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So, being a miner of small repute, mainly cos i like to play with old hardware and fit it to a new purpose, and i also hate to throw something away if i can use it for something else....I've been following this FPGA trend closely as it's pretty interesting what folks are up to..

So much information is out all over the place so i thought I'd condense it down purely for my own needs, but you guys can use it also.

General Comparison site :
http://bitcoinfpga.com/

General FPGA Performance Analysis
http://www.wikifpga.com/index.php?title=Performance_Analysis   ( if anyone has something more up to date.. please let me know )


Butterflylabs Single
http://www.butterflylabs.com/product-details/
Raw performance: 832 Mega Hash / second  (+/- 10% running variance)
Power consumption: 80w at load
Cost: $599 + Shipping


ZTEX
http://www.ztex.de/btcminer/
http://stores.ebay.de/ZTEX-Shop/   ;D
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=49180.0
1.15x Version Board
Cost: 309.51EUR + Shipping
205~215MH/s @ approx 9.4W


FPGA Miner
http://cablesaurus.com/index.php?route=product/category&path=10

Dual FPGA X6500 Mining Card
Avg. hashrate: 400 MH/s Max. power draw: 20W
Cost: $580.00 + Shipping

FPGA X6000 Mining Card ( DISCONTINUED )
X6000 200 MH/s @ 10 W
Cost: $390 + Shipping

FPGA development board "Icarus"
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=51371
ngzhang
Technology: Spartan6 -LX150 -2I (or -3C)
speed (MH/s): 380
$: 569 (1) / 469$ (multiple of 30) (-5$ if you do not need the adapter, recommend for bulk orders, they are heavy)
W: 4.5 for idle / 19.5 for full load. (notice this is the on wall power, include the adapter losses)



There are others... but I've limited it to these as they are probably the most serious players in the market to date.

So this is just some info scanned from the various forums and such into one place. I'm been looking at other FPGA set-ups, and whilst they all look pretty intriguing, I'm no where near closer to figuring out which one look the best in terms of economics.

From the comparisons, and from the set-up cost, per unit, vs eventual power usage I'm kinda leaning towards the ztex boards as they offer the best power conversion rate to btc. The best thing i like about this is the lower power consumption requirements, which might fit neatly into my Solar experiments I'm going to start in the summer.

I think, in terms of space taking motherboards, psu, graph cards, worrying about the heat generation, noise levels, safety concerns, power usage, the FPGA does have the ability to clear my entire spare room of junk boards currently grinding away to earn a pittance....
if i think real hard ( which is a rare event ) i'm pretty sure that after all the 5870/6790/6990 setups, planning, tubing for vents, extractors, ice trays, kitty litter trays and weird 2am confabs... a small fpga miner means i can have my spare room back....

trouble is... at roughly 400euro a pop its not a cheap alternative... but the power savings over my own rigs would in the long run save me power and increase btc profits... but they aren't all that resalable after im done with it......yeah, i know.. there's always resale value in ati cards.. but seriously... once im done with mining... i'll just start tinkering with something else that will end up costing me money, time, and patience lol

So i've also done some research into China for FPGA setups... i found a few that have ready made FPGA Spartan6 board with USB.... thing is, i haven't found out yet if a i need some jtag conversion box to talk to them yet.. ( im a FPGA n00b ) so the search is on.. .i suspect at some point, in china somewhere in Shenzhen a plan will be released to make them available en mass... when that happens... i suspect difficulty will rise 10 fold 6 months after that. Then im probably going to be looking for a new tinkering hobby.


Comments, flames, buckets of water all welcome... but please refrain from throwing rotten fruit.... aim it towards my biomass generator please.

Salt 'O' the rock

So... the whole FPGA thing is now really biting me......

surfing around, looking at designs ( not that i know a thing about it ) i am slowly starting to understand implications.

So this post is for supplementary information that i find... in the hop that some FPGA dev's might find this useful.

http://www.hdl.co.jp/en/spc/lib/php/liblist.php/XIN.html
Whole load of FPGA circuit diagrams and other odds and sodds.

http://www.opalkelly.com/products/
Some nice Spartan Dev Boards

Thanks for this, looks like it'll be quite helpful. Maybe list the prices in one currency for easy comparison?

you definitely missed a "major player"

FPGA development board "Icarus"
ngzhang
Technology: Spartan6 -LX150 -2I (or -3C)
speed (MH/s): 380
$: 569 (1) / 469$ (multiple of 30) (-5$ if you do not need the adapter, recommend for bulk orders, they are heavy)
W: 4.5 for idle / 19.5 for full load. (notice this is the on wall power, include the adapter losses)

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=51371

Cheers mate, i had previously seen this guy, and was looking through his posts and comparing his offerings with the rest...
now updated :)

With current firmware/bitstream versions those can do 400/200 MH/s. With the new firmware that's going to be released soon, they will add dynamic overclocking support, so they should end up at the same hashrate (or twice the hashrate for the X6500) that the ztex boards have.

Cheers Seven, that does change the stats a hell of a lot now.... seriously, that gives the x6000 series a bigger wedge to apply...:D

Cool! Nice to see this information in one place. A couple clarifications about the X6500.

First of all, it's not my X6500. It's the FPGA Mining X6500. We are made up of fpgaminer, li_gangyi, and myself. Also, Cablesaurus.com is our distributor, so that we can focus on working with FPGAs instead of USPS. :)

Our forum thread is here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=40058

Our website is: fpgamining.com (http://fpgamining.com)

The X6000 has been discontinued, due to lack of demand. Dual FPGAs really makes much more sense anyways.

I've been doing a lot of careful power measurements over the last few days. At 200 MHz (400 MH/s total), I'm seeing 16.36 W, measured at the board directly. It would be nice to get power measurements of each of the FPGA miners under the same conditions for a proper comparison. I'll be posting the results of my tests (power consumption measured at a range of clock speeds) in our thread and on our website soon. I'll also do the same tests on several different boards to see how much it varies from FPGA to FPGA.

Finally, we're about to start shipping the latest incarnation of X6500, the rev 3. This one has some nice new features, most notable of which is probably the on board temperature sensors. I believe that none of the other FPGAs have this. I think it is a crucial feature to protecting your FPGA miners when something goes wrong (e.g., fan failure). Here's a glamour shot:  :P

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/13472215/forum/angle_a_720.png

Cablesaurus appears to be doing a terrible job, as the X6500 does not appear to be listed on their website, and the link on fpgamining.com just takes you directly to cablesaurus.com.

very interesting

Yeah.. Even when the X6500s were listed and showing as 'out of stock' - you couldn't put in a pre-order.  They've surely lost out on a few impulse buys that way.

The single unit unit price of the1 1.15x board is is 309 EUR.

See there for volume proces: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=49180.0

Updated :D

Updated :D

nice to see those improvements on ztex but jut want to note

not true

the BFL BitFORCE Single has temp sensors - it automatically throttles itself down if it gets too hot - also the latest compile of cgminer shows accurate temps for BFL.

Ah, I didn't know this. Thanks. Then, we're the only Spartan 6 miner with temp sensors. :)

Don't forgot the red PCB is sexy.

And everybody knows, sexy red is like CAPS LOOK INSTAND COOL!

Da red ones go fasta!

I wanna know how you can put go faster stripes and an aerofoil on the back :)