Worthless article as they don't mention WHICH project(s) they run to achieve that profitability.


 How the heck are you supposed to vote in these polls?
 If you say "steemit only" then CHANGE that, a lot of us have no use for that site.

 Some of us run both, and know the strengths AND WEAKNESSES of both.

 If AMD pricing and availability hadn't gone crazy the last 2-3 months, AMD would overall be the hands-down winner for most mining (ZEC would still be strong for NVidia, and certain small-cap coins are traditionally NVidia dominated because AMD *can't* compete on them).

 Since it has though, NVidia RIGHT NOW is quite competative on most coins.



 As I recall, Metropolis was supposed to introduce a 1% POS / 99% POW split, to allow for testing of the POS code prior to the move to full POS long-term.

 That particular split won't have a noticeable effect on mining.

 Innosilicon has been selling miners longer than most.
 They're NOT a scam site.


 This is not to say the "final" specs will be what they announced, they DID announce over-ambitious initial specs for the A4 after all - but it seems like EVERYONE got over-ambitious in the 14/16nm ASIC space, you don't see Bitmain claiming 14+ Ghash any more for S9s....

 You forgot Pinidea, and iBelink is supposed to be shipping a SECOND generation machine shortly (the Bailkal "cube" doesn't count as it's still the same ASIC just they put 2 of them on one board for the cube).

 I suspect Innosilicon will drop the MOQ at some point, the A4 was originally MOQ 100 but they dropped that to 5 after a bit (and had a group buy that would ship 3 to one address).

 I WOULD worry about the preliminary specs not ending up matching the final specs, after the A4.



 Pandaminer doesn't do ASIC, they're strictly a GPU-based miner maker.

 Link?

 I've not seen mention of Innosilicon getting into X11 miner making anywhere before now.

 I'm pretty sure the first *2* batches of the L3+, as well as the original L3, were all "cash or bitcoin" payment only.


 I expect X11 coin network hashrates to climb quite a bit when Bitmain starts shipping the D3 - but how much depends on how big the initial batch size is.

 It says X11 somewhere on the product page.

 It doesn't specify DASH but DASH is the only major X11-based coin.

 It would seem you missed the insane gouge pricing on RX 470/480/570/580 models that have put most of them *WHEN AVAILABLE AT ALL* commonly into GTX 1070 and sometimes GTX 1080 price levels the last 2-3 months.


 ETH network hashrate has stagnated for about a week now, I do NOT see it going up 40% or even 10% unless the price makes a serious move upwards.

 Profitability isn't much IF ANY better right now than it was the middle of last summer, when ETH hashrate was climbing a few percent A MONTH most months.

 For around $2400 (probably a bit less), you can build a NON-RISER 3x 1080ti rig - use one of the Zotac shortie cards in the 3'd slot to let the middle slot card cool, and a pair of Gigabyte Windforce full-size cards for the other 2 slots.

 Ballpark 2200-2300 hash/s on ZEC and don't have to count on FINDING cheap RX-series cards that are commonly "LIMIT 1 per 48 hours" when you can find them in stock AT ALL for under $300.

 Expecting to find RX-series cards at $233 each is a pipe dream anyway at this time.

 The Gigabyte 3-fan Windforce model is frequently available at $699 on Newegg, and there's usually 1 or 2 other NON-BLOWER models at that price point on sale.
 I don't pay attention to the Founder's Edition cards as the cooling on those is fairly poor and they clock a good bit lower.

 Blower models work BETTER in a case in most cases, since they're blowing lots of air OUT of the case instead of just recirculating it.


 On the other hand, 2 x GTX 1080ti is overkill for pretty much all gaming - *1* can handle about anything out there at 60dps on a 4k display.

 Nice specs, but X11 coins are such a small market and already have 3 companies that have/make ASIC for it so I'm rather shocked Bitmain decided to enter it.

 Baikal folks are probably going to be OK since their miners don't JUST do X11, iBLink and Pinaldea folks are going to get squeezed pretty hard.

 DASH is about the only X11 coin that has ever been worth anything (especially back in the DarkCoin days when it was the ONLY X11 coin), and even it isn't REAL big cap.


 I suspect Bitmain has seen S9/R4/T9 sales drop quite a bit, or they wouldn't be bothering with altcoin ASIC miner making to fill up their available foundry space for chipmaking.

 Or perhaps they are using a repeat of the L3+ design because the heat density is low enough they can, just with different chips on the board and slightly different software.

