Butterfly Labs - Bitforce Single and Mini Rig Box - page 62.

jamesg

vip

Activity: 1358

Merit: 1000

AKA: gigavps

Quote from: malevolent on March 14, 2012, 06:03:36 PM

Quote from: jamesg on March 14, 2012, 05:49:53 PM

Rig box should get 20Mh/w and was priced (when I bought them) at $25k each. That's $0.50/Mh which is pretty darn good unless you are really bargain hunting for GPUs and the other items needed to run them.

How can you tell that rig boxes will get 50GH and use 2.5kW? I wouldn't be surprised if it turned the same as with singles (1.05GH, 19W if I remember right..). Of course I hope this time they will go along a different route, I might buy one myself then (once I raise enough money ofc, $30k, even 25, is a bit steep).

BFL has already adjusted their original estimates on the Rig box based on their finding from the single and are quite confident this time around.

stevegee58

legendary

Activity: 916

Merit: 1003

I'll wait for some of the early adopters to get out of mining in a few months and buy a used BFL for 50% off. Cool

jamesg

vip

Activity: 1358

Merit: 1000

AKA: gigavps

Quote from: max in montreal on March 14, 2012, 06:02:16 PM

I have 2 issues I am trying to figure out...

1.they guys making the fpga's can sell them, but for every one they sell, they keep one, and mine with it, eventually drowning us all out.
2.the reasons you give for guys with gpu's dropping out will eventually be the same reasons you guys drop out, your buying the least efficiant fpga.

The jump from CPU to GPU along with a huge price spike will be quite hard to replicate IMHO. Bringing on 1Th of FPGA/sASIC equipment will not raise the difficulty significantly and will take quite a while. It will take something like a custom ASCI chip sold in mass to duplicate the jump in difficulty we had from CPU to GPU.

As for buying the least efficient FPGA, I believe it is the jump from GPU to FPGA which matters most to my bottom line. A rig box, as proposed, is so much more efficient than my GPUs that it will pay for it's electricity costs in 1 day of mining whereas it takes my GPUs 15 days to pay for the electricity they use. If I tried to purchase equipment that was twice as efficient as the rig box, it would pay for the electricity in 1/2 day. This is a diminishing return and not the only thing to consider as I would like to make my original investment back.

makomk

hero member

Activity: 686

Merit: 564

Quote from: DeathAndTaxes on March 14, 2012, 10:34:15 AM

Yes theoretically it would be optimal to always return work as soon as it is found. Still for efficiency IIRC even GPUs run an entire "batch" and return all work at the end. The batch just happens to be small. Technically the larger batch size may be resulting in slightly higher lost work even in a "normal pool".

I believe GPUs are designed to process batches of computations, so you pretty much have to do it that way. There's no reason why FPGAs can't be designed to return nonces as they're found and continue processing the work though, and unlike with GPUs there's not really an efficiency penalty for decreasing latency this way on the designs I've seen.

Quote from: DeathAndTaxes on March 14, 2012, 10:34:15 AM

There is no "free" lunch when working with a smaller nonce range though. There is some latency and overhead in setting up work for the processor.

If you're clever you can make this latency more or less irrelevant to the total hashrate on FPGAs, though I don't think the BitForce boards do that either.

malevolent

legendary

Activity: 3472

Merit: 1724

Quote from: jamesg on March 14, 2012, 05:49:53 PM

Rig box should get 20Mh/w and was priced (when I bought them) at $25k each. That's $0.50/Mh which is pretty darn good unless you are really bargain hunting for GPUs and the other items needed to run them.

How can you tell that rig boxes will get 50GH and use 2.5kW? I wouldn't be surprised if it turned the same as with singles (1.05GH, 19W if I remember right..). Of course I hope this time they will go along a different route, I might buy one myself then (once I raise enough money ofc, $30k, even 25, is a bit steep).

max in montreal

hero member

Activity: 504

Merit: 500

I have 2 issues I am trying to figure out...

1.they guys making the fpga's can sell them, but for every one they sell, they keep one, and mine with it, eventually drowning us all out.
2.the reasons you give for guys with gpu's dropping out will eventually be the same reasons you guys drop out, your buying the least efficiant fpga.

