BFL Single in the wild (BOUNTY RECEIVED!!!)

[RoloTonyBrownTown]

Wow those look really tempting now.  Pretty close to a 5970 / 6990 but without the power, heat, or noise.  But as was said, they're only *just* slightly more efficient for MH/$.

It's all about reducing the power bill for me.   Same cost (there abouts) for the same hashing power, but at greatly reduced power consumption.    I pay a lot for electricity though so it makes sense for me.  If you pay peanuts for your power then I can see how you'd not be quite as tempted.

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[cypherdoc]

IMO, and i'm looking at it as an investor, financial analyzer, is that these fpga's are a huge game changer for the positive.

as you say, it now allows the average joe shmoe non geek to get involved.  any 'ol executive at a big business can now plug this in at the side of his desk and call it an "accessory".  

the hashing rate is going to blossom upwards and the rewards will come in the form of a higher btc price as this will rise all boats.

you're actually already seeing the positive signs being manifested in the last coupla days rising price.

[Syke]

It's all about reducing the power bill for me.

Then you should consider modern FPGAs like Icarus and X6500. Way more power efficient. BFL Singles will become unprofitable long before other FPGAs.

[jamesg]

Wow those look really tempting now.  Pretty close to a 5970 / 6990 but without the power, heat, or noise.  But as was said, they're only *just* slightly more efficient for MH/$.

I'm not sure slightly is the right word here......

BFL Single 813Mh/80w = 10Mh/1w

At BEST, a 5970 can MAYBE to 5Mh/1w when it is underclocked / undervolted.

So if you consider DOUBLE the Mh/w to be slightly, then maybe I'm dumber than I have been thinking.


Ultimately what this means is, a BFL single will be profitable a lot longer when the next significant downward event happens in price or subsidy.

[Unacceptable]

I have 2 probs with Icarus & X6500:

#1- NO WARRANTY at all....................

#2- The BFL will pay for itself in 4 months(at current rate),the others will take 10-17 months.

The power consumption IS less,but so are the m/h per $$$$.360 m/h @ $560 or 800 m/h @ $600(with 6 month warranty),hhmmmm tough call 

I ran the numbers with this:  http://www.alloscomp.com/bitcoin/calculator.php

1/8 the power consumption(compared to my 2 6970's) is enough for me to get my hashrate up to a profitable margin.

I pay .11 per kwh on average.

[RoloTonyBrownTown]

It's all about reducing the power bill for me.

Then you should consider modern FPGAs like Icarus and X6500. Way more power efficient. BFL Singles will become unprofitable long before other FPGAs.

I'd need 3 or 4 of those to match the hashrate, at 3 or 4 times the price, so no

[Unacceptable]

It's all about reducing the power bill for me.

Then you should consider modern FPGAs like Icarus and X6500. Way more power efficient. BFL Singles will become unprofitable long before other FPGAs.

I'd need 3 or 4 of those to match the hashrate, at 3 or 4 times the price, so no

+1 

[DeathAndTaxes]

It's all about reducing the power bill for me.

Then you should consider modern FPGAs like Icarus and X6500. Way more power efficient. BFL Singles will become unprofitable long before other FPGAs.

I'd need 3 or 4 of those to match the hashrate, at 3 or 4 times the price, so no

3 or 4? 

Sure BFL is lower MH/$ but you might have forgotten to carry a 1 or something.

[SgtSpike]

It's all about reducing the power bill for me.

Then you should consider modern FPGAs like Icarus and X6500. Way more power efficient. BFL Singles will become unprofitable long before other FPGAs.

Weren't those only generating something like 200MH/s though?

[SysRun]

It's all about reducing the power bill for me.

Then you should consider modern FPGAs like Icarus and X6500. Way more power efficient. BFL Singles will become unprofitable long before other FPGAs.

Weren't those only generating something like 200MH/s though?

Stop talking people into BFLs guys! I need to buy them all!

[nmat]

Weren't those only generating something like 200MH/s though?

Currently ~380Mhash/h at $569 and 20W

[RoloTonyBrownTown]

Weren't those only generating something like 200MH/s though?

