If you're thinking buying mining hardware, read this first

[Jack of Diamonds]

In all honesty, what could a card do if it was designed by NVIDIA or ATI for the specific purpose of mining? In realistic terms of today's usable technologies I mean.

Could any card ever do 9000mh/s? What about 9000gh/s?

If Moore's Law for semiconductors holds true in the future, then 9000mh/s dual GPU cards would become a reality (in theory) in roughly 7 years. Currently the best dual GPU does about 800 mh/s.

A 9 thash/s card will never happen with current silicon based GPUs. When we move onto 3d and carbon based resistors on graphene wafers after the 11nm process in 2015-16, we could see a limitless expansion of GPU computing power.

I haven't seen plans by AMD, but Nvidia is planning their graphene GPU technology 'Echelon' for 2018, the first chips are said to achieve 10 teraFLOPS of computing power, which is 400 times more powerful than a Radeon 6990. They will also use 20 times less energy than todays GPUs

http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-news/4210815/Nvidia-describes-10-teraflops-processor

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[Jack of Diamonds]

Satoshi has probably created his difficulty model upon the expectation that processing power will really double in performance every 2 years.

Think 1.6 million difficulty in January 2009, people would simply quit mining because even the most expensive GPUs back then before the 5xxx series was released, cost about $300-$400 and only yield about 100mhash/s.

Doesn't sound so bad now that you can buy two 5830's for about 200 bucks and stretch them to 600mhash/s.

Similarly 160 million difficulty wont sound so bad many years in the future when you can get a fairly cheap GPU doing 10ghash/s,
but sounds like a nightmare to someone who only has access to year 2011 gpus doing a few hundred mhash/s

[Quantus]

Just don't fucking do it. Its a waste of your money. I am out $1K bucks. /end thread /pin

[bcpokey]

In all honesty, what could a card do if it was designed by NVIDIA or ATI for the specific purpose of mining? In realistic terms of today's usable technologies I mean.

Could any card ever do 9000mh/s? What about 9000gh/s?

If Moore's Law for semiconductors holds true in the future, then 9000mh/s dual GPU cards would become a reality (in theory) in roughly 7 years. Currently the best dual GPU does about 800 mh/s.

A 9 thash/s card will never happen with current silicon based GPUs. When we move onto 3d and carbon based resistors on graphene wafers after the 11nm process in 2015-16, we could see a limitless expansion of GPU computing power.

I haven't seen plans by AMD, but Nvidia is planning their graphene GPU technology 'Echelon' for 2018, the first chips are said to achieve 10 teraFLOPS of computing power, which is 400 times more powerful than a Radeon 6990. They will also use 20 times less energy than todays GPUs

http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-news/4210815/Nvidia-describes-10-teraflops-processor

Who is we? Nothing that NVidia is developing will reach consumers, at least not in the foreseeable future. If they succeed with their design, and that's a big if, it will be from a millions dollar grant by the US Govt, and certainly not developed in any way for mass release. Not to mention that double precision floating point operations are not at all used in hashing, so the power is irrelevant for bitcoin.

Not saying that technological progress isn't cool, but let's not conjure up pipe dreams of computing bitcoin to the moon just yet.

[Arxan]

... So then even when the difficulty is at retarded proportions, the productivity won't necessarily have to decrease?

When total network was 1GHash/sec a block took 10 minutes, same as now.  The whole point of difficulty is to keep productivity the same.

[Mousepotato]

... So then even when the difficulty is at retarded proportions, the productivity won't necessarily have to decrease?

When total network was 1GHash/sec a block took 10 minutes, same as now.  The whole point of difficulty is to keep productivity the same.

Were blocks worth more than 50 BTC back then?  I remember reading in that one thread about the guy who bought two pizzas for 10,000 BTC that he was generating "a few thousand" bitcoins per day.

[Littleshop]

There are about 7200 generated a day.  So if he was 1/3 of the mining he could do 2000 or so.  That is possible. 

[Arxan]

... So then even when the difficulty is at retarded proportions, the productivity won't necessarily have to decrease?

When total network was 1GHash/sec a block took 10 minutes, same as now.  The whole point of difficulty is to keep productivity the same.

Were blocks worth more than 50 BTC back then?  I remember reading in that one thread about the guy who bought two pizzas for 10,000 BTC that he was generating "a few thousand" bitcoins per day.

The number of coins per block is cut in half every 210,000 blocks.  We are currently around block 136,746 so it will drop to 25 coins per block in about 17 months from now.

