Can any of you that already have these tell me what your real world savings is on your utility bill and what your price per kWh is? I want to hear mainly from those that have replaced a video card with this product. With the dual purpose of the HD 7970 and its great hashing power I’m having trouble pulling the trigger on a product that's about the same price and can’t be used by me for anything but mining and can't be resold to anyone but miners. Thanks in advance.
I have both cards and icarus.
Currently the for me the electricity to generate 1 btc is about 29c for GPU and 1.44c for FPGA and with BTC being around $6 it is not that important to me atm. I think the big advantage is ease of expandability:
Those are all very good points, thank you. The cost savings looks like it's substantial. That's the only real issue for me. I have computers used by my family that I haven't upgraded the GPU on yet so the other factors are not as big a concern for me. Of course, I forgot about heat because it's winter. Thanks for reminding me how miserable last summer was for me.
Keep in mind that Defkin's cost of 29c to generate 1BTC is extremely low; most people cannot achieve anywhere this low a cost.
To generate 1BTC per day at today's difficulty would require 1400Ghps. That's 3 overclocked 5870s running at 200W each, or 600W. Add to that the power for the cpu, motherboard, and power supply efficiency (assume 90%) and that brings you up to 700W. Or 16.8kWh per day. The AVERAGE electricity rate in the US is $0.11/kWh. So 16.8kWh x $0.11/kWh is $1.85. Not $0.29.
So although Defkin can somehow generate 1BTC with his GPUs for $0.29, most people in the States will need $1.85 in electricity to generate that same 1BTC. Run the same numbers for the FPGA and see what you get. Defkin gets 1.44c, but again that is unrealistically low for the average person. Check your electricity bill and see what your actual rate is.
You are correct CornedBeefHash I screwed up my calcs big time, still trying to work out where
1 BTC GPU $2.11 @800w not including the 250w pedestal fan.
1 BTC FPGA 16c @64w
Mind you I am using a cheap $19 power meter too.
It is going to be nearly double that when they install the 'smart meter' the gov said would save us all money....
Unless of course I only run for 8h out of 24h period then it will be half........
That's seems more like it.
Still at 1400Ghps to generate 1 BTC and the Icarus board producing an average hash rate of 362Mhps you would need 3.87 Icarus boards per BTC generated. At 1400Ghps to generate 1 BTC the 7970 card producing an average hash rate of 561Mhps you would need 2.49 7970 cards per BTC generated. At $600 per Icarus board initial purchase cost to generate 1 BTC would be $2,322 and at $559 per 7970 it would be $1,391.91. I can buy a lot of electricity for the $930 difference.
The big things for me are the expected life of the equipment, the initial cost, the electrical cost, the warranty and ability for resale of equipment.
I know the warranty return and repair policy for AMD cards. I don’t know what it would be for the Icarus board. Icarus is the obvious hands down winner in mh/watt and cooling but lifespan and resale value for even a year from now is a big unknown.
-The batch 2 boards are doing 380mh and the new alpha bitstream looks to have increased that to 400mh.
-Life of the equipment would be in favor of Icarus if only due to the number of components.
-Icarus has no warranty at all.
-Icarus would have resale value to BTC miners not the larger gaming market.
-if BTC stays around $6 Icarus earns about 30% more BTC if you pay $0.11Kwh and live in a cool climate.
-Icarus has no dual use, you cannot use for games.
-You cannot just add another card. Icarus needs no supporting equipment so adding a new board is no prob
-in comparison Icarus makes no noise.
-If you live in a warm climate $930 saving would be used for installing and running a cooling solution.
?
You may upload a bitstream with ARM CortexM2 processor and I saw a doom game for that. And many, many more. Imagination is a limitation. Popably it wouldn't be a problem to convert Icarus to Playstation 1 game console. Only licence is on your way, so you will propably not find such a bitstream on internet, but you may do it yourself. 