Mining: Using ATI cards compared to dedicated ASIC mining machines

[ed1973]

I am just a newby and I question myself:

Why do most people use ATI graphic cards to mine bitcoins, instead of using dedicated ASIC mining machines ?

I found this link : https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mining_hardware_comparison

When I look at:

- hash rate (Mhash/s)
- price
- power consumption

I conclude that a dedicated mining machine Xtreme Miners Lion 7.5 Th of $14.500 with a hash rate of 7.500.000 Mhash/s and power consumption of 2250 Watt, is much more efficient then the setup I found on this website : https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mining_rig

A PC with Three ATI 6990s cards, total costs $1824 with a hash rate of 1.400 Mhash/s and power consumption of max 950 Watt.

I really do not understand, why people invest in ATI cards, while the dedicated mining machine is about 5000x faster and cost about 10x times as much.

Can somebody explain this to me ?

[Vizakenjack]

coz there are no asic for litecoin and scrypt-based forks.

[ed1973]

Thanks, do you maybe have a link to learn more about scrypt-based forks and the advantages of that ?

Keep in mind, that I am still learning.

[bitpop]

They don't, only for litecoin

[superresistant]

No one use GPU to mine Bitcoin since a long time.

[infinitybo]

The forum "search" function is pretty useful if you want to learn more about scrypt-based forks and the advantages of that.

[DrG]

Pretty much all Bitcoin mining today is all ASIC (a few FPGA).  Bitcoin started off using CPU, then went GPU in 2011, FPGA in 2011/2012 and ASIC in 2013.

Litecoin became a strong alt as many other alts failed.  It started as CPU mining and is now on the GPU mining cycle.  Supposedly ASIC are in the works but given the way it is computed that seems unlikely.