Too late to start mining?

[sunyag]

It's tough to say, but the valuations do not appear (at present) to have the enormous payoff for simply buying the coins. Plus, you will at least have your equipment if you go that route, but it definitely looks slower.

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[darkskypoet]

Yeah, I just started a couple days ago, and just ordered another 6950... considering power consumption vs the 5850 and that I already have one 6950... a cross fire rig mostly paid for (gpus anyway) if the mining does dry up is perfectly fine for me. However, i am not gonna jump in with hardware that would require a long amortization period... No real point if the difficulty ratchets like I think it will considering the new comers that will start mining. However, if i had it to burn, and then say an outlet for it.. (a gaming cafe off hours per se) then I would totally take the time to build out a lab to mine... as long as I had a fall back revenue generation stream.

[whenhowwho]

i do not think it is too late. In fact i think it is very early in the game yet. I have spent the last 44 hours straight doing math and mining with a laptop. Yes i said mining with laptop. I did this mainly to see if it could be done. My lappy gets about 166 mhash/s and gpu stays around 100 C. Next week im building a rig that will output about 6ghash/s the price is steep but it will pay itself off rather quickly.  Oh and btw lap uses 155w of power or so under full load. Just as a side note it is going to take quite awhile for the block count to reach 21m but what i cannot quite get my head around is how it is going to be limited to that. I mean in the process of creating blocks you are encrypting the transfer data will there no longer be transfer data at 21m or will the same block be recycled over and over again?

[helo]

The blocks will still be created, there just won't be any block generation awards (currently 50BTC, but this gets divided by 2 every 210,000 blocks). Once all 21M BTCs are "created" miners will only get compensated with transaction fees.

[skyhigh]

i do not think it is too late. In fact i think it is very early in the game yet. I have spent the last 44 hours straight doing math and mining with a laptop. Yes i said mining with laptop. I did this mainly to see if it could be done. My lappy gets about 166 mhash/s and gpu stays around 100 C. Next week im building a rig that will output about 6ghash/s the price is steep but it will pay itself off rather quickly.  Oh and btw lap uses 155w of power or so under full load. Just as a side note it is going to take quite awhile for the block count to reach 21m but what i cannot quite get my head around is how it is going to be limited to that. I mean in the process of creating blocks you are encrypting the transfer data will there no longer be transfer data at 21m or will the same block be recycled over and over again?

Could you please post your math, I would really like to see it. I'm not saying don't do it or that you are wrong or whatever. I would just like to see your research and math behind it and would be interested in talking over whatever areas we would disagree on.

Thanks

[whenhowwho]

you know you are an addict when you take a power nap and the first thing you do is check your creation while sleeping and the second thing is check this forum. lol

@helo ok this may affect my math a bit but assuming the difficulty will grow by x amount as to keep block creation at 2016 per 2 weeks how do you think the value will increase based upon @210k blocks reward per block drops 25 BTC? At first blush it seems that halving the reward per 210k would be extremely detrimental to the BTC's viability.

The factor of new people mining as a hobby would drop as the coin reward drops unless the value per coin were to rise exponentially. It would seem that the difficulty would have to fluctuate wildly to compensate for computing power gains and losses which would also lead to constant market corrections and volatility . That being said it would very difficult to determine profitability over time.

This directly affects my specific right now as negotiations began yesterday between myself and investors. hmmm i think i need to invest in a chalkboard or two.

[helo]

The factor of new people mining as a hobby would drop as the coin reward drops unless the value per coin were to rise exponentially. It would seem that the difficulty would have to fluctuate wildly to compensate for computing power gains and losses which would also lead to constant market corrections and volatility . That being said it would very difficult to determine profitability over time.

I think that it's all about the float. By the time we reach block 210,000 there will be 10.5M BTC in circulation. Wheter 150 new BTC get mined per hour (25BTC/block) versus the current 300BTCph will probably not amount to such a big deal. Don't forget that currently MtGox averages 30K+ BTC/day in volume. The volume will likely be much higher if Bitcoin survives to see block 210,000

Also hardware will be more powerful, cheaper and less expensive to operate in the future. Someone will always have access to powerful machines and figure out a way how to make some $$$ with them - as long as they're mining for the network, not trying to overpower it.

[Jack of Diamonds]

My lappy gets about 166 mhash/s and gpu stays around 100 C.

1. There is no laptop gpu capable of outputting 166mhash/s. Radeon 6970M is the fastest one and fully optimized it yields 110-120mhash

2. 100C 24/7 will kill your chip within weeks

3. A single rig with 4ghash/s would require 12 gpu's = 6x radeon 6990. Not possible by any other combo, even if your mobo has 8 slots, filling them all with 6970s would give about 3200

There isn't even an XL-ATX motherboard that can accomodate 6 dual/triple slot cards without using a bunch of extenders (you'd then be drawing 450 watts from the motherboard power connector just to feed the PCI-e slots which isn't very healthy)

[murfshake]

Man I hope not, got 2x5830 in the mail today, but don't think my power supply will be able to handle it!

