Let's recap on what we've seen in the past few months

[defxor]

(Yes I'm sure I want to reply to a thread that has had no posts for at least 120 days)

So, let's recap on what we've seen in the past few months - relevant to the discussion that took place in this thread half a year ago. Since the early FPGA boards were already available then, but didn't convince the GPU crowd that the path CPU->GPU->FPGA->(s)ASIC was clear and inevitable, the new data would be:

Butterfly Labs - Single and Rig Box (FPGA, of which the former is apparently selling like hotcakes)

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=60586.0

LargeCoin (sASIC, although not in customer hands yet)

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=67505.0

... and of course the tantalizing (or worrying) prospect of someone throwing a lot of ASIC (?) power online without sharing

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=67634.0

[1714094328]

1714094328

[fcmatt]

As always one has to do the maths on these FPGA boards which are not cheap.
832mh/s for 600 bucks.
Assume diff stays the same.
Assume price stays the same at 5.29.
Assume 10 cents kW/h and this small board+fan uses 80 watts (butterfly single).
After 10 months of non stop flawless running you will finally be ahead by 25 bucks.

But... diff will go up. Rest assured. 50 for a block will get cut in half before you break
even extending it out to what i will say is a year.

Now with that said if I was just getting into bitcoin and wanted to seriously mine at home
I would probably buy one. It is much better then setting up a traditional rig. But this assumes
you already have a gaming rig or do not want one. If you play games and have an older computer
I would probably just go with AMD/ATI and upgrade my home PC to mine.

Then there are people like me who have free electricity. I am happy running 5830s, 5850, 6950(flashed to 70s). etc...
They represent great value when you buy them used. 630mh/s costs around 150 dollars if you patiently troll ebay.
As for what to plug them into.. pfft.. people are at the point they are tossing MB with two pcie slots in them. Cheap
money. The power supply is the key of course.

In my mind.. the people buying these would just be spending their money on video cards anyway. So diff will go up
just the same with or without them.

As for the last thread.. dunno. Some AMD place is testing a few hundred cards at once and decided to make money at it ;-)

[defxor]

Every post I will ever make in the future will be at a lower average price than the last.

And anyone that believes FPGAs will ever be cost effective for mining is deluded.

Anyone who believes there will ever be a Bitcoin ASIC is simply fucking retarded.

... and finally, we can now end the old heated debate

http://bitcoinmagazine.com/working-avalon-asic-confirmed/

Although since price is at $20 I guess we'll never see any posts from Synaptic again - true to his word:

Last Active:    September 12, 2011, 01:36:26 AM