New card for mining

[txoomy]

I priced out a new card for mining.

$409

Radeon HD 7970 OC 3GB GDDR5 PCI-E w/DVI, HDMI

Thoughts?

[Aahzman]

Don't waste your money on GPU for mining. You'll get *maybe* 800MH/sec out of it, with a lot of tweaking, swearing and frustration.  Order a $1300 60GH Avalon ASIC, and for the cost of 3 of those cards, you'll have almost 77x the hashing power.  Or pre-order a pair of BFL Little Single ASIC @ 30MH each, for about the same price. You won't see them until probably June/July at the earliest, however.

[middlemarkal]

Avalon batch 3 are 5000$

I agree don't buy a GPU now but use what you already have

[txoomy]

Avalon batch 3 are 5000$

I agree don't buy a GPU now but use what you already have

I don't have anything yet..

I wast going to build a new PC with that card. The total build came to about $1200.

[txoomy]

Don't waste your money on GPU for mining. You'll get *maybe* 800MH/sec out of it, with a lot of tweaking, swearing and frustration.  Order a $1300 60GH Avalon ASIC, and for the cost of 3 of those cards, you'll have almost 77x the hashing power.  Or pre-order a pair of BFL Little Single ASIC @ 30MH each, for about the same price. You won't see them until probably June/July at the earliest, however.

I have a budget of about $1500 for a new PC, for just mining. I want to buy one this weekend, not wait til summer.

[Feldspar]

Don't waste your money on GPU for mining. You'll get *maybe* 800MH/sec out of it, with a lot of tweaking, swearing and frustration.  Order a $1300 60GH Avalon ASIC, and for the cost of 3 of those cards, you'll have almost 77x the hashing power.  Or pre-order a pair of BFL Little Single ASIC @ 30MH each, for about the same price. You won't see them until probably June/July at the earliest, however.

I have a budget of about $1500 for a new PC, for just mining. I want to buy one this weekend, not wait til summer.

As somebody who built a new PC in January, mostly for gaming, but with an eye towards mining as well, the other posts in this thread are correct. You'll maybe get up to a BTC or less a month, currently. Which, if you're okay with that, go for it. But those aforementioned ASICs will be coming out en masse soon enough (unless butterflylabs is a complete scam after all), and when they hit the blockchain on a large scale, the difficulty will shoot through the roof and GPU mining will be increasingly not worthwhile, even with the BTC price so high.

[Aahzman]

ugh. didn't know batch 3 was so ridonk. talk about inflationary butt-fucking.

[Gator-hex]

Get an old PC off ebay and stick some 5830s/5850s in it and you'll be gaming & mining for <$400 total.

[txoomy]

Thanks for the feedback. What are the different configs available with ASIC.

I want to control my budget.

[txoomy]

Get an old PC off ebay and stick some 5830s/5850s in it and you'll be gaming & mining for <$400 total.

But if I have a budget of $1500 for a new build, will going with a 7970 give me much better results?

[Tejsei3]

Recommend you do some calculations, such as MH/s/$ and MH/s/W for each of the cards.

You can find common MH/s, Power, and price numbers here: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mining_hardware_comparison

Also, look at your electric bill and see how much you pay for power, for example, $0.16/kWh

For example, say a 7970 can reliably do 650MH/s at 200W (not sure if this is right, check the numbers yourself) and goes for $400.

MH/s/$ = 650 MH/s / $400 = 1.63 MH/s/$
MH/s/W = 650 MH/s / 200W = 3.25 MH/s/W

Do the same for the other cards you're comparing and you'll have a basis for making your decision. This is a great application for a spreadsheet.

I've done the same analysis myself and for quick payback you can't beat a $100 5850, but if you're looking beyond 6 months a 7950 is a great card, but at $300 it'll take longer to pay back. After the payback period you're getting much more hashing power for a given power requirement.

The difficulty with all of this is no one knows what will happen. Will difficulty increase? How much? Will ASICs hit sooner or later? Will GPU miners migrate to Litecoin or just sell their hardware? How will the price of bitcoins and litecoins vary relative to your local currency? Lots of unknowns, that's why they call it gambling!

[txoomy]

Thanks, great answer. I'll look have a look.

[JoroBo]

For now there are not many options for ASIC - Avalon are the only known company that actually managed to produce and ship them. Butterfly Labs is the other contender who are supposed to start shipping any time now but they initially had to ship their products in October or last year anyway...

[txoomy]

How about this one:

http://www.memoryexpress.com/Products/MX36957 - $750

Specifications
Processor   AMD FX-4100 3.6GHz Black Edition
Motherboard   Asus M5A97 Motherboard
Graphics   AMD Radeon HD 7770 1GB Graphics Card
Memory   G.Skill 2x4GB DDR3 1600MHz Memory
Hard Drive   WD 1TB Caviar Blue 7200RPM 64MB
Optical Drive   22x DVD+/-RW
Chassis   Velocity IW-C583 Mid Tower
Power Supply   Power Man 500W Power Supply (3x18A on 12V)
Operating System   Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit
Warranty   1 Year Parts & Labour



or this one:

http://www.memoryexpress.com/Products/MX42482 - $1400

Specifications
Processor   AMD FX-8120 Processor 3.1GHz w/ 16MB Cache
CPU Cooler   Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus
Motherboard   Asus Sabertooth 990FX
Graphics   AMD Radeon HD7970 Graphic Card
Memory   G.SKILL 2x4G 1600MHz Memory
Hard Drive   Crucial M4 128G SSD
Seagate 1TB Barracuda 7200RPM 64MB
Optical Drive   24x DVD±RW
Chassis   Cooler Master CM 690 II Advanced / USB3
Power Supply   Cooler Master Silent Pro 850W Power Supply
Operating System   Windows 8 64bit
Warranty   1 Year Parts & Labour

[Gator-hex]

Get an old PC off ebay and stick some 5830s/5850s in it and you'll be gaming & mining for <$400 total.

But if I have a budget of $1500 for a new build, will going with a 7970 give me much better results?

2x Ati 5830's are 520-600MHs (depending on overclock) for $180
Dell Core 2 Duo Tower PC XP $85
Total = $265

Leaves you $1235 to for the Butterfly Labs 60gh/s $1299 ASIC later.
(okay u gota find another $64 by then but you'll mine that in less than a month)

Having a cake and eating it.