PulsedMedia

sr. member

Activity: 402

Merit: 250

Quote from: jamesg on March 14, 2012, 05:49:53 PM

Quote from: max in montreal on March 14, 2012, 05:42:48 PM

whats the reasoning you guys are using to buy these instead of ICARUS fpga's.

just curious.

Rig box should get 20Mh/w and was priced (when I bought them) at $25k each. That's $0.50/Mh which is pretty darn good unless you are really bargain hunting for GPUs and the other items needed to run them.

When the subsidy halves, we will see a lot of GPU miner become unprofitable with 2Mh/w to 5Mh/w unless the price rises substantially. I doubt the price will jump like this in lock step with the halving (I've been wrong before) so we should see the same thing we saw when the price went to $2. Miners will quit.

I'm targeting long term goals, so even if price goes down now to 1$ i will keep my miners operational. I see all of this as a risk investment and my goals are set on not what BTC is today, but what it is 1,3,5,10years from now. If best case scenario happens in 10-15years i can retire off my mining earnings from the 2$ days or whatever the low point is going to be. Hence i mostly invest outside money to my rigs. Right now i'm on 2nd investment period and i've yet to sell single BTC (quite the contrary).
My initial miners were bought with 10€ BTC investment from year earlier, which was worth at peak something like 7500€ .... Looking back now i should've sold 90% of my BTC back then XD

kano

legendary

Activity: 4592

Merit: 1851

Linux since 1997 RedHat 4

Quote from: P_Shep on March 14, 2012, 05:48:07 PM

Quote from: Inaba on March 14, 2012, 05:46:32 PM

Quote from: max in montreal on March 14, 2012, 05:42:48 PM

whats the reasoning you guys are using to buy these instead of ICARUS fpga's.

just curious.

Too expensive and too slow.

200 MH/s for $500, really? Thanks, no.

This.

Not "this" - yes he corrected it but it's still not right.

Icarus 380MH/s $569

Not sure where ANY of those other numbers came from ... ... ...

jamesg

vip

Activity: 1358

Merit: 1000

AKA: gigavps

Quote from: max in montreal on March 14, 2012, 05:51:56 PM

ok....why will miners quit?

Mining will become unprofitable.

max in montreal

hero member

Activity: 504

Merit: 500

ok....why will miners quit?

jamesg

vip

Activity: 1358

Merit: 1000

AKA: gigavps

Quote from: max in montreal on March 14, 2012, 05:42:48 PM

whats the reasoning you guys are using to buy these instead of ICARUS fpga's.

just curious.

Rig box should get 20Mh/w and was priced (when I bought them) at $25k each. That's $0.50/Mh which is pretty darn good unless you are really bargain hunting for GPUs and the other items needed to run them.

When the subsidy halves, we will see a lot of GPU miner become unprofitable with 2Mh/w to 5Mh/w unless the price rises substantially. I doubt the price will jump like this in lock step with the halving (I've been wrong before) so we should see the same thing we saw when the price went to $2. Miners will quit.

P_Shep

legendary

Activity: 1795

Merit: 1208

This is not OK.

Quote from: Inaba on March 14, 2012, 05:46:32 PM

Quote from: max in montreal on March 14, 2012, 05:42:48 PM

whats the reasoning you guys are using to buy these instead of ICARUS fpga's.

just curious.

Too expensive and too slow.

200 MH/s for $500, really? Thanks, no.

This.

Inaba

legendary

Activity: 1260

Merit: 1000

Quote from: max in montreal on March 14, 2012, 05:42:48 PM

whats the reasoning you guys are using to buy these instead of ICARUS fpga's.

just curious.

Too expensive and too slow.

380 MH/s (?) for $600, really? Thanks, no. Rather have 2x the hashrate for the same price.

PulsedMedia

sr. member

Activity: 402

Merit: 250

My ex-fiance at first tried to some blame game on expenditure, i simply told her "Well, you are a student, living on a shoestring budget, and i bring the food on the table, and now that we are living together you have nothing to worry about living expenses, so stfu and concentrate on your studies!" and that was that, she didn't even say a single word couple years later when my business ran into trouble and i was making like 100€ a month max for quite a while ... That did tho probably contribute to the break up, but we never had even an argument about money after the first time.

