Are GPUs still relevant and for how long
ScaryHash:
GPUs for Bitcoin mining will still make BTC, but at current prices, will stop being profitable by about 22 million difficulty.
This depends on your power cost as well. At 15 cents a Kwh, they stop being profitable closer to 19 million difficulty. If you have cheap power, you could probably extend that to 22 million, roughly.
When they stop returning significantly over power cost is a question that each individual miner has to answer for themselves.
You can also mine other scriptcoins, not just BTC. Most of the BTC mining will probably be going over to ASICs in 6 months tops.
massnerder:
Quote from: Rakessh on June 05, 2013, 12:54:14 PM
And since they're twice the price of equal games wise performing nVidia cards, one could probably deduce they are bid on by hobbyist bitcoin miners, eh? 8)
(The ones on eBay that is)
Maybe true, but I know some folks who absolutely will not buy nvidia or vice versa, for whatever purpose. I know plenty of gamers who have 'good enough' gaming rigs and who don't need/want to be on the bleeding edge of new tech. The newest stuff is expensive ;D For example, I have 7950s in my mining machine and a 6770 in my gaming pc. Could my games be a little bit prettier with a 7xxx? Sure. Does it really affect my gameplay? Nope. I wonder how many people are waiting for the next series of cards to come out so they can grab a cheaper 7xxx card to game on?
My point is that there will always be a market for older hardware. I really don't care who buys it or for what, just as long as people will still buy it. You may not be getting close to what it originally cost, but it will sell. I used to sell 10-20 year old computer parts on ebay in my old job, and always thought 'why the hell would anyone buy this??' My boss at the time even got mad at me for trying to sell some new(er) obsolete parts for a few bucks more than I could find them anywhere else, because it was less than half the original price (they were 5+ years old). Couldn't explain that they weren't worth that much anymore to the guy.... those parts probably still gathering dust and losing value in his office today lol
FloridaBear:
Quote from: aznewsh on June 02, 2013, 05:41:30 PM
I have tried to do a lot of research and used calculators etc, however there is a lot of guesswork and I would appreciate more informed opinions.
With ASICs on the horizon - If I were to invest in GPUs:
1) Am I likely to get at least my money back?
IMO, no. See https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=204322.0. With difficulty now at 15.6 million, I think it's a very bad time to buy GPUs strictly for mining. You may be able to mine some BTC and then sell them to make a tiny profit, but I don't think it's worth the risk.
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2) Are there realistic options in Alt currencies that the GPU could be useful for vs ASIC - can ASIC at this point or in the near future be used in Alt?
I discussed that in the above linked thread--current GPUs will hash scrypt altcoins while ASICs will not. However, my theory is that GPUs will shift to scrypt coins (mainly LTC), keeping it roughly in line with BTC, until ALL GPUs have shifted over to LTC. There may be a period at that point where LTC mining is somewhat profitable, but FPGA development is already underway for scrypt, and that will doom GPU mining in the same way.
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3) Are there any realistic ASIC options at this point, all the sellers seem rather dodgy to me?
I don't really think so. They are either too expensive (e.g. ASICMINER), unavailable, or delivery date too uncertain.
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4) What other angles could I look at other than actually buying Bitcoin of course?
Well, you could always look at stocks on btct.co, but the options are pretty limited.
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Feel free to add any other pearls of wisdom that spring to mind...
Thanks for your time.
The numbers have gotten even worse after the 28% jump in difficulty. A 7970 put to work today will likely make less than 1 BTC over its useful life--which is probably only until mid-October before it costs more to run than it earns when difficulty hits about 60 million (this is for 650 MH@250W). Currently, you will start at only about $2 per day, and that likely drops to $1 by the end of July.
Don't start a GPU farm!
massnerder:
yes OP, read the thread linked above, but just incase you're lazy ;)
Quote from: kendog77 on May 14, 2013, 12:16:41 AM
I believe some miners purposely give out bad advice on forums like this one to discourage new folks from mining because it will chip away at their own personal profits. How many GPUs do you own, FloridaBear? ;)
This! I have been mining altcoins with my rig and to say that they are dead when some of them are consistently more profitable than btc to mine screams 'i have ulterior motives'... Historically LTC has been ~30% more profitable to mine than BTC, and I will admit that it was a wash 2 weeks ago when this thread was posted, but look again and you will see that it is back up to 30% more profitable today. Some alts even better than that. I have made 1btc in the last week on a single rig with those 'dead' altcoins....
Quote from: ISAWHIM on May 14, 2013, 06:24:43 AM
That's a lot of assumptions, without any actual knowledge or proof, other then speculation on hypothetical possibilities.
Thus, useless. That was the point of my prior post.
Who are you warning? Yourself? Why do you care what others do? Obviously your point of view is as limited as your knowledge, but I may just be assuming that. (Irony)
So, should we all buy "non-existent, non-shipping", ASIC's that won't be here until after Christmas?
..........
The "defense" was that alt-coins were a FAD...Yea, they WERE, so were bitcoins. Bitcoins didn't make bitcoins valuable, we did, and where we go, the value goes. With our hardware.
But anyways... Don't buy GPU's. That leaves more hashing for me, here or there... On a plane, on a train, in Spain, or in the rain. I don't give a flying f**k, as long as it turns green, and comes from my f**king machine!
lol, yes, FB... why exactly do you care enough to start a new thread warning everybody to stay away from gpus? Are we all buying them on your credit card? I must have missed the memo, I will take some free 7950s please. ;D
Quote from: peewee on May 14, 2013, 07:44:45 AM
FloridaBear has clearly made way too many assumptions to have any credibility...this is just more button pushing to try and curb the flood of new miners coming to the market.
Quote from: BBQKorv on May 14, 2013, 02:02:02 PM
Do not buy GPUs so I can make a bigger profit ;)
Thats a serious advise to all of you.
and here is an example of it working out for another newbie...
Quote from: jacoby0419 on May 14, 2013, 03:55:48 PM
I'm doing alright so far... Only been doing it about 3 weeks and just last night added enough to get me to 1.5 Gh/s. New cards bought on sale with rebates and selling game cards brings the cost way down. Installing them in a handful of systems I had laying around- I've brought in about $140 for $700 in expense so far.
I'm having fun, and it looks like I'm going to do alright- no it won't make me rich, but especially when it comes time to sell cards I think I'll come out ahead by a fair bit.
The real point is that FB here can't see the future any better than you or me. Read up and do what you want, don't put anything not expendable 'hobby money' into btc and don't expect to get rich .... you'll be alright and might even have some fun doing it.
Quote from: philips on May 15, 2013, 09:02:32 PM
Come on guys, this is the same old story over and over, don't do this, don't do that...for how many threads now since last year?
Take the risk, don't take the risk, whatever.
Better wait until GPU mining IS dead and open a I've told you so thread.
daemondazz:
Quote from: DPoS on June 05, 2013, 01:38:24 PM
exactly.. ask how many 'photographers' ever make anything back from all the lenses, etc they throw down on
I got in by treating it as a hobby that happens to return a bit of investment back. I've dropped about $5k into model helicopters and got nothing back except the fun of flying (and needing to put more money in whenever I crash).
With bitcoin, I've dropped about $1500 and so far gotten about $500 back from mining, and love the cool facter as well.
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