This is just getting nuts

[yochdog]

Newegg is sold out of every 6970 except one.  A week ago you could pick from a dozen. 

It seems like mining adoption is ACCELERATING despite the fall in price and the uptick in difficulty.  Amazing. 

I guess it makes sense though, how many other investments can offer a 100% ROI in about 4 months?  Until it takes a year or more to pay off the hardware, I doubt the adoption rate will slow. 

[Bitcoin_Silver_Supply]

I agree with you that demand is still growing; however, that may change if this price drop holds and continues to slide.

[ManOfKnight]

I wouldn't necessarily blame it on the miners...the 6970 is a good card but I know a bunch of guys that are buying them to game on at the moment because of Battlefield 3 alpha.

[Phateus]

Newegg is sold out of every 6970 except one.  A week ago you could pick from a dozen. 

It seems like mining adoption is ACCELERATING despite the fall in price and the uptick in difficulty.  Amazing. 

I guess it makes sense though, how many other investments can offer a 100% ROI in about 4 months?  Until it takes a year or more to pay off the hardware, I doubt the adoption rate will slow. 

Also, don't forget that old 5xxx cards are probably dying at some rate, so if 6970 cards weren't being sold, the rate would be dropping.

[phorensic]

A smart person on this forum once did the calculations and realized we have almost no power to drive distributors out of stock on AMD cards. We are such a tiny fraction of GPU buyers compared to gamers it's funny.  AMD is just doing a damn good job selling great GPU's.

[ManOfKnight]

A smart person on this forum once did the calculations and realized we have almost no power to drive distributors out of stock on AMD cards. We are such a tiny fraction of GPU buyers compared to gamers it's funny.  AMD is just doing a damn good job selling great GPU's.

100% agree....as I stated above.  It isn't the miners doing this.

[Inaba]

We drove them out of stock on the 5xxx series.  I personally drove my local Microcenter out of stock

[Mousepotato]

A smart person on this forum once did the calculations and realized we have almost no power to drive distributors out of stock on AMD cards. We are such a tiny fraction of GPU buyers compared to gamers it's funny.  AMD is just doing a damn good job selling great GPU's.

Exactly.  Because we all know it's the gamers who are buying up all these cards.  But for some reason only the ATI/AMDs.  You can find nVidia cards every day all day.  Huh.. they must not be very good for gaming I guess.

[Caffarius]

Exactly.  Because we all know it's the gamers who are buying up all these cards.  But for some reason only the ATI/AMDs.  You can find nVidia cards every day all day.  Huh.. they must not be very good for gaming I guess.

Because we all know it's the miners who are buying up all these cards. But for some reason the difficulty is trending down.

You can see just how many of these recently purchased 6970s are mining by looking at the next difficulty prediction. If we did drive them out of stock it was a poor purchase decision it seems, because we're pushing it back towards 1784732 at the moment. Maybe if you wait a few days you'll be able to buy an open box version cheaper when all the panic sellers return some hardware. 

[AngelusWebDesign]

Exactly.  Because we all know it's the gamers who are buying up all these cards.  But for some reason only the ATI/AMDs.  You can find nVidia cards every day all day.  Huh.. they must not be very good for gaming I guess.

Because we all know it's the miners who are buying up all these cards. But for some reason the difficulty is trending down.

You can see just how many of these recently purchased 6970s are mining by looking at the next difficulty prediction. If we did drive them out of stock it was a poor purchase decision it seems, because we're pushing it back towards 1784732 at the moment. Maybe if you wait a few days you'll be able to buy an open box version cheaper when all the panic sellers return some hardware. 

"But for some reason the difficulty is trending down."

Say what?

Difficulty hasn't gone down even 1% since Bitcoin hit the public eye -- let's say May 10th, 2011.

Most of us registered on or after that date. (And please, you 20 people who registered before then, don't chime in this thread with a roll call -- I know you exist, but MOST of us came in May or later)

The fact of the matter is: we have yet to see ANY difficulty decrease since Bitcoin became common knowledge.

You're probably looking at "instant" difficulty estimates which mean nothing. The current outlook is 1.94 up from 1.89 -- we're looking at another 10 or 11% increase about 12 1/2 days from the last one.

[Caffarius]

You're probably looking at "instant" difficulty estimates which mean nothing. The current outlook is 1.94 up from 1.89 -- we're looking at another 10 or 11% increase about 12 1/2 days from the last one.

Instant here being x0.92, "Next" being x0.95. But a lot can change by August 16.

[AngelusWebDesign]

Ok, I see you're referring to

http://dot-bit.org/tools/nextDifficulty.php

I, on the other hand, was going by

http://bitcoincharts.com/markets/

Which shows a projected increase.

Does anyone know how two sites could have access to the same data and yet come to such drastically different conclusions?

I agree that a lot could happen in the next week. For example, some people look at a prediction of stabilizing difficulty as a cue to go ahead and max out their NewEgg Preferred credit card.

[brandon@sourcewerks]

Was able to pick up 3 more 6970's from amazon yesterday.  Still on the waiting list for 6990's though...

[bcpokey]

Ok, I see you're referring to

http://dot-bit.org/tools/nextDifficulty.php

I, on the other hand, was going by

http://bitcoincharts.com/markets/

Which shows a projected increase.

Does anyone know how two sites could have access to the same data and yet come to such drastically different conclusions?

I agree that a lot could happen in the next week. For example, some people look at a prediction of stabilizing difficulty as a cue to go ahead and max out their NewEgg Preferred credit card.

  As always you choose your windows most carefully, there was a difficulty drop right before may, so of course it's "no drop since say, may", which has been all of 3 months time, and not at all indicative of any kind of trending (the entire time has been fairly exceptional).

