How to determine if an FPGA is suitable for mining?

[R04dRunn3r]

Call it unethical but my friend from college has a 4x5970 setup running 24/7 in his office at work. He has a few more of the same rigs running 24/7 at his sister's house because she is on some low income energy program where she pays a flat rate no matter the usages.

Tapping power that is being paid for by the state/government doesn't matter to me. We are paying for it one way or another.

Damn right is your friend. We payed the goverment way to much the last decade, time to get something back for it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Even when it's only electric power. People are being ripped off by the goverment and it's time to do something back!!!!!
We can all start by undermining the central banking system by mining/trading/buying Bitcoins!
So support Bitcoin is a vallid way to protest to the way goverments function!

[chrisp]

On one page they describe a project that costs $175.  But I think they all use a spartan chip.

I too was wondering if the problem can be solved by 200 $0.50 chips or something like that.

Part of the difficulty with using multiple smaller parts is the large state-size.  Each iteration requires 8 32-bit integers as well as other variables.  To pass >256 bytes at the goal clock rate would in general more expensive than using a larger FPGA.