GPU Mining profitability is a joke

[Ignition75]

I keep reading that X11 is FPGA territory, however I've not yet seen any proof as of yet.

Even ASICs can mine x11. Just take a look at chinese pools. Single users with over 70gh/s.

That doesn't make sense to me.  The largest users I've seen on x11 are people with big gpu farms.

Can you link me some of the pools with 70 Gh/s plus users?  That would be good.  Thanks 

I dont think the 70gh/s is asic, its just mini GPU farm...

I will believe it when I see it...

ASIC manufacturers have a lot to lose if Scrypt coins fail, keeping the LTC price up and hiring shills would be good insurance for them.

[MaxDZ8]

X* algo coins are FPGA territory now.

I keep reading that X11 is FPGA territory, however I've not yet seen any proof as of yet.

Even ASICs can mine x11. Just take a look at chinese pools. Single users with over 70gh/s.

Based on my experience with Qubit (X⁵) I'd say FPGA designs will have to be fairly advanced to mine it efficiently. Even if you take a large FPGA fitting Qubit efficiently is not trivial and you'll have to face even greater problems with X¹¹. Single chip designs will win on efficiency but I don't think they're going to provide extreme efficiency. That said...
Those numbers look high to you because you are used to shitty kernels. I believe it is likely your GPUs could pull out twice the current hashrate with a properly written kernel.

I'm very interested. Please provide links.

[Amph]

I keep reading that X11 is FPGA territory, however I've not yet seen any proof as of yet.

Even ASICs can mine x11. Just take a look at chinese pools. Single users with over 70gh/s.

is there a proof that is a single user? could be a private pool inside the primary pool, in the doge era this one a common thing

[cassimares]

Shut down my GPU rig also, any algo that is worth mining right now?

[ebliever]

Shut down my GPU rig also, any algo that is worth mining right now?

I'm seeing nothing. Trying to keep my head above water with leasing, but even that looks dead, practically no one is leasing GPU's the last few days. Anyone paying more than $0.05/kwhr is losing money on X11/X13/X15 etc.

I think there is a mix of factors right now:

1. General fatique towards altcoins caused by the clonecoin/scamcoin flood. Even the better asset-coin and anonymity coins and so forth are languishing. Low prices equals lousy profits from mining.
2. Increased use of POS rather than POW limiting the opportunities to mine. For example I tried switching from X11 to X13 and X15, only to find most coins listed as X13 and X15 seem to have had terribly short POW mining periods and then went to POS. There's hardly anything left on those algorithms, certainly no "Flagship" coins like LTC for Scrypt and Darkcoin was for X11.
3. Mining botnets - hard to guess how many are out there and how large, but I'm sure they are a factor. Virtually no cost for the thief/hacker running them, so in the worst case crypto mining will end with all legit miners gone and only botnets competing with one another!
4. Miners who don't pay for their electricity - I've heard some people pay a flat monthly rate for their residence, or people using computers at work/school for mining, or more likely you've got teenagers running their gaming PC upstairs while mom and dad can't figure out what made their electrical bills jump. Junior is hoping they won't notice or is too naive to understand they're just cutting their own inheritance. ;-)
5. People mining in the hopes things will turn around soon and the coins they mine today will be worth enough tomorrow to make a profit. The problem with this logic is that it's simply more sensible to shut off your miners at this point and use the fiat $ you save to buy MORE of the coins you are mining than you can mine with your GPU, at current rates.
6. People who aren't paying attention. No idea how many are in this category, but I think some mining rigs are almost on autopilot, with people barely paying attention to them. When they wake up they'll shut their rigs off, but apparently are slow to do so. (I'd be inclined to doubt any significant number of miners are out to lunch like this, but there is proof to the contrary: the absurd numbers and hashrates of miners who keep mining at mining pools that have tanked to horrible profitability compared to easily available alternatives. Anyone familiar with Middlecoin knows what I'm talking about.)

I've told myself that if a week goes by without running a profit, it's time to shut my rig down. So far I've been able to squeak out profits with every trick I can think of, but I pay a little over $0.12/kwhr so it's hard to imagine holding out til winter. On the flip side, propane prices spiked horribly in my area last winter, so I definitely plan to hold on to my rig and run it as a space heater as autumn cools down. So I don't expect to be fully out of the game until ~March 2015, despite how grim things look. I'll kick myself if my 290X GPU's depreciate significantly over that time, though.