In answer to your question however, the difference depends on the time period that the calculation is based upon. Sliding block window size, and all that jazz.  A common sense look would yield simliar thoughts however, as bitcoin charts reports 5.32blocks/hr solved, which would be a basis for expecting a decrease, or at least a much lower increase.

I expect the huge ass sell off price drop will lead to a slight decrease in difficulty myself though. Although I won my last bet on difficulty projections, I don't care to speculate just yet betting wise.

[SmokeAndMirrors]

I don't quite understand why people are still buying mining hardware. Currently it will take about a minimum of 4 months to pay off one card.

[AngelusWebDesign]

  As always you choose your windows most carefully, there was a difficulty drop right before may, so of course it's "no drop since say, may", which has been all of 3 months time, and not at all indicative of any kind of trending (the entire time has been fairly exceptional).

I told you why I chose the beginning of May. It's when most of us found out about Bitcoin.

I don't care if a few hundred "early adopter" miners got to experience difficulty drops before May 2011 -- I'm talking about what MOST OF US have experienced since discovering Bitcoin.

You can like it or hate it -- but May 10th is a good dividing line between "most of us" and "hardly anyone". If you have a better suggestion, I'm all ears.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=mlist;sort=registered;start=8970

Sort by "Date Registered", and click on Page 300. That's May 6th. There are 1156 pages total. But I don't think 25.9% of the active membership here is on page 300 or before -- a TON of the users on Page 300 and earlier have 0 posts. And with any forum, you have a larger % of active members toward the "today" end of the list than the "forum grand opening" end.

[mike678]

I don't quite understand why people are still buying mining hardware. Currently it will take about a minimum of 4 months to pay off one card.

I picked up 5 5850's for 145 each and you cant tell me that is not a bargain. I have tested each and the average between them is about 390 megahash. That's .208 a day for this difficulty. I recognize that the difficulty will increase but I'm going to stick with this for simplicity sake.

Now I'm not a dumb ass and I am not selling at the listed price of around 11 dollars. I agree selling at 11 dollars would take a long time to get your roi. I plan to hoard until the price goes up to between 15-20 dollars. So in 30 days I'll have 6.24 bitcoins which is $93 dollars at 15 a btc or $124 @ 20 a btc.

If you take the cost of electricity the card costs $7.2 a month (I pay 6.7c a kwh) That means $86 or 117

Also a months time is only two difficulty increases so my profits wont get drastically lower. Since in a months time the cards will be more then half paid for it still is 100% worth it.

[release]

I don't quite understand why people are still buying mining hardware. Currently it will take about a minimum of 4 months to pay off one card.

I picked up 5 5850's for 145 each and you cant tell me that is not a bargain. I have tested each and the average between them is about 390 megahash. That's .208 a day for this difficulty. I recognize that the difficulty will increase but I'm going to stick with this for simplicity sake.

Now I'm not a dumb ass and I am not selling at the listed price of around 11 dollars. I agree selling at 11 dollars would take a long time to get your roi. I plan to hoard until the price goes up to between 15-20 dollars. So in 30 days I'll have 6.24 bitcoins which is $93 dollars at 15 a btc or $124 @ 20 a btc.

If you take the cost of electricity the card costs $7.2 a month (I pay 6.7c a kwh) That means $86 or 117

Also a months time is only two difficulty increases so my profits wont get drastically lower. Since in a months time the cards will be more then half paid for it still is 100% worth it.

the 145 for a 5850 deal is pretty much the only thing that was worth buying. Anything else now would be way overpriced because AMD is getting very overpriced due to the ridiculously high demand, and Nvidia's relatively low demand.

[fcmatt]

I don't quite understand why people are still buying mining hardware. Currently it will take about a minimum of 4 months to pay off one card.

I picked up 5 5850's for 145 each and you cant tell me that is not a bargain. I have tested each and the average between them is about 390 megahash. That's .208 a day for this difficulty. I recognize that the difficulty will increase but I'm going to stick with this for simplicity sake.

Now I'm not a dumb ass and I am not selling at the listed price of around 11 dollars. I agree selling at 11 dollars would take a long time to get your roi. I plan to hoard until the price goes up to between 15-20 dollars. So in 30 days I'll have 6.24 bitcoins which is $93 dollars at 15 a btc or $124 @ 20 a btc.

If you take the cost of electricity the card costs $7.2 a month (I pay 6.7c a kwh) That means $86 or 117

Also a months time is only two difficulty increases so my profits wont get drastically lower. Since in a months time the cards will be more then half paid for it still is 100% worth it.

testing them and running them for days on end overclocked to the nuts are two very different things.
i would be hesitant to tell someone to expect more then 375 mh/s from a 5850 on average. A minor difference
from your 390 but it all adds up when discussing 5 of them.  For every time a card hangs and it takes you time
to realize it and fix it.. has to be factored into your mining results.

just my opinion. i realize some 5850s perform better then others but a 990-1000 core clock speed, stable for days and day,
is impressive on these 5850 cards.

[mike678]

testing them and running them for days on end overclocked to the nuts are two very different things.
i would be hesitant to tell someone to expect more then 375 mh/s from a 5850 on average. A minor difference
from your 390 but it all adds up when discussing 5 of them.  For every time a card hangs and it takes you time
to realize it and fix it.. has to be factored into your mining results.

just my opinion. i realize some 5850s perform better then others but a 990-1000 core clock speed, stable for days and day,
is impressive on these 5850 cards.

This should be pretty stable though because they run at 75c and it isn't a 990-1000 clock speed. It only requires 960 mhz these days to get 390 megahash. Plus these aren't some shitty brand they are sapphire cards.