Are GPUs still relevant and for how long

[erpbridge]

The critical path item is the pricing of BTC/USD, and secondary, the trade of a given coin to BTC. The conversion of the latter usually hovers real close to the generation rate of the one compared to the generation rate of the other, eg all hardware being equal, how many bitcoins can be generated and how many Digicoins can be generated in the same exact time frame, and express that as a ratio. That's the median... you might see pricing shoot above it as investing is done, then drop back down toward the median, maybe slightly dipping below for a very brief time.

The more critical item is BTC/USD. This itself is what determines the pricing for just about everything else. And at this point, we have to thank the people who pay USD and buy BTC, as they are the ones who inject the cash into the economy. If BTC stays level at $120, then yes, slowly things will tend toward un-profitable, as the one CONST is block reward decreases, and the variable that figures in to change things is difficulty, driven by global hashrate. (The same was said when BTC was steady around 5 a couple years ago, and 30 a year ago.)

As before, you will see one of two major changes:
-BTC/USD stays stable, causing miners with less profitable equipment to drop offline, global hashrate to decrease, and difficulty to decrease. (In this case, GPUs that are from the x7xx of their line and earlier... but in the case of SHA256, also GPUs heading up into the high x9xx cards.)
-BTC/USD rises, causing purchase of more equipment, and more global hashrate, driving a difficulty increase.

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[wetjet43]

I invested about $4k into 2 rigs, with 3 7950's each. They've been running for about 1 month, and I've earned 4 bitcoins since. It's a slow payback, but I didn't do this for a fast return. We'll see how well it goes.

[FloridaBear]

yes OP, read the thread linked above, but just incase you're lazy  

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....

The "better" alts are typically only "better" for a matter of minutes or hours lately. Not really viable unless you're auto-switching. Litecoin is still a wash, if your pool also mines NMC. This will likely be the case until ALL GPUs are mining LTC. However, that point may be after GPUs are completely unprofitable.

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.  

It's easy to get that "bitcoin fever" and look at profitability calculators that don't take increasing difficulty into account and say, "hey, this will be pretty profitable," when the reality is it won't be. Honestly, I'm just trying to sound the warning. Sue me for my honest opinion.

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.

Well, you are not posting my rebuttal to that post--I will leave it to the readers, but suffice to say I believe my assumptions are realistic if not conservative. Nobody has even argued about my ACTUAL assumptions, which so far have proved to all be correct.

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...

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.

[/quote]

Wow, a whole $140 on a $700 investment. He will never make $700 total. Thank you for making my point.

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.

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.

I wouldn't have posted if I didn't believe it. Please do the math and just plug in the 18% average difficulty increase we've seen every two weeks for the last 3-4 months. That is the proper way to calculate ROI, not pulling up a calculator that calculates today's profitability and extrapolate 200 days out. We just increased 28% and it sure looks like the next increase will be over 20%. With more and more ASICs getting plugged in, do you think that we will enjoy nice, gentle increases? Do you think GPU miners make any difference in recent hash rate increases (e.g. your theory that I'm trying to keep GPU miners out of the market)? If so, you're suffering from denial.

[massnerder]

The "better" alts are typically only "better" for a matter of minutes or hours lately. Not really viable unless you're auto-switching. Litecoin is still a wash, if your pool also mines NMC. This will likely be the case until ALL GPUs are mining LTC. However, that point may be after GPUs are completely unprofitable.

This statement points to a big portion of the picture that you seem to disregard and misunderstand.  Auto switching is actually not a good way to go IMO, because the alts do bounce around and you mine on the upside...  you need to mine one of them and wait for the upside to come after you already have coins.  I have been watching a few alts that have remained better than LTC for several days, they bounce down to near LTC, and they come back up and let me know when to trade.  Another cornerstone of your argument is that price will not rise with difficulty.  Now, I know that price and difficulty are not directly related, but look at the long term charts and they match up perfectly.  So to disregard the idea that price rises might keep gpus mining longer than you expect is not something I can agree with.  You do make some good points, but you disregard variables in favor of your own assumptions, which may or may not be right.  At the end of the day cryptos are a hobby, what do you care how anyone else does it?  Besides, people have been screaming gpu mining is dead for such a long time that you shouldn't expect anyone to believe you now even if you are right  

[FloridaBear]

The "better" alts are typically only "better" for a matter of minutes or hours lately. Not really viable unless you're auto-switching. Litecoin is still a wash, if your pool also mines NMC. This will likely be the case until ALL GPUs are mining LTC. However, that point may be after GPUs are completely unprofitable.