[kalus]

Shut down my GPU rig also, any algo that is worth mining right now?

I'm seeing nothing. Trying to keep my head above water with leasing, but even that looks dead, practically no one is leasing GPU's the last few days. Anyone paying more than $0.05/kwhr is losing money on X11/X13/X15 etc.

didn't want to say nothing, but i think leaserig is being overtaken by a few more profitable sites (miningrigrentals comes to mind).  miaviator had made some comments in suchmoon's thread about his comparisons; after working a while on a few leasing sites, there is a competitive market for rig owners. 

still, the prices we're getting for leases are steadily trending downwards.  still making profit, but for only a few more months or so. 

will you keep your equipment, or are you going to sell off at the end of profitability?

[Farndogg]

Look into the Merge Mining pools for the blake-256 algo

[adaseb]

If you have free electricity, what would you all be mining?

[ebliever]

Shut down my GPU rig also, any algo that is worth mining right now?

I'm seeing nothing. Trying to keep my head above water with leasing, but even that looks dead, practically no one is leasing GPU's the last few days. Anyone paying more than $0.05/kwhr is losing money on X11/X13/X15 etc.

didn't want to say nothing, but i think leaserig is being overtaken by a few more profitable sites (miningrigrentals comes to mind).  miaviator had made some comments in suchmoon's thread about his comparisons; after working a while on a few leasing sites, there is a competitive market for rig owners.  

still, the prices we're getting for leases are steadily trending downwards.  still making profit, but for only a few more months or so.  

will you keep your equipment, or are you going to sell off at the end of profitability?

When I bought my rig, I did so with the plan that I would make it my new desktop computer including for games once mining was done. (Most games I play are not CPU/GPU intense, but I do enjoy Skyrim and the Total War series) So it's actually a pretty well spec'd out rig (SSD, blu-ray, fast CPU and so forth). So far I've not so much as played a game of solitaire on it however. I'll keep a pair of 290X's to crossfire them and sell the other pair. I've been buying up Amazon gift cards at 30% off with BTC at Purse.io, and when Black Friday comes I'm hoping to get a good deal on a 4K monitor. Then I'll be a happy camper, mining or no. :-)

I'm curious about your comments about Leaserig and other sites. Seems when I check the other rental sites I'm familiar with they list much lower rental rates, below my profitability theshhold. Is that accurate in your experience or is leaserig competitive still? I've been wondering at how few X11/13/15 rigs were left at LR and if the die-off was due to the overall market or there being greener pastures elsewhere.

[Radelderth]

If litecoin and dogecoin change from scrypt to x11, we would see a big boost in GPU mining profitability. But right now, sell it before you cry..

[MCMK]

If litecoin and dogecoin change from scrypt to x11, we would see a big boost in GPU mining profitability. But right now, sell it before you cry..

It has been a while since I actually checked but LTC said they will never deviate from scrypt. Why would they move from one asic algo to another one anyway?

[ebliever]

If litecoin and dogecoin change from scrypt to x11, we would see a big boost in GPU mining profitability. But right now, sell it before you cry..

It has been a while since I actually checked but LTC said they will never deviate from scrypt. Why would they move from one asic algo to another one anyway?

It would please GPU miners, who would be able to mine it profitably again. And it would shut out ASIC owners, who would be left with just scraps to mine. That would royally torque them off, as well as the ASIC hardware manufacturers. Just imagine how someone who's paid for and been waiting for a KNC Titan all this time would feel.

Going back to GPU mining would help keep LTC mining more decentralized as well. But pleasing GPU miners who are otherwise shutting down and keeping a decentralized network seems like a weak set of pro's compared to the total uproar that would erupt on the ASIC side. I wish it were otherwise as a struggling GPU miner, but this is how the equation looks to me. Only if there were a severe threat from centralized ASIC mining that really threatened the integrity of LTC could I see it shifting.

[Amph]

If you have free electricity, what would you all be mining?

xcn or monero

[Ignition75]

If you have free electricity, what would you all be mining?

Darkcoin.

[ScryptAsic]

If you have free electricity, what would you all be mining?

Darkcoin.

Darkcoin profitability is really low.

[Ignition75]

If you have free electricity, what would you all be mining?

Darkcoin.

Darkcoin profitability is really low.

Apologies, for instamining I wouldn't have a clue, not DRK, it's never been profitable to instamine.

