I average 5000 MH/s with my "farm" 

electricity definitly factors in.....but I am lucky enough to live in the state with the second cheapest power in the country.

I would not want to be mining in California....ouch. 

As I scale up my mining operations, I am running into a dilemma.  Spend more money to buy faster mining cards, or save cash and get slower cards. 

I really believe there is an "early adopter" premium involved in bitcoin, and given the difficulty increases that seems to be a fact.  If I can cram more MH/s into the early going, I will ostensibly earn more bitcoins before the difficulty increases.  However, I spend more to get the higher hash rates.

Does anyone have a good breakdown on this?  Does it always make sense to buy the cheapest MH/$, or do the difficulty increases skew the analysis? 

It seems like many forum members are mentally "throwing in the towel" after the recent difficulty increases.  I am reading much bellyaching about how it makes not sense to mine anymore because profitability has dropped. 

I think this is sour grapes directed at newer miners such as myself (2 months), and not really the correct way to view mining.  When looking out more than a few weeks, mining can still be a very good investment.  Given that there are still some 14 million bitcoins yet to be created, the opportunity to have fun, make a little money, and learn something new is still great.

Just because we can't "pay off our cards" in a month does not mean its time to cry and go home.  Show me any other investment opportunity with a 100% ROI in 90 days.....they just don't exist. 

I will continue to moderately scale up my mining operations with a timeline of several years, not a few weeks.  I have not doubt I will earn enough in that time frame to cover my periodic investments. 


Tidbits:  I am running 15 6950's, a random 6870, and 2 6750's.  I average around 5000 MH/s taking into account freezes.