Speaking of prime numbers...

http://www.wired.com/2014/12/mathematicians-make-major-discovery-prime-numbers/

Gatra / Claymore, any insight into this discovery from the perspective of optimizing your current miner algos for hitting bigger chains?

"It has taken longer than expected for our design team/aggregators to complete its test solution."

Never seen or heard that in this type of business before.  Oh wait, that's nearly every single ASIC designer out there.

This statement is exactly the reason why pre-ordering from an unknown entity is so stupid in the face of ROI time constraints.  It's nothing but gambling and funding development, which is why i don't feel half-sorry for all the individuals who did put money toward these products and lost out.  I try not to blame the victim(s), but seriously, what can people expect these days given the general history / track record of ASIC manufacturers up to this point? 

That time has long been over thanks to Claymore.  XPM has been GPU territory for many months now.  RIC and GAP are still CPU-only atm, but that will change one of these days too.
 
In the eyes of the profiteers (miners, investors, etc), XPM is just another coin.   If it's profitable to mine and dump, it'll be mined and dumped.  If it aint, then noone is going to touch it, regardless of its technological innovations or features.  If the price doesn't support the cost of mining, it doesn't matter how technologically magnificent the coin is - it won't get mined and the network will die off.

I have learned never to say never, at least when it comes to cryptocurrency. 

See though, i have a bunch of 7950s / 270s.  Their power/hash ratio won't be the best, but they won't be the worst either.  The new round of AMD cards will likely mirror the current crop of Nvidia Kepler GPUs in hash/watt (or do better) so efficiency is definitely better, but the 7950s and 270s were both at least 3khs / watt at a very bad minimum.  You can still make cash on that.  

Now, all of that said, i probably should have sold my farm earlier this year when 7950s were going for $400+.  We may or may not see that again, but when GPU mining does kick back up, i'll have a decision to make for sure because i fully expect people to do the same exact thing they did this summer which was get cards at any cost.

If the next gen cards are the right price / available and people are paying up for the old cards, then dump my current farm and swap out for new cards.  Else, hold on to current farm and mine.

Wow soul, this is a smart move.  KK on NCP was already a great idea to begin with.  Very glad to see you doing well.  I know you got some mouths to feed!

Long live NCP    I'll put this in my sig.

Noone is kissing and telling these days.

Sorry chief.   

^^^ Not surprising at all.

The x algos are a ripe target.  Lots of coins to hit and no known existing competing FPGA/ASIC implementations = open season for the few who are capable of monetizing the opportunities.

These types of players don't kiss and tell until they've made their fortune and then some.

People should not be surprised at all to see any algo eventually ported to FPGA / ASIC.  The x series is no different.  It's actually about time.  

There are some extremely intelligent academics / professional developers out there who, previous to Bitcoin blowing up, had no idea about the opportunities present in the cryptocurrency space to utilize their skills. 

Everyone should expect an acceleration of algos being ported to FPGAs/ASICs due to these types in the space.

Another +vote for Poloniex.  They're some of the few honest people in the business here.

Nope.  Not selling a single GPU / rig.  There will be another *boom* one of these days.

History tends to repeat itself.  I'll be ready this time 

Riecoin is one of the few cpu-only coins out there.  Also gapcoin and magicoin.  XPM is gpu territory.

None of these coins are profitable to mine unless you have under-the-table renting deals, cheap / free electricity, or some other means of skirting the normal costs of mining.

Sure - if the FUD results in a competitor's coin getting leveled and the antagonist's coin getting pumped.  That's $$$ well spent.

Depends on your 12v rail(s).  Feed the 290X anything less than 25-30v and you'll get nothing. 

Wolf is a hack, but a clever one.

Claymore is an actual developer.

It's because 99% of all ICOs and IPOs are scams.  Cryptsy is wise not to get sucked into all of that monkey business.

There are 32bit minerd exes out there..but last i checked 32bit mining had serious performance handicaps compared to the x64 versions.

Your rig can handle it.  The 270 is actually one of the most efficient GPU scrypt miners out there.  Uses ~100w to put out 400khs or so.  

Now, with that ~400khs and using this calculator with .4mhs being your hashrate..

24 hours   0.01046988 LTC   0.04 USD
7 days   0.07328918 LTC   0.27 USD
30 days   0.31409648 LTC   1.14 USD

In other words, ~8 hours would net you 1/3 of that .01 ltc/24h, so about .00333 repeating LTC per day.

Wolf,
You are a dev with private (read: highly tuned, not available to public) miners.  Your situation is irrelevant and unrelatable to your average miner.  


Now, back on OP:

GPU mining is dead at the moment, but this is exactly the same situation that occurred when bitcoin asics forced out the gpu farms a while back.  Something called Scrypt then hit the scene and GPU mining was back in force.  History will repeat itself. here All of the new attention on crypto-mining has brought even more programmers and academics into the algorithm scene (Squaggle dga, you there? ).  This spin-cycle is real and i'll call back attention to this very post when the next "Scrypt" hits the bigs.

I recommend people not dump their farms if they have 79xx/R9 2xx cards, but that's already happening.  I am not selling a single GPU out of my farm because i know they will be put to use again in not too long.  

In fact, if i had more disposable income at the moment, i would be buying a new rig or 2.  Image how quickly a $100 280 or $200 290 would ROI itself if profitability was there.

Wisdom from cAPSLOCK here:

100% true.  The NSA et all were momentarily confused by the tech behind Bitcoin, but that moment is way past over.

I am not condoning the dark markets in any way, shape, or form..but XMR has a unique opportunity to be "that coin" due to the legitimacy of  its devs.