I can buy a Radeon HD 5830, or I can buy 13 bitcoins
how much time would it take for the Radeon HD 5830 to produce 13 bitcoins?
what is more cost effective, buying bitcoins or mining?
are there any cheaper cards that mine just as well? Thanks!
See the relatively big drop at the right?
That's because after the "halving" (to where the block subsidy dropped to 25 BTC per block) a lot of GPU miners are powering down. They are powering down because they are losing money when mining. They are paying more in electricity than the value of the bitcoins they get from mining. The loss of this hashing power appears visually in the graph as a drop in the hashrate.
Only two things can fix the situation. A much higher exchange rate (like BTC/USD in the $18 to $20 range), or the hashrate falling another 30% or so. Even then if that happens, the only ones mining on GPUs profitably would be those who pay average electric rates or less.
But that argument is moot really.
The very first ASIC manufacturer to ship (and there are five independent efforts not even including Yohan's super-FPGA that he says they've built) will decimate whatever is left of hope for GPU miners.
So if you were going to buy an Radeon for gaming anyway, and want to play around with mining then would could do that without it costing you anything. But don't plan on making any money from it. Those days are likely long, long gone.
