Bitcoin Forum

Do any of you know when purchasing S3 late batch 3 or batch 4 will be available?

Thanks,

Bitmain hasn't announced their plans for batch 4 yet, but most expect it to begin within the next 2 weeks.

I'm guessing Bitmain won't start batch 4 orders till batch 1 starts shipping,  at the minimum.

Antminer S3 Batched currently sold were having issues in achieving the hash rate specified.
So, they are issuing a refund in proportion to the amount of under spec.
Batch 1, 2 and 3 are now only having 441Ghs/340W against the original 478Ghs/366W (Earlier it was 504Ghs/390W).
During the mass production they found the DC-DC controller are not stable and that forced them to reduce it to 441Ghs/340W.
Since they are selling underclocked and they need some time in correcting and redesigning the Batch 4 S3 may be a little bit delayed.

Batch           Shipping Date
Batch 1 10>=<17/July (10>=<14, 10>=<20)
Batch 2 <=20
Batch 3 <=20+2

Well summarized.  I'm hoping that the batch 4 units correct the initial problems we're seeing with the batch 1/2/3 units and they give the originally quoted 504GH/s @ 390W.  Honestly, I hope they could do a little better power-wise and get that 504GH/s @ 350W, but that's very unlikely to happen given the power requirements of the chip itself.

In my opinion, even if they correct it 504 will not be achievable due to ASIC chip limitation.
As of now max we can achieve is 441Ghs.
If we take the risk and we are lucky enough to overclock to 478Ghs, take it as a bonus.
Efficiency wise, as per Bitmain's statement, we are still at 0.77J/W that's a good thing.

Do we even know why the limitation is present? I was of the understanding it had to do with the DC/DC regulation, not the ASICs themselves.

Although, perhaps you're right and the Eng. Sample ASICS were higher quality than those of the first production lot.

Could be either or both.  From Bitmain's description, it is the DC/DC component that was the limitation, but I imagine the ASICs could also be something like a slow corner and inherently have less performance than their initial samples, and the DC/DC couldn't be tweaked to compensate without issues.

Any updates?

Have the first and second batches been shipped?

HAH

Batch 1 hasn't even been fully shipped

Shoot. Good to know. Thanks for the info.