Currently ~380Mhash/h at $569 and 20W

Ok then, so 2 would get me 760mH (which is close, but obviously less) at $1138 (plus whatever delivery is) and 40W.   So yay, I save 40W at the wall, but it's going to take quite a while to save enough to get me that initial $500+ dollars back.

I'll pass.

[Epoch]

#2- The BFL will pay for itself in 4 months(at current rate),the others will take 10-17 months.

I ran the numbers with this:  http://www.alloscomp.com/bitcoin/calculator.php

I pay .11 per kwh on average.

Um, you need to 'run the numbers' again.

At today's difficulty of 1376302, @832Mhps, and $5/BTC, will generate $3.04 per day using 2kWh of electricity at a total cost of $0.22. So you net $2.82 per day. Cost of Single: $600. Let's ignore shipping and/or tax. $600/$2.82 is 213 days or 7 months payback period. If instead you go with the next predicted difficulty of 1,411,550, your payback period becomes even longer.

Not sure how you 'ran the numbers' and got 4 months out of it.  
Must have been the same way you somehow got '3 or 4' Icarus or x6500's to equal the hashrate of a Single. Try 2.2 Icarus.

I suggest you stop spreading FUD.

[toffoo]

Looks to me as though someone has figured out how to sell pickaxes to miners in the midst of the gold rush of 2012.

[SlaveInDebt]

Looks to me as though someone has figured out how to sell pickaxes to miners in the midst of the gold rush of 2012.

More like

[rjk]

Looks to me as though someone has figured out how to sell pickaxes to miners in the midst of the gold rush of 2012.

More like

No that will be when ASICs come out. (soon)

[P_Shep]

Still can't wait for mine. Getting very excited

[fitty]

#2- The BFL will pay for itself in 4 months(at current rate),the others will take 10-17 months.

I ran the numbers with this:  http://www.alloscomp.com/bitcoin/calculator.php

I pay .11 per kwh on average.

Um, you need to 'run the numbers' again.

At today's difficulty of 1376302, @832Mhps, and $5/BTC, will generate $3.04 per day using 2kWh of electricity at a total cost of $0.22. So you net $2.82 per day. Cost of Single: $600. Let's ignore shipping and/or tax. $600/$2.82 is 213 days or 7 months payback period. If instead you go with the next predicted difficulty of 1,411,550, your payback period becomes even longer.

Not sure how you 'ran the numbers' and got 4 months out of it.  
Must have been the same way you somehow got '3 or 4' Icarus or x6500's to equal the hashrate of a Single. Try 2.2 Icarus.

I suggest you stop spreading FUD.

What's your numbers for Icarus? Based on your numbers for Single, Icarus runs about 14+ months payback period. So the Single is only twice as good, instead of 3-4x as good? I mean sure he was wrong, but it doesn't really change what the better option is.

[triplehelix]

No that will be when ASICs come out. (soon)

do you have information on ASICs currently being developed?


on a side note, total cost of ownership as you scale needs to be looked at when comparing FPGAs to GPUs.  with GPUs, your going to have to invest far more in support hardware (motherboards, cpu's, ram, etc) than you will with FPGAs.

as an example, apparently you can run 100 of these singles off of one computer (1 CPU, 1 MOBO, 1 HDD, etc) where with GPU's, every few that you want to expand to, you have to buy another MOBO/CPU, etc.

so comparing them 1 to 1 is only valid up to say 3 units (or whatever number of pci slots modern mobo's have generally), after which the cost of FPGAs seems to become much cheaper than expanding with GPUs.

[pandemic]

No that will be when ASICs come out. (soon)

do you have information on ASICs currently being developed?


on a side note, total cost of ownership as you scale needs to be looked at when comparing FPGAs to GPUs.  with GPUs, your going to have to invest far more in support hardware (motherboards, cpu's, ram, etc) than you will with FPGAs.

as an example, apparently you can run 100 of these singles off of one computer (1 CPU, 1 MOBO, 1 HDD, etc) where with GPU's, every few that you want to expand to, you have to buy another MOBO/CPU, etc.

so comparing them 1 to 1 is only valid up to say 3 units (or whatever number of pci slots modern mobo's have generally), after which the cost of FPGAs seems to become much cheaper than expanding with GPUs.

But you can use a computer with 4+ GPU's for something else. Good luck using the FPGA for anything else but BTC mining.