Bitcoin Forum

I have been acquiring hardware to build a couple of mining rigs.  Newegg.com and Tigerdirect, where I usually order parts from, are both out of stock in the higher end graphics cards.  I did find a couple for sale on ebay, the bids were already over $900.  Newegg shows 4 cards in the mid $700 to $800 + range.  I asked to be notified when they become available.

I am wondering if AMD is seeing a big increase in demand for their high end cards and if so when the supply might increase.  I also would like to know more about their plans for the next generation of high end cards.  Specifically if they can reduce the power consumption it would dramatically affect the mining profitability.

It is also apparent that the cost of electricity to run the build rigs is quite significant.  Since these cards draw 900 watts at rated output and I pay $0.15 per KwH for power, running one for 24 hours costs about $3.60 a day.  If the machines reside in AC space that will add more load to the AC.  In Florida this is already high.  :) So running one high end rig for a month is likely to increase my bill by at least $100.  I even looked into adding some Solar PV capability to my home to offset the increase in power costs. 

Building and operating these mining rigs makes economic sense, at least a little bit, and especially if one expects the value of bitcoins to rise dramatically in the future.  However it is fun, at least for some of us.

Actually, it makes no sense.  If you expect bitcoins to increase in value, you are better off buying them now.  See my post about hardware never paying off.  (Unless you can build hardware for less than $.25/MH/S, and even then you will only just break even, not counting the value of the hardware after the mining cost reaches electricty cost)

I think you are right about that..... if anything is increasing in value then it is a good investment assuming it is marketable.  One thing I have not seen people mention is the inflation of USD that is happening, Assume 10% or more.  also I wonder if AMD or someone else is working on new cards that are more efficient.

I will buy a few, and run the mining rigs for a while just to see what happens.  I also invest in Silver not so bad, stocks pretty bad, and by far the biggest investment is real estate not so good either.... :)  but I do get a nice place to live. 

I can confirm that both the 6990 and the 5970 are completely out of stock in Belgium Netherlands and Germany.

List price of the 6990 is around 699 eur, but on the 'black market' they go around 1000 eur a piece.

I'm getting 1600mhash with a crossfire 6990 setup

Mining is reaching the point where it might not be profitable, too many people not checking their numbers buying very expensive hardware.

Pretty much, unless you already have a system that is paid for, there isn't any point in building a new one.

actually if you do the math at about 3 triple 6990 rigs to start and put half of your revenue into new hardware every 2 weeks you can keep ahead of the curve and if the conversion rate keeps a week behind the diff it should still be profitable.

Yes, get 5970 or 6990 is verry dificult, bz of this, im search for anothers options

Anyone know if there is a compiled list of best cards to get, in order of availability?

I was reading last night about some alternative hardware to speed up the hash rates adn lower the power consumption.  FPGA boards and chips are being developed apparently.  It did occur to me that this might be an effort to disrupt the current situation or perhaps is not true.  It was also mentioned in other posts that AMD is of course testing their cards extensively.  It would seem that running a miner on the card would be a good stress test.

Like many things, the hardware and software evolve rapidly when lots of people get interested in the problem.

Good they got 6990 stock in my country. Soon going to buy one!

6990's don't seem very cost efficient to me, what are they, $700USD or more for a 700-800 mHash rate?  That's almost a a 1:1 ratio.  I think a stock 6950 can get 330 mHash/sec and you can buy one of those for $240.  Perhaps I'm missing something..