[BenTuras]

I think it is simple to ROUGHLY determine how much Bitcoins you can expect from a new to build mining rig. Make a configuration overview and calculate the expected number of Ghashes you would get by using https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mining_hardware_comparison#20_Popular_Mining_Cards and call this number MYHASHES.

Now go to http://bitcoinwatch.com/ and look at the lower left and read the Network Hashrate Gigahashs/s number, call this TOTALHASHES.
On that same page you also see Blocks last 24h, call this TOTALBLOCKS.

The number of Bitcoins in a block is currently 50, call this BLOCKSIZE. This will drop to 25 in 2013 and halve again every next 4 years.

The average number of Bitcoins you can expect to mine on a day is then:

MYHASHES / (TOTALHASHES + MYHASHES) * TOTALBLOCKS * BLOCKSIZE

Now that you have a ROUGH idea, calculate the hardware cost and estimate the energy (http://www.coolermaster.outervision.com/index.jsp)  you're gonna use to run the rig and to keep it at a reasonable temperature (AC ?). Is the place you want to put the rig capable to supply this amount of energy ?

You can go to https://mtgox.com/trade/history to get an idea of the US$ <-> Bitcoin exchange rate.

After all this, you should have a rough idea of your bright or not future ;-)

Any suggestions and improvements are welcome :-) Don't shoot me right away, this is my first post and I am a miner since a few days *grins* after reading a lot about Bitcoins, mining, etc.

The above formula gives a good value for my own situation.

Oh, and also take into account if you really want all the noise of the high rev fans of the graphics cards.....

[mvoss]

I work a desk job. If I bought the best video card that fit in the thing (it's a decent system, I design tools with Autocad Inventor 3D modeling software) then mined all night while I wasn't there, no power costs. THEN, surely it is very profitable...

Except that you'd be stealing the electricity from your employer, not to mention that they would have claim to the bitcoins for providing the system, even if you provided the video card, assuming that your employer / network admin is ok with you making hardware changes.

If none of those things bother you and you're confident of getting away with doing it, then easy profit for you!

This may change things a bit: My father owns the company

[Fjordbit]

I work a desk job. If I bought the best video card that fit in the thing (it's a decent system, I design tools with Autocad Inventor 3D modeling software) then mined all night while I wasn't there, no power costs. THEN, surely it is very profitable...

Except that you'd be stealing the electricity from your employer, not to mention that they would have claim to the bitcoins for providing the system, even if you provided the video card, assuming that your employer / network admin is ok with you making hardware changes.

If none of those things bother you and you're confident of getting away with doing it, then easy profit for you!

This may change things a bit: My father owns the company

Then you're taking money from your father. Also you run into a moral hazard because once the money you are generating from bitcoin is less than the power cost, if you were paying for power, you would simply sell the rig. Here you would continue because even though it nets your family negative.

It's not really clear what card your system could handle. Does it have PCI 16x? How big is the Power Supply? Are there any PCI-E connectors. These things will help you determine if you can mine profitably. Pretty much to get any decent extra money, you would need to drop in a 6990.

[Jakers]

I have an idea that I want to pursue, but I have no idea if it will be profitable at all. I really need some opinions on the matter.

Alright, so this summer I'll be heading to my grandma's for the whole summer, where I'll be working making about $15,000 the entire summer. When I go back North for the school year, my mom's a teacher so I'll have free power. I'm looking to invest about $6000 in computer software, and upgrade to the fastest internet speeds at my location ($175/month). So my only cost monthly would be about $70 for the internet bill (my mom would cover the rest). Would this be a good idea, I know profitability is decreasing and difficulty is increasing, but I think I can make this work since I'm paying minimal bills every month.


Here's cliff notes on what I want to do

1) Go to my grandmas this summer, make $15,000

2) Invest $6,000 in mining software and head back North

3) Have however many computers set-up, running 24/7 (Free-power)

4) Paying around $75 /month for internet



Would this be a good idea? Would I be able to create my own pool with just my own computers?

[deadweasel]

Just work for Grandma, buy coins, hold some and spend some on things you want.  This will likely be the best monetary outcome.

[Luno]

I have an idea that I want to pursue, but I have no idea if it will be profitable at all. I really need some opinions on the matter.

Alright, so this summer I'll be heading to my grandma's for the whole summer, where I'll be working making about $15,000 the entire summer. When I go back North for the school year, my mom's a teacher so I'll have free power. I'm looking to invest about $6000 in computer software, and upgrade to the fastest internet speeds at my location ($175/month). So my only cost monthly would be about $70 for the internet bill (my mom would cover the rest). Would this be a good idea, I know profitability is decreasing and difficulty is increasing, but I think I can make this work since I'm paying minimal bills every month.


