU-dominated ecosystem and no single meaningful advantage over the coin that has all the traction - except for those with large quantities of LTC.

Ah come on man, let me enjoy my new card, don't be a killjoy  ;D
Besides, I got it rather cheap (around 150$) and I mine at CoinLab, I could still get my money back...(well, maybe).
It has a great resale value also.

LTC has been around for almost a year. It's not dead and it's probably not going to die. Like BTC, the algorithm is self adjusting so that it remains profitable to mine.  The naysayers are welcome to sit around in a circlejerk waiting to profit from nonexisting ASICs they bought six months ago while I continually make money with a GPU farm.

Screw LTC, I'm more concerned about where you got a 7970 for $150!!

Pure, sheer luck ;D

The guy (someone I knew) sold it because of the broken (kinda stuck) fan and lots of BSOD. Oh, should I mention the cracked shroud?
Anyway, it still seemed OK to me after some tests and bought it eventually at 150. Bought also a replacement fan from Ebay only to discover that the original fan was OK but a stupid piece of black foam was blocking it from inside (have no idea how it got there).

Luck, as I said  :)

Care to share your flags etc?

+7970

Win7x64, CCC 12.8 with included SDK. CGMiner 2.7.5 with all defaults, which is -k poclbm -v 1 -w 64.

I'v since undervolted and downclocked to 1050, and I'm getting ~ 610MH/s @ ~170W.

From what I've read of Satoshi's original posts, no a shift to high capital cost & customized equipment was not expected nearly this fast or even at all. Maybe after a decade or so when the payout per block become < 6BTC, but not yet.

The goal was for widely distributed hashing and BTC generation, both to ensure stability of the network and to disperse BTC widely in order to encourage adoption. The number of people dropping $40K plus figures for Avalon's or SC Rigs is counter these goals.

IMHO if Satoshi predicted this, he would have made the hashing algorithm more complicated in order to require a CPU (i.e. limited benefit from GPU, FPGA or ASIC).

All that said I don't believe the rise of ASICs and centralized mining (at least for now) is necessarily a negative event, in fact I think it demonstrates just how strong the crypto currency is and how rapidly it is gaining traction.

For all the MINERS selling $+10K worth of BTC for equipment, there are USERS buying BTC for other market purposes. This is capitalism.

And unlike others, I think ASICs will strengthen the network. The reason is the ASICs have no other purpose, once an ASIC is fabed the only useful thing it can do is add hashing power to the network. This ensures a stable base of hashing power. Compare this to GPU mining when the 2011 crash happened, the network started to weaken because people sold their GPUs to gamers. Even if people sell their ASICs, the only thing a buyer can do is hash with it, this is positive for the bitcoin project.

IMHO the goal of the network is to become strengthened against government disruption, if 100,000 ASICs are sold that would do a lot towards getting there.

CPU intensive hashing would opens the network to serious risks from botnet operators. Having skilled miners operating less nodes with superior hardware protects the network against attack. As soon as botnet operators realize that ltc -> btc is more profitable, watch out.


Neither algorithm adjusts to profitability. Look towards namecoin, ixcoin, iocoin, etc to see how the algorithm doesn't adjust to profitability. I say mine while the mining's good, but these alt currencies often hit a point where people begin to abandon them and there's no trading them for bitcoin, and there's no products and services built around them (i.e. no economy).

But at 100W, that's $10 a month in electricity. That's only $25 a month profit now.

5770, hands down. 220MH/s for $50ish. Good re-sale value.

Except that the slot density for those is horrible. You'd need an entire rig of those just to get what 1 5970 can do.

FTFU

Umm no. Discounting electric, you will get ~ 35USD a month. After electric, it will be ~25USD. However, you'll have a 100day break even point: http://bitcoinx.com/profit/

ummm, yes, that is why i crossed out the electric :)

But he was correct. With free electric, it's $35/month.

Thought the last time I did the math on this it seemed that the 6770 was one of the more efficient choices.  You could push them to the max in Afterburner (~920 MHz or so).  Granted 3 cards is probably the most you could fit in a system without airflow problems and even then you'd only be pushing ~650-700 mh/sec for slightly less than the used cost of a 5970.

I'd wager the 6770s would be easier for resale and also have warranty / be brand new, etc. though so that's good.

Those things draw 200w.  Horribly inefficient cards.

Except I'll be the one laughing when my ASIC farm makes more money in 5 days than you've made in 5 month.  ;)

You won't make much of anything if everyone else with an ASIC also decides to dump.

...except for maybe a good price for me to buy at.

and thus, need more motherboards, etc.

5970 is still King

I'm not too worried about that.  If the price takes a dive, I'm holding until it stabilizes again.

Just for the record, if you take the number of pre-ordered ASICs from all companies, multiply them by the likely distribution of high end vs low end hardware, and adapt it to the current GH/s level of the entire system, the result is a 5970 making slightly less than 1 BTC per month and costing a ballpark of $30 per month in electricity.

If you dont care about power consumption, a 6870x2 is probably ur fastest ROI =) .. can be had for 200$ or less and does around 650mh/s

That is quite an interesting card, but a 6870 is pretty much a 5830, and 2 of those can be had for ~160.

Yeah, anyone buying any new GPU hardware right now is crazy. You'll never see any RoI on it.