[whenhowwho]

@xonar

 The base speed with the flags of -v -w 128 on my 5870m is 140 base clock 700mhz memclock 1000 leaving the memclock the same as it makes no difference on this particular card even lowering all the way to 300 base temp is about 90c .

when i run i overclock to 810 temp hovers around between 100-102c and Mhash goes between 163 and 166



incidentally when i play games such as bad company or vietnam temps hit about 105 and i tend to play for a long time or used to before this whole mining thing

[dmiii]

@xonar

 The base speed with the flags of -v -w 128 on my 5870m is 140 base clock 700mhz memclock 1000 leaving the memclock the same as it makes no difference on this particular card even lowering all the way to 300 base temp is about 90c .

when i run i overclock to 810 temp hovers around between 100-102c and Mhash goes between 163 and 166

http://i1227.photobucket.com/albums/ee440/whenhowwho/Mining.png

incidentally when i play games such as bad company or vietnam temps hit about 105 and i tend to play for a long time or used to before this whole mining thing

Isn`t 100+ temp too high? As far as I know temperatures above 95 Clsius are strongly not recommended 

[dmiii]

@xonar

 The base speed with the flags of -v -w 128 on my 5870m is 140 base clock 700mhz memclock 1000 leaving the memclock the same as it makes no difference on this particular card even lowering all the way to 300 base temp is about 90c .

when i run i overclock to 810 temp hovers around between 100-102c and Mhash goes between 163 and 166

http://i1227.photobucket.com/albums/ee440/whenhowwho/Mining.png

incidentally when i play games such as bad company or vietnam temps hit about 105 and i tend to play for a long time or used to before this whole mining thing

Isn`t 100+ temp too high? As far as I know temperatures above 95 Clsius are strongly not recommended 

[Jack of Diamonds]

Well, you are overclocking a laptop circuit above 100mhz it's base frequency and running it at 105 celsius. Maybe the hash rate really is possible.

I'm thinking that's a big waste of a laptop though. Most people don't like to run their hardware at even past 80 degrees due to long term damage.

[UniverseMan]

@xonar

 The base speed with the flags of -v -w 128 on my 5870m is 140 base clock 700mhz memclock 1000 leaving the memclock the same as it makes no difference on this particular card even lowering all the way to 300 base temp is about 90c .

when i run i overclock to 810 temp hovers around between 100-102c and Mhash goes between 163 and 166

http://i1227.photobucket.com/albums/ee440/whenhowwho/Mining.png

incidentally when i play games such as bad company or vietnam temps hit about 105 and i tend to play for a long time or used to before this whole mining thing

Isn`t 100+ temp too high? As far as I know temperatures above 95 Clsius are strongly not recommended 

Your temperature would likely go down if you underclock your GPU memory. It doesn't impact MH/s, but saves greatly on heat and energy use.

[tokn]

I don't believe mining is too late yet.  Only 1/3 of the coins have been found so far, meaning the 2/3s are still up for grabs.  Although those that have been mining for the last few months and longer are way ahead of the game, but doesn't mean you won't get a piece of the pie, albeit a smaller one.

To everyone who thinks, they could turn around and resell their gpu and recoup some money back if bitcoin were to collapse...well you might want to think twice.

1. If bitcoin collapsed, everyone else will be selling their GPUs at the same time, especially the previous generation cards, and we all know when supply is greater than demand...

2. Computer hardware rarely ever keep their value since newer models come out all the time with the 7xxx series being just around the corner, so for a gamer's perspective you aren't going to get top dollar for the current 6xxx gen cards, esp if the market is flooded.

So if you're going to get in, now is always better than later.  I wouldn't be putting my life savings on either, just what you can afford and see if you get at least a return on initial investment before you dump serious cash into it.

Another thing to keep in mind is would you benefit more with just buying the coins outright vs spending the money on the hardware...

For me I have a system lying around all I needed was to get a couple of GPUs and a bigger PSU to accommodate, and at the current difficulty I should recover my investments in a few weeks.

[tehcodez]

Yes, it's too late to start mining unless

a) You have a sizeable FPGA cluster that can be configured to run all day long

b) You have a ASIC cluster that was built to hash all day long

Just like CPU mining, barring awesome increases in GPU hashing power (which will be purchased by all the already-profitable miners here), GPU mining has almost had its day.

Onward and upward, not sideways.

[digitzero]

Yes, it's too late to start mining unless
...

People have been saying this for months now.  Yes, it's getting harder and harder to generate blocks of bitcoins, but being that bitcoins are by nature deflationary, the value should be going up as well. 

[tehcodez]

Yes, it's too late to start mining unless
...

People have been saying this for months now.  Yes, it's getting harder and harder to generate blocks of bitcoins, but being that bitcoins are by nature deflationary, the value should be going up as well. 

Your statement requires you to "put your money where your mouth is."

As this is the n00b forum, and you're a n00b, you might want to check out the awesome mining calculators that exist; put in the numbers you think will happen. Good luck...

or

Just admit you're a late adopter (relative to those who are not), and invest.

The two cases I'd recommend attempting to mine: 1)If you needed a graphics card for gaming and were going to buy one anyway, it might not hurt (the economic value is different then. Also, notice I didn't say rig.). 2) You know the "f" what you're doing.

[sciter]

Yes, it's too late to start mining unless
...

People have been saying this for months now.  Yes, it's getting harder and harder to generate blocks of bitcoins, but being that bitcoins are by nature deflationary, the value should be going up as well. 

Theoretically it should increase in value indeed. But last increase in difficulty it didnt increase so you cant just blindly rely on that.