Bitcoin Forum

Howdy. So I am new to the bitcoin scene with a 7950 and a couple 7870s (good for a total of 1400mh/s). I ran the numbers, things looked good and I did my research before buying.

However! Now that I have the good and am cranking away at some coins, I am reading about the upcoming BFL devices and the good ol upcoming halving.

Not going to lie, but that two things combined seem pretty scary for the profitability of future GPU work. Do you guys think I should stick with it or have I 'missed the boat' so to speak?

you have 100 days before the reward drop

BFL may well be delayed getting actual product in the hands of miners

You have some awesome gaming rigs when they become unprofitable to mine with

I would flog the snot out of them and see what happens

Same boat. Known about bitcoin for a while, but was too lazy (and heavily invested in other projects) to take a hard look at it.

the money is right, but right now I don't have much in the line of hardware... now with reading about these forthcoming BFLs coming out sooner or later... its a hard call to jump into mining or not.

Same here.
Just got a 7950 new for 260 euros and mining in italy (i can afford 270 watt for supporting bitcoin)
At november i can sell it or play with it.

I'd say stick with it. You can make decent money for at least the next couple months. You will probably have to sell eventually, but why not lock in some profits while you can?

Ya, that is kind of what I was thinking.

I also wonder what'll happen with difficulty once the 'halving' occurs (assuming BFL doesnt produce). I would imagine it would at least have a downward affect on it.

Also, maybe the substantial drop in supply could mean an increase in the price.

Ah, such is the life of investing and taking chances on markets.

At current difficulty, 1400mh/s should be netting you around half a coin a day. If difficulty goes up 5% every 2 weeks, then it will take 84.333~ days until the block reward is halved, leaving you with approximately 40 bitcoins. Still enough coins to play around with, and you will thank yourself if the value skyrockets.

I'd stick with it.

Personally I've gone for energy friendly video cards rather than beastly cards. I was able to get all my video cards for next to nothing used.

I've got 3x5770 (~200) and 2x6950 (~400).

Yes, I use cgminer and have tweaked memory speeds, clockrates and unlocked the extra shaders on the 6950s. Hashing out at ~1400. total cost using old pc parts and buying video cards - less than $500.

The very next thing I'm doing is making a new machine for myself, complete with liquid cooling... I'm just waiting for 7990s to release. Mostly a vanity purchase for gaming, but will probably spend most of it's time mining.

 

7990s cancelled buddy

crossfire 7970s for you

Man I didn't want to hear that, it's too bad really...

Makes me wonder if I could score a couple of 6990s somewhere for a decent price.

there are custom 7970x2 options

http://www.tweaktown.com/news/24453/his_world_s_first_with_radeon_hd_7970_x2_video_card_at_computex/index.html

Unfortunately 7970x2 doesn't have the benefits of a 7990. Mainly better power consumption and ATI ref drivers.

Just wanna mention CoinLab pool here. They have an interesting offer, basically giving you some extra profit after GPU mining becoming useless. Mine there for say 3 months before difficulty rise and get extra 3 months profit after. More details at their page: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=99643.msg1089915.

They even talk about using (and you get paid for) your GPU outside bitcoin mining.

Until then they are basically a PPS 5%-2% pool like any other, and so far I am (...almost) satisfied with it.

PS: I just mine there, I am not their employee or anything.

If it's anything, it's still possible to earn substantially more elsewhere for the moment.
For example, I'm still buying hashing power at 105%+ PPS.

I'll be really interested to see what they come up with though, If they can work out a way to do it and the prices aren't bad I'd buy GPU time for CFD crunching  :D Unfortunately for something like that the amount of info that'd have to be streamed to the miners would make it very bandwidth-intensive, so I don't really see what they can do with it right now.

Can't say what's gonna happen, but the fact that they have ckolivas involved in creating their software gives me a bit of confidence.
(Well, nothing is guaranteed, they could still go belly up.)

You will be able to mine profitably with GPUs for the next couple of months before the new ASICs release.

There's more than one place promising ASIC's now, so it's almost a certainty. I thought about investing in GPU/FPGA mining again last month, but the numbers still didn't work out to be profitable in any reasonable amount of time. You're better off just buying BTC with the hardware money and just sitting on them at this point.