It's one of the best long holds however...

[hedgy73]

I dismantled and sold my gpu rigs 6 months ago, it was bad enough to make profit then but now I believe its even harder.

The only way I made a half decent return towards the end was to mine every new scrypt, x11, x13 or x15 coin immediately from launch hoping they might be worth something.

I would then sell as soon as they hit the first decent exchange as it seems most are worth more in the first few hours of hitting an exchange.

Problem with doing that is you spend a lot of time monitoring the forums and waiting on new coin launches, some of which had me waiting up all night and then turning into failed / re-launches. Some days I would go to work after only a couple of hours sleep, which is crazy.

The only positive thing about gpu mining is that I bought all my cards second hand and sold them on for similar money so hardware depreciation was minimal.

Now I have half dozen s1's split between 2 pools mining away in a spare room, they aren't making any money but they're keeping the chill off that room and drying our clothes. They mine about 0.02 - 0.03 btc a day depending on pool luck so just about covers the electric.

So I'm still in the mining game purely as a hobby but it doesn't rule my life anymore, I'm way past that, it just isn't worth it anymore.

[OrientA]

I dismantled and sold my gpu rigs 6 months ago, it was bad enough to make profit then but now I believe its even harder.

The only way I made a half decent return towards the end was to mine every new scrypt, x11, x13 or x15 coin immediately from launch hoping they might be worth something.

I would then sell as soon as they hit the first decent exchange as it seems most are worth more in the first few hours of hitting an exchange.

Problem with doing that is you spend a lot of time monitoring the forums and waiting on new coin launches, some of which had me waiting up all night and then turning into failed / re-launches. Some days I would go to work after only a couple of hours sleep, which is crazy.

I have the similar experience. If you pay over $0.05/kWh, it is not profitable.

[kalus]

When I bought my rig, I did so with the plan that I would make it my new desktop computer including for games once mining was done. (Most games I play are not CPU/GPU intense, but I do enjoy Skyrim and the Total War series) So it's actually a pretty well spec'd out rig (SSD, blu-ray, fast CPU and so forth). So far I've not so much as played a game of solitaire on it however. I'll keep a pair of 290X's to crossfire them and sell the other pair. I've been buying up Amazon gift cards at 30% off with BTC at Purse.io, and when Black Friday comes I'm hoping to get a good deal on a 4K monitor. Then I'll be a happy camper, mining or no. :-)

I'm curious about your comments about Leaserig and other sites. Seems when I check the other rental sites I'm familiar with they list much lower rental rates, below my profitability theshhold. Is that accurate in your experience or is leaserig competitive still? I've been wondering at how few X11/13/15 rigs were left at LR and if the die-off was due to the overall market or there being greener pastures elsewhere.

it's refreshing to find people with an exit strategy.  too many people are showing up as mining bagholders on the forums these days.

leaserig lost the advantage in number of mining rigs 1-2 months ago; mining rig rentals have more selection these days, and i think them and nicehash have more customer traffic.  when it was doing well, it was hard to beat leaserig. I remember even before LR was bought out the rigs were accountable by deposit, and i felt the owners were selective.  the more difficult it was to list a rig, the more they'd be pushing rigs to other sites.  i think places other sites which were less selected became much easier to list equipment, and that's where both renters and owners ended up. the main problem is whether people see the rigs at all.  i don't think LR is getting the traffic it was in june.

in the past month, the x13 rigs have all disappeared;  i was one of the last x13 rigs on leaserig, and ended up being rented at 0.0008/mh, but maybe once a week for a day or two.  

x15 dried up almost as soon as it started; maybe a week or two of profitability back in july.  

x11 is the way to go right now, but even that return is abysmal.  there's no point fighting for the bottom price anymore.  i think LR is great still for scrypt if you got batch 2-5 equipment.  still good for SHA-256 for getwork.  but for most GPU folks it's not only the power that costs, but managing rigs takes time.  

[Equate]

If litecoin and dogecoin change from scrypt to x11, we would see a big boost in GPU mining profitability. But right now, sell it before you cry..

Litecoin devs already denied change to any other algorithm and with rising network difficulty , huge investments in Asics, I don't see any reason for them to change to new algo . LTC devs hoped that Asics will have same affect on LTC price as that happened with BTC, but on the contrary  things are going in opposite direction. Let the Asic dust settle and then LTC price may be stable.