Calculated Effectivness of GPU Mining come October?

[FLHippy]

Hi

   So I'm now a couple months into a $2500 hardware investment. I've got 3 MSI Lightening HD 7970s running full time, stable at ~710MH/s for each card.

   I've paid for 1/3 of my investment after electricity costs.

   Has anyone done specific calculations on various hardware for what can be expected when the ASIC stuff comes out from butterfly labs? Their website claims that "no one will be able to mine with FPGA/GPU hardware after October."

 Is this a true statement?

  Basically I'm wondering if I should try to sell this hardware now while I still can since the 8000 series of GPUs are due out in a week or two (not that anyone can get one then but..). I would hate to get "stuck" with hardware I can't use anymore. I'm not a game enthusiast.

[live627]

You seriously think your GPUs are gonna be rendered useless overnight based solely on BFL's word?? They'll still be profitable for several months yet as those ASICs aren't coming out on time given BFL's past track record.

[Stephen Gornick]

  Has anyone done specific calculations on various hardware for what can be expected when the ASIC stuff comes out from butterfly labs? Their website claims that "no one will be able to mine with FPGA/GPU hardware after October."

 Is this a true statement?

If they or their competitors actually do ship in October, then yes, ASICs will, in short order raise difficulty maybe 2X or more after a matter of a couple weeks.   Come December 3rd (or thereabouts) the difficulty drop will cut miner payouts by half again, instantly

Basically I'm wondering if I should try to sell this hardware now while I still can since the 8000 series of GPUs are due out in a week or two (not that anyone can get one then but..). I would hate to get "stuck" with hardware I can't use anymore. I'm not a game enthusiast.

I don't know the resale market but ... mining profitability is still pretty decent right now thanks to a decent exchange rate (yes, even with the weekend selloff).  Depending on what you pay for electricity, you probably will get more out of milking our GPU until December than what you will gain by selling a used 7970 today versus selling it 100 days from now.

[gektek]

I'm really confused by the whole Butterfly Labs 'scare' thing. From what I understand about how btc mining works...its essentially random right? So doing something random faster is well...still random right? Therefore, a bunch of equipment out there with higher hash rates are really not going to do anything other than encourage things like P2Pool mining and possibly 'shared' mining investments such as Pyramining ( http://pyramining.com/referral/ecbn2gf9h ...another shameless plug sry ). Now what IS scary is what the market is going to look like when the mined payout halves. I assume this would actually drive the 'worth' of btc up which would again make the above two options more viable...right? Or am I completely misunderstanding the concept of pooled mining...especially p2pool mining...and possibly even bitcoins in general...hah!?

[BlackBison]

You seriously think your GPUs are gonna be rendered useless overnight based solely on BFL's word?? They'll still be profitable for several months yet as those ASICs aren't coming out on time given BFL's past track record.

Well yea thats what I thought, but look at the recent huge hashrate spike...

[CoinLab]

If you are mining with GPUs, you should definitely check out our Protected Pool:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=99643.msg1089915

TL;DR : 95% PPS.  Plus, the longer you mine with us, the longer we'll guarantee that you earn at least $2.50 per GH/s per day. This should be enough to keep most rigs up and running profitably. We will eventually resell your GPU's power for other purposes, which is why we can offer that.

Feel free to PM me if you have any questions.