Not looking good for FPGA's

[FCTaiChi]

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=209750.msg2197347#msg2197347

If you are invested in FPGA's and wish to check my database, it's there!  (love to get any errors corrected anyway)

[Ultraviolet]

Your spreadsheet would have value if even 40% of those ASICs actually existed. There's a huge difference between the shit people post saying they have/will have/is coming and what actually is available and has shipped.

Pretty much just Asic Miner and Avalon have a real product with the group buys on Bkk's Klondikes being 3-4+ months out being behind that. Avalon is barely less vapourware than BFL and BFL looks like a real company compared to some of the other miners you have listed.

[FCTaiChi]

Just to make it clear, I'm not saying to stop running your FPGA's, I'd love to have some..  but that we may be approaching a point where the price of BTC will have to go up to make buying new ones worthwhile.

Are you saying that they will never be available to the public?  I'll be perfectly happy to move the time frame back if they don't deliver, or remove them if they get a scammer tag.  I'm just aggregating information and making it easily available to people.

Anyway the vapourware doesn't get to the basic topic of the post, no matter what happens with those the difficulty will continue to rise.  It looks like at this point there isn't anything you can buy that will break even, unless maybe you get in on the next couple blackarrow at 10+

[andrewsg]

It's not looking that bad, I will agree with you that buying them now make little sense, but for those who have them up and running, they are still very power efficient, and will continue to be profitable for some time. Also, FPGAs retain their value quite well for resale.

[FCTaiChi]

Oh yeah, if I had any I'd probly run them till the blocks run out!

[bb999]

I think a lot of it depends on your electricity costs and what your investment time horizon is.  The days of 3-6 month payback periods may be coming to an end, but even if it takes 1.5-2 years to earn your investment back that is still terrific by non Bitcoin investment standards.

[FCTaiChi]

This shows how many bitcoins you can make in a year with 1GH.  For instance if I think difficulty will be 13% for the next year and I'm going to be getting my FPGA at July of this year.  Lets say this is a 300MH about the best you can do is 2BTC. 

So with 1GH in July at 13% you would get almost 3BTC. 
At 300MH that's less than 1BTC in a year.
As you can see if you were going to run a card for a year starting in March next yer you'd only get 1/4 of a coin.

Anyway if that's hard to understand it looks like you would spend about 2BTC and get back less than 1.5 in two years.  This is without electricity.

Does this mean you won't get paid back?  No, the price will probly go up and you'll get your electricity back + some.
This is just saying that you're not going to make your coins back, you would have done better in the long run buying BTC