This statement points to a big portion of the picture that you seem to disregard and misunderstand.  Auto switching is actually not a good way to go IMO, because the alts do bounce around and you mine on the upside...  you need to mine one of them and wait for the upside to come after you already have coins.  I have been watching a few alts that have remained better than LTC for several days, they bounce down to near LTC, and they come back up and let me know when to trade.  Another cornerstone of your argument is that price will not rise with difficulty.  Now, I know that price and difficulty are not directly related, but look at the long term charts and they match up perfectly.  So to disregard the idea that price rises might keep gpus mining longer than you expect is not something I can agree with.  You do make some good points, but you disregard variables in favor of your own assumptions, which may or may not be right.  At the end of the day cryptos are a hobby, what do you care how anyone else does it?  Besides, people have been screaming gpu mining is dead for such a long time that you shouldn't expect anyone to believe you now even if you are right  

Timing is critical with your method, and you're basically speculating and timing the market. You may as well just buy the coin you think will rise.

If you believe BTC price will rise, buy coins rather than GPUs. Difficulty will certainly rise quicker than price; hence it will ALWAYS be more profitable to buy coins directly than it is to buy GPUs, if you believe price will rise.

Of course I expect at least some people to believe me...otherwise why post at all? If I help even one person avoid losing money on GPU mining, it's worth it.

[Littleshop]

I invested about $4k into 2 rigs, with 3 7950's each. They've been running for about 1 month, and I've earned 4 bitcoins since. It's a slow payback, but I didn't do this for a fast return. We'll see how well it goes.

Next month about $400, month after that about $300.  After that if price does not rise then electricity cost will be close to return and time to power down.

[rfisher1968]

I got a small mining rig with just 1 7970 and mining on Slush and 50BTC and have a return of 1.3 BTC (2 months). But I have opened up a coinbase account and have bought 40BTC and recently was able to buy in the mid 90s this weekend. I also make a lot more gambling on satoshidice, 1 BTC just in the last 8 hours. The little BTC I get from from mining is barely anything when compared.

[mgio]

It's hilarious how most people use bitcoin when thinking of GPU profitability.  Bitcoin mining with GPUs is dead.  However, my 6 7970s are bringing in a 200+ hundred bucks a week mining alt coins.

I love Bitcoin and I want the value to stay strong, but I wouldn't even consider letting my GPUs sneeze at it, it just doesn't make sense.  We all mine to make money, so mine what is most profitable.

If you mine alt-coins and get lucky by getting in a good coin right when it starts, you can make your investment back in 1-2 months, even just weeks if you get really lucky.  If you just pick an average alt-coin that is doing good, or whatever coin is doing the best, you make your investment back in 2-4 months.  Difficulty doesn't matter or any of that mess because there will always be new and more profitable coins to switch to.

Don't bother. Alt coins are going to die as everyone who used to GPU min bitcoins switches over to them. The difficulty will soar, and there will be no one buying alt coins up since none of them offer anything bitcoin doesn't already.

[FloridaBear]

It's hilarious how most people use bitcoin when thinking of GPU profitability.  Bitcoin mining with GPUs is dead.  However, my 6 7970s are bringing in a 200+ hundred bucks a week mining alt coins.

I love Bitcoin and I want the value to stay strong, but I wouldn't even consider letting my GPUs sneeze at it, it just doesn't make sense.  We all mine to make money, so mine what is most profitable.

If you mine alt-coins and get lucky by getting in a good coin right when it starts, you can make your investment back in 1-2 months, even just weeks if you get really lucky.  If you just pick an average alt-coin that is doing good, or whatever coin is doing the best, you make your investment back in 2-4 months.  Difficulty doesn't matter or any of that mess because there will always be new and more profitable coins to switch to.

Come on, do you even look at coinchoose.com? That shows every altcoin's current profitability vs. bitcoin (and now the 7-day average). Adjusted for stales, the absolute best coin over the last week was Bitbar, at a whopping 22% more profitable than bitcoin alone. If you throw in namecoin co-mining, it's only 15% more profitable. And that's the best one. Litecoin is actually less profitable than bitcoin+namecoin.

Your 7970s *may have been* bringing in 200 bucks a week, but starting on about Saturday, they will be bringing in about $50 a week total. For 6 cards. The total income for all 6 going forward is probably around BTC2.5 ($275) through September, when you start losing money mining.

As for "there will always be new and more profitable coins to switch to..." well, I kind of doubt that, but I suppose that's possible, for awhile. Scrypt coins could stay marginally profitable for efficient GPUs, but that's not terribly likely IMO.

I know the first step of loss is denial...you need to get past it.

[Charles999]

Still relevant in the scrypt world..but not much longer as prices keep dropping for scrypt coins.. let's hope for another Cyria

[Quix]

I'm honestly just breaking even. But that does include adding new GPUs so I suppose if I sell them all off I'll make some cash.

I wouldn't get in to this now with GPUs because I don't think it will be profitable enough come September. Difficulty keeps going up. If you're really keen you might want to try one Block Erupter USB. I'm considering getting a couple but the mh/$ is quite high.

[Kinetic915]

I'm honestly just breaking even. But that does include adding new GPUs so I suppose if I sell them all off I'll make some cash.