Here's cliff notes on what I want to do

1) Go to my grandmas this summer, make $15,000

2) Invest $6,000 in mining software and head back North

3) Have however many computers set-up, running 24/7 (Free-power)

4) Paying around $75 /month for internet



Would this be a good idea? Would I be able to create my own pool with just my own computers?

Where do your grandma live? Can I stay there all year and make $60.000? Is she married?

[crazyates]

I have an idea that I want to pursue, but I have no idea if it will be profitable at all. I really need some opinions on the matter.

Alright, so this summer I'll be heading to my grandma's for the whole summer, where I'll be working making about $15,000 the entire summer. When I go back North for the school year, my mom's a teacher so I'll have free power. I'm looking to invest about $6000 in computer software, and upgrade to the fastest internet speeds at my location ($175/month). So my only cost monthly would be about $70 for the internet bill (my mom would cover the rest). Would this be a good idea, I know profitability is decreasing and difficulty is increasing, but I think I can make this work since I'm paying minimal bills every month.

Here's cliff notes on what I want to do

1) Go to my grandmas this summer, make $15,000

2) Invest $6,000 in mining software and head back North

3) Have however many computers set-up, running 24/7 (Free-power)

4) Paying around $75 /month for internet

Would this be a good idea? Would I be able to create my own pool with just my own computers?

A few questions:

1) What do you mean by "my mom's a teacher so I'll have free power" ? You're not thinking of stealing electricity from any schools, are you? Yes, it is actually stealing, and yes, you can't actually get in trouble for doing it.

2) By "Invest $6,000 in mining software" do you mean hardware? I don't know of any mining software that you have to pay for, but the hardware can be quite expensive. If you're asking about $6000 worth of hardware, that's 4-5 SC Singles, or ~270GH/s worth of BFL hardware. But that's sort of speculation, as who konws what mining will look like 6 months after ASICs hit.

3) "Have however many computers set-up, running 24/7 (Free-power)" Again, similar to point 1 above, these are all your computers, right? Mining on (and consequently degrading their hardware) on someone else's hardware while they pay for the power is stealing.

4) "Paying around $75 /month for internet" One small computer can run all 5 of the BFL equipment I mentioned in point 2, and not require a heavy internet connection. With stratum and varrdiff on a pool such as OzCoin, network and internet requirements really shouldn't be that high. You don't need a $175/month internet bill.

[Jakers]

It'll be my money that I've worked for during the summer, and I'll be using the power at our house so I won't be stealing anything. By mining software I meant the software I need to buy in order to start mining. I guess it's to early to start speculating as I can see how much the bitcoin world has changed in the last 6 months. Thanks for the information.

[crazyates]

It'll be my money that I've worked for during the summer, and I'll be using the power at our house so I won't be stealing anything. By mining software I meant the software I need to buy in order to start mining. I guess it's to early to start speculating as I can see how much the bitcoin world has changed in the last 6 months. Thanks for the information.

Ah ok. Powering computers at your own personal house is ok. As far as purchasing software goes, you really don't need to. Any mining software you need is already free and open-source, it's the hardware that's expensive.

[Jakers]

Okay, how much do you think a set-up that mines BTC in the top 20 percentile would run me?

[crazyates]

Okay, how much do you think a set-up that mines BTC in the top 20 percentile would run me?

That's really hard to answer, because I don't know of any place that shows an average user's hashrate. You said you won't be getting the hardware until the end of the summer? I'd say wait until then, and see what your options are. A lot will change between now and then.

[bcpokey]

Would this be a good idea? Would I be able to create my own pool with just my own computers?

Good idea? A good idea is typically defined by the results, which cannot be foreseen ahead of time. As in "is it a good idea to go swimming with leadweights tied around your feet? Not if you drown, but if you become a world champion olympic swimmer because you got so strong at swimming it is.

That not being a terribly helpful answer, I'll say that no one really knows when and where bitcoin investment is good, it's all very volatile, and therefore very risky. For example, many people, last summer invested thousands or tens of thousands of dollars into ASIC pre-orders. for mining. Since then, pretty much every company stalled out on their promises of delivery, and bitcoin more than doubled in value. By next summer, things might shift that radically again.

What I can tell you is that you will almost certainly not be in the top 20th percentile, nor will it really make sense to run your own pool, on a $6000 investment, barring some very large happening between now and then. As said by another poster, much will be different, so just keep checking in to see where things are by then, and make a decision based on the facts at the time.