these chips are for immediate delivery vs. october....but yes the price is still high, but that's the cost for development. it would be nice to get the price for october prices too. it's difficult to produce hardware without knowing what chip prices will be in the future. originally it was ~$25USD/chip (from the US store) for loose chips and $20/chip for counts of 3K.
one more thing...the card you buy from bfsb and megabig are downclocked to perform at 1.5GH/s. If you buy chips for your own hardware, you can potentially push them to 2.7-3.0 GH/s.
Chip prices will only go down with time..
We will be revising our bulk pricing in a few weeks. I believe that this will coincide with another big announcement, that will make planning your own production with our chips much easier.
Some people tend to make their purchase decision based on price, others on something else. We have a working product that is over 5 times more efficient than anything that has been proven to exist. We didn't collect preorders before we had this working product. This is how we choose to work, and we hope that our style will be appealing for a large enough amount of customers and developers, so that they will choose to go with us.
Our bulk pricing is still competitive, but not the cheapest for sure. At least you're paying for existing product with proven specs.
And we have a self-imposed punishment for missing delivery dates (price drops if we're late + option to cancel). So please choose with whom you want to work with. We will always be happy to serve you.