Topic: FPGA's pricing themselves out of the market (Read 3856 times)

I had a quick scout myself, they all seem stuck on the Spartan 3 atm - definitely no cheap spartan 6's floating around.

Methinks you're going to be waiting a long time then.  Don't see china making counterfit FPGAs anytime soon;  Last I checked they weren't making counterfit AMD/Intel processors and that's a much more lucrative market.

FPGA's will eventually get cheaper once china starts churning out clones  . This will force current FPGA manufacturers to drop prices.

Supply and demand. So for now, I'll hold out until it hits mainstream prices.

seriously - you disagree with someone and their instantly a troll ?

You kids that fail to grasp memes but shoehorn them into every retort you possibly can.
Shouldnt you be screeching on xbox live ?

Seriously? Get back to school and study the math....just another troll on my ignore list 

FPGAs get new generations as well, as fast as GPUs.

They will always be more power effective and less cost effective. We are just using cheapo FPGAs which are mainly educational products slapped on prototyping boards. The industry either uses the high end range (1-5k USD per piece) in single quantities or low end stuff for consumer electronics.
High performance FPGAs will never be cost effective for bitcoin mining because after a certain volume you quickly arrive at costs equal to ASICs masks.

Time will tell when the first ones come out. But this isn't the end of the road either since bitcoin is the first application where wafer scale integration makes sense.

Gotta love security through obscurity.

This made me laugh.
Do you really think bitcoin mining is a big deal in the FPGA industry?
Sure, we'll see repurposing of obsolete hardware (like in the BFL singles) but major FPGA manufacturers designing bitcoin mining hardware? No chance.

I wouldn't sell them on Ebay first of all. I have gaming forums I belong to where I could get $450-$475 pretty easily with payments that are fee free. So lets just say $450 for each card. I am down $80 per card. I purchased an $80 motherboard for each rig, and a $8 stick of RAM, and I got the processors and harddrives/cables as freebies from work as they were junking out machines. I purchased a $250 powersupply for $200 and I know I can re-sell for $200 for each rig. Taking all that into account I would be down $640 in cards, $0 in supplies, $160 in boards, and $16 in RAM. So a grand total of $810 in "loss" right now.  That 150BTC that I just sold for $5.30 per covers most of the hardware depreciation cost so far. On top of that I have none of the Singles I bought since then. So I would have made zero money if I had just bought all BFL singles. I have no idea when the singles are going to show up.

I am still satisfied with my purchase of the 7970s. I played around with voltages and I am now down to 940W per 2.5GH/s.

Extrapolate your numbers until December 23 assuming $5 per BTC, 940W@$.06 per KW. Set the resale value of BFL to $0, and the resale value of the 7970 at $250. Let me know what you come up with. Also set the delivery date of my BFL singles to May 1st at the earliest.

Then move the price of recovery of the BFL single up until you get a break even point with the 7970s. Let me know what it would have to resell for, and when, for it to have been a better purchase than the 7970s.

I bought the XFX Black Edition 7970s, and I might have to go to $425 due to the price drop.

recent prices on ebay for used 7970's:

apr 17th - $415
apr 18th - $470
apr 18th - $530
apr 18th - $510
apr 19th - $423 (+ "variable" shipping rate)
apr 19th - $435 (+ "variable" shipping rate)
apr 19th - $405
apr 19th - $435
apr 20th - $420
apr 20th - $450
apr 21st - $515 (+ "variable shipping rate)

so you could sell those eight for maybe $475/ea on eBay (being generous), subtract the 9% eBay electronics fee + the paypal fee....  end up with around $430 (more likely, $20 or $30 less)?   you're down $800 since feb 23rd, 150BTC doesn't even cover that

Not with 0.05$ per kwh. In my case FPGa's are worst choice, until prices for them will be much lower.

Hand those prices over to me right know, I have a soldering gun and I'm not afraid to use it 

Kill-A-Watt says 1050. That is with no voltage changes or memory downclock.

Edit to add: I pay $0.06 per KW.

How much power does each one of those 2.5 GH/s rigs suck down?

I ordered with BFL on Feb. 23 and still don't have a single.(Not a complaint) On that same day I ordered 8 7970s for $529 each and they were up and running two days later on the 25th. Each machine is getting 2.5GH/s so I added 5GH/s on the 25th. I believe those machines have been paid something like 150BTC. I am pretty happy with my choice to order GPUs when looking at the possible unknown with the reward cut.

I'm not too worried about the reward dropping. Either the price will go up or the difficulty will go down (or both). Either way, the profitability will still be good for mining with energy efficient FPGAs.

No, it's longer since around december you drop to 1 EUR/DAY if BTC price does not double.

And 25 quads it's a 18K EUR investment (even more if you have to pay VAT).

spiccioli

719€ (25+ without vat in a company) for 1 Ztex Quad: 0,54 BTC per Day = 2€ (energy costs already removed) per day = 719/2 = 359,5 days ROI

I am interested to see what Lancelot brings to the table, seeing as how Icarus was such a success (and learning experience for the designer/engineer).

I have a feeling BFL might be in trouble if they are unable to satisfy the needs of the masses before ngzhang launches his new would-be? hashing monster.

Damn that is cheap power, Im so jealous.

Shame the icarus board has been discontinued, it does seem like a viable option especially with the cheaper power consumption,
Good luck with your mining