I wouldn't get in to this now with GPUs because I don't think it will be profitable enough come September. Difficulty keeps going up. If you're really keen you might want to try one Block Erupter USB. I'm considering getting a couple but the mh/$ is quite high.

Please don't. Theyre incredibly overpriced

[JohnSy]

Gpu are relevant and for quite some time.  Soon a lot coins will start to grow and more GPRS will be needed. 

[Amph]

the secret is to have a large vga farm so you can switch very fast between altcoin, mining a good amount of them, and sell them asap, because the duration of their profit is very short

[massnerder]

Timing is critical with your method, and you're basically speculating and timing the market. You may as well just buy the coin you think will rise.

If you believe BTC price will rise, buy coins rather than GPUs. Difficulty will certainly rise quicker than price; hence it will ALWAYS be more profitable to buy coins directly than it is to buy GPUs, if you believe price will rise.

Of course I expect at least some people to believe me...otherwise why post at all? If I help even one person avoid losing money on GPU mining, it's worth it.

Well, that's true, but I see it as no more true than mining or trading BTC.  If I had BTC and panic sold during this last weekend in the mid 90's, it is no different than holding my coins and trading at the wrong (or right) time.  You do have a point about trading coins instead of mining, if price is always on the rise.  We all know price is going to be volatile, but I do expect it will go up for the long term.  However, I like mining because it supports the crypto network and because it gives a (somewhat) constant supply of coins to play with.  If I made a BTC last week and lost it in a stupid trade, I can always (at least for now...  ) make another one this week.  If the day comes when it makes no sense to run my GPUs, most of it gets rebuilt into nice gaming machines that I would use anyway.  Even if I sold off my mining hardware it doesn't need to make very much BTC to break me even in that case.  So in this example my view of losing 1BTC != losing $ had I bought that BTC.  It's a hobby and everyone does it differently.  I do think most of the alts will die out in the long term, but I also think that scryptcoins in general will stick around.  We don't really know how it all will play out, so do what you want and have fun    Personally, I will be planning on getting more GPUs going unless the prices come down on some of these ASICs.  So far I have only seen one start up that offers a reasonable price and if they deliver on time then I will switch, until then it's go 7950s, go! 

[aznewsh]

Wow what a great thread - excellent arguments from both camps and in good humor....well sorta 

Update:

I did take the plunge and as anticipated I am not going to be making my fortune but I am having fun, I am currently mining litecoins, though have tried bitcoin (too difficult) and I did take advantage of FTCs little bubble recently.

Please keep the discussion going I was thrilled to come back and see how much it had grown in a productive way.

[FloridaBear]

Sometime Sunday, difficulty is going to jump about 23%, to 19.2 million (the last jump was 28%). That will bring the average 650 MH/s GPU down to about $1.04 per day after electric. Around June 29, the difficulty will likely jump to 23 million or so, which will bring profit down to $0.73 per day. The BTC price dropping to ~$100 is not helping at all.

Plugging in a new 650MH/s GPU today will likely yield less than $50 (0.45 BTC) in mining profits over the life of the card at 20% difficulty increases (which is probably optimistic). By September at the latest, GPUs will cost more to run than they produce.

Pretty irrelevant if you asked me. FPGAs are also irrelevant.

[FloridaBear]

Wow what a great thread - excellent arguments from both camps and in good humor....well sorta 

Update:

I did take the plunge and as anticipated I am not going to be making my fortune but I am having fun, I am currently mining litecoins, though have tried bitcoin (too difficult) and I did take advantage of FTCs little bubble recently.

Please keep the discussion going I was thrilled to come back and see how much it had grown in a productive way.

Litecoins are less profitable than BTC over the last week. I don't understand your "too difficult" comment re: BTC.

[Tomintx]

I have been running the math - My GPU rig is now at 100% break-even with 8.5 cents/KWh, $101/BTC and difficulty at 15.8M.  Difficulty will be at 19M by Monday morning.  Unless BTC goes to $120, I'm pullin' the plug and putting it all on Ebay.  If you still think GPUs are relevant, you can bid for it there.

Now I just need to wait for the BFL stuff to materialize on my doorstep.  I'm hoping that the hashrate is below 300T and that Hell is still warmer than Texas (i.e. not frozen over) when that eventually happens.

In looking at prices for ASIC-Miner "block-erupter" cards, they are about the same cost in $/MH/s as Radeon cards.  Their only benefit is power savings.  It's hard to recover $5,000.00 in power savings while the hashrate heads moonward. 

[Bobs Yerunkle]

Just got my first electricity bill.

Surprise! PG&E Tiered Rates!

Baseline	$0.13 per kWh
Tier 2	$0.15 per kWh
Tier 3	$0.31 per kWh
Tier 4	$0.35 per kWh
Tier 5	$0.35 per kWh

I blasted all the way to Tier 5. That means I win? Right?

My own fault for not knowing.
Mining has officially become a labor of love.
Or collecting BTC.