I would much prefer a 6870 over a 5830... They are better cards IMO... I have a few of each.... 

For gaming, sure, but for mining? They're not faster...then run cooler? Less power? Why do you prefer them?

I can get more mhash out of a 6870 vs a 5830.... I can also achieve higher, more stable overclocks.....


The way I run things anyway.. :)

They both have 1120 SPUs. The 6870 starts at 900mhz, while the 5830 starts at 800mhz (but can OC into the high 900s. I ran mine at 980mhz).

I run one at 1080mhz..

all 6 of my 5830's have a max overclock of around 940-950

Lol, guys, come on.  The GPU has almost nothing to do with overclocking.  It's the power quality on the board and the manufacturer of the card makes the board.  MSI and Sapphire for example will overclock so much higher than most others regardless of GPU model.  My 5830 Sapphire Extreme Edition with better voltage control than the standard card ran at 1040MHz stable @ 61C for about 11 months then I sold it.

Apparently the new MSI Lightning 7970 poster that they sent my shop doesn't reside anywhere on the web or I'd show it to you.  Anyway, it has zero voltage variance.  That means no opening and closing of the circuit with a voltage regulator or passing along messed up power.  You can overclock it to the freaking moon!

EDIT: FOUND IT! http://event.msi.com/vga/lightning/r7970.html#Unlocked

That's pretty sweet.^


All my 5830's are sapphire xtreme versions and they don't overclock very well IMO..

Mine was a Sapphire Xtreme, the one that went to 980.

6870x2 is more rare than a unicorn (including horses with toilet paper or paper towel cylinders taped or strapped to their heads)

Oh, I forgot that the PSU is a huuuuuuge part too.  I was using a 900W 80+ silver certified PSU which at 550W draw still measured at 12.15V.  If your PSU is feeding in the power at 11.5V under load, your GPU is not going to overclock very high.  The only problem is, paying for a high end power managing card and an amazing PSU costs about as much as just buying a much better GPU, lol.  I got the PSU for $90 as a return at a local PC shop.  It's worth like $175 or something lol.  Btw it's for sale at the moment :D

i am mining with a MSI 6670

5870/5970 are in my opinion the best and they
Are cheap. (So Long there are no asics)

I just ran the numbers and it looks like the 5870 is indeed the best bang for your buck.  It could make around $50/mo approx and you can get a used one for just over $100 on ebay.  That's not bad!  The 5970 seems difficult to cool and even runs really hot stock and thus it's difficult to overclock so yeah it's fast but it's extremely expensive and you can't get it a whole lot higher necessarily.

I got a 7950 to stick in my work PC for the next couple of months, cost me £220, should hopefully earn £80 - £100 before its no longer worth running even with free electricity... then I will sell my 6870 from my home PC and hopefully it should work out as a pretty GPU upgrade for my gaming machine, probably just £50 difference :)

5970, yeah look at my temps (video):

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=115621.0

BTCFPGA has FPGA's in stock, and they will offer a trade-in program to go from FPGA > ASIC. This might be your best bet to get in the game now, at low power usage, and trade-in the FPGA for full value on an ASIC. 6 months from now, mining will only make sense with ASICs.

unless a protocol change

While risky, nothing will replace 5970's for ROI. If you look hard enough, you can find stable-ish ones for ~200 USD. I didn't do any math, because the actual ROI depends on your electricity rates.

With that said, the ROI is probably longer than the borrowed time most GPU's are running on. ASIC's are slated to begin shipping very soon.

shameless promotion....win 3x5970's for 1BTC:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=116893.msg1251772#msg1251772

Man, let me just withdraw a little bit from GLBSE. Oh wait.

with underclocking the ram, i was able to get my 6770 up to 960Mhz....getting about 210Mh/s out of it.

??? ???  first they have to CREATE an fabric out of some 2nd hand manchines.. ??? ???

https://forums.butterflylabs.com/content.php/120-BFL-Invests-in-Assembly-Equipment

but ontopic, 5870 if bought 2nd hand are quick ROI get 400mhash out them, also 5970 are good to use but for now i d say waite untill december...or perpared to take loses if investing now....ASIC  ???

well, i've paid for my 3x7950 rig mining litecoin for a few months.  all profit from here on out.

Ati 5830's you can get 'em cheap <$99 and they overclock good and still stay cool unlike 5770/6770s

270MHs (875/500/66c) for $99 thats 2.72Mh/$ ROI

I even see one on ebay $75 buy it now! Assuming you could collect (that's 3.6Mh/$ ROI)

http://www.ebay.com/itm/XFX-ATI-Radeon-5830-1GB-PCI-Express-/321000286598?pt=PCC_Video_TV_Cards&hash=item4abd1ba986

Some people even manage to get them running over 300MHs potentially 4Mh/$ ROI @ $75

Nothing like risking a full time paying job for a few £ in electricity. :)

what card has a better ratio for litecoin mining than bitcoin?

Ekkk, not good.

haha +1

I never understood people that try to shove a GPU into a work PC because of 'free power'.  So, let's lose a job that makes more in an hour than we'd make in two weeks of mining.  At some point someone is going to hear the GPU running, notice the power spike or the web traffic going to a mining pool.  Try to explain to your boss and HR what 'this bitcoin thing is', and see what they look like when you start talking crypto currency.

easiest way to get an adrenalin rush every time your boss step inside your office, i guess