I would never let girlfriend/wife interfere with my business investments, if i see something is going to bring X % ROI annually, all she'd need to know is that it's going to bring the bacon on table.

I'm still investing in GPUs for the moment, maybe i'll get a single or 4 next month or whenever shipping times get lower. Just got my electricity rate lowered significantly and still got few tens of kW available to be utilized

Now that original hardware has paid off 150% it's time to invest again Wink

SgtSpike

legendary

Activity: 1400

Merit: 1005

Quote from: Inspector 2211 on March 14, 2012, 05:20:18 PM

Quote from: SgtSpike on March 14, 2012, 05:11:58 PM

Quote from: Inspector 2211 on March 14, 2012, 05:09:10 PM

Lucky you - my wife would most certainly play the blame game and thus I keep her totally in the dark about the three GPU mining rigs, the ZTEX FPGA miner, the twelve singles I have ordered (but not received yet) and the C200 which I have tried to order (but have no order confirmation for, yet). I'm mining in my rented business office, which she also does not know about...

Good grief man - and she doesn't notice the $10k missing from your bank??

After we got married, I changed my primary checking account into a joint account, but she didn't change her primary checking account into a joint account, so I was like: "Wow. O.K. Welcome to California Feminism."

Recently, I closed the joint account and instead I just give her a monthly allowance of $1,400 for food, clothes and gasoline, and of course I pay all the bills such as mortgage, utilities, property tax, car insurance, fire insurance, credit cards, etc. etc.

Ah ok, that makes sense. Wink

kano

legendary

Activity: 4592

Merit: 1851

Linux since 1997 RedHat 4

Quote from: Turbor on March 14, 2012, 05:31:45 PM

Wow. People must be really confident to invest such a large sum. It's nice to know that there are others that believe in Bitcoin. Most people think that i am crazy but no matter how this ends, we have to tell something to our grandchildren when we are old.

BTW, ordered 2 singles today. Cheesy

My brother has 1 grandchild and a second on the way ... oddly I still don't feel very old

max in montreal

hero member

Activity: 504

Merit: 500

whats the reasoning you guys are using to buy these instead of ICARUS fpga's.

just curious.

Turbor

legendary

Activity: 1022

Merit: 1000

BitMinter

Wow. People must be really confident to invest such a large sum. It's nice to know that there are others that believe in Bitcoin. Most people think that i am crazy but no matter how this ends, we have to tell something to our grandchildren when we are old.

BTW, ordered 2 singles today. Cheesy

max in montreal

hero member

Activity: 504

Merit: 500

why are womens feet smaller than mens feet...so they can stand closer to the sink... Shocked

WhitePhantom

sr. member

Activity: 348

Merit: 250

Quote from: max in montreal on March 14, 2012, 05:24:46 PM

my girlfriend too is all about the blame game...3 weeks ago I spent 175$ for 2 5870's. 175 for the pair!

Max...did we really need to spend the money for that?

she would probably freak-the-fuck-out if she knew how much i plan on spending...

here is how to argue and win...

max you spent 175 on videocards?

erin, we need to include gas, they were 110 kilometers away, so add an extra 220 kilometers worth of gas...plus some food and cigarettes for the drive. So lets say I spent about 240$ in total.

WTF?

can you tell me where else I can invest 240$ and make about 1000$ in a year?

um no...

STFU then, get back in the kitchen!

just kidding, she would kick my ass if i said that...but how can you argue with this:

I can invest 240$ and make about 1000$ in a year

Yup, you can't get returns like that anywhere else.

Even further off topic, but you reminded me of a joke I heard today that made me chuckle.

Quote

If a tree falls on a woman and nobody's around to hear it, what was a tree doing in the kitchen?

Topic: Butterfly Labs - Bitforce Single and Mini Rig Box - page 62. (Read 186946 times)