I suspect they aren't bothering to replace dying S7 units as such, just let them die and convert the "slot" into a S9 slot - and modify the available totals accordingly.

 Isn't there an option when your "Hashnest S7" becomes unprofitable for long enough that they shut it and your contract down and give you the option to buy the machine?



 There is NO new tech available for Bitmain to "do R&D on a new chip" WITH, that is going to provide a significant improvement in performance.

 They're AT the current semiconductor state-of-the-art so it's going to be a year or two AT LEAST before such a new process node is AVAILABLE to design for.


 People need to understand that the days of "a new generation in a year or less of miner" CAN'T HAPPEN any more, the only reason that was possible for so long was that miners weren't using the state-of-the-art prior to the S9 (and the same-gen Bitfury chip and some others since then) so they had room TO improve a lot more rapidly.

 At this point, a new generation every 3-5 years is going to be the norm, and expecting anything different is a pipe dream with no basis in reality.



 Given that both IBM and Intel have already stated that Silicon has reached "the end of the road" at 7-10 nm (IBM's 7nm experimental work uses a HYBRID Silicon/Germanium wafer not the pure Silicon wafers most semiconductors have been made on for the last 30 years or so), it seems VERY likely that Moore's Law is finally about to break and it's going to be quite a bit longer between generations after folks get to 7nm.



 It's not so much that Bitmain isn't interested in developing a "S11" model, it's that they CAN'T for a while longer.

Well, it's getting a bit more complicated, prices on Bitcoin and the bigger altcoins seem to be recovering the last couple days.

 ETH network hashrate has pretty much stagnated the last week, have to see if the price climb is enough to stimulate more machine builds or if folks are going to stay cautious for a while.

Just saying that's why all the calculators are optimistic, not that my other machines aren't mining and submitting deadlines.

 IME the calculators seem to be 30-50% on the high side, even on the long-term - and a LOT more than that if you never find a block.

Gigabyte FE for $659 a few days. Then MSI FE for $669 for a few days. Following by Palit FE for $659. The Evga SC2 1080ti is $729 now. I have 2 of them, they hash at 970mh/s skein vs 930-950 for the FE cards. The FE cards are throttling slightly I think, 76 degrees hence are slower.
[/quote]

 I don't pay attention to the 1080 ti cards and generally ignore all of the FE models, as the cooling is VERY poor compared to any aftermarket card.

 Good cooling makes a BIG difference on boost clocks, my Gigabyte 3-fan Windforce model vs my Aorus model in the same machine consistantly boosted about 100 Mhz less due to the inferior cooling, with ALL other settings the same - even when I swapped the 2 between slots in my testing of the two.

 People are still building gaming machines - the Mining market is NOT eating all of AMD's capacity or even CLOSE to doing so on Nvidia.
 Also, you've got some definite mistakes in there.

 Case companies do NOT benefit from mining, as most mining rigs don't USE cases.
 Memory HD SSD Motherboard and CPU companies DO benefit, but it's kind of a push as miners usually buy lower-end parts.

 I don't know many gamers that waste money on that RGB lighting kit garbage.
 I certainly don't waste money on that junk on MY gaming machines.
 I suspect that just is aimed a LOT more at "I want to show off my machine" type folks, who often are clueless about actually making a gaming machine PERFORM well.


 The gamers that are ticked off are the ones that want to use "mid-upper" level GPUs but are finding they're out of stock a lot and higher priced than normal the last few months due to having to compete with miners for those parts.
 HIGH END gamers don't care, they're using NVidia 1080ti GPUs that haven't had shortage and gouge pricing issues, and a few of the mid-upper folks that used the gouge pricing issue to justify moving up TO the current top gaming card.

 A lot of us miners are also gamers.

 My "primary gaming" machine right now runs a pair of RX 470 and a HD 7750 - and spends more time most days mining than gaming.
 The HD 7750 is a low profile card, and is only in there 'cause it was the only thing I had that both would fit in the 3'd slot AND allowed the middle card to cool properly.

 My previous "primary gaming" machine also did double duty - pair of GTX 960 and a GTX 950 (3'd cards a shortie for coolling). It's pretty much a dedicated miner now, though I also run some of my wallets on it and I CAN still game on it if the main machine is down for some reason.

 Pinaldea (sp?) USB-based thing where the fan is about as big as the actual miner?

 Depends on the specific 1080 ti model (some clock higher than others), and also on your settings especially TDP, but generally yes.