Topic: High Efficiency FPGA & ASIC Bitcoin Mining Devices https://BTCFPGA.com - page 48. (Read 218469 times)

Relax slick, I'm confident your title as PR guy of the year is quite secure.

CANNOT BELIEVE I NEARLY SENT $$$ TO THESE CLOWNS.

Or when they might ship. Their own website says 3 different things depending on what page your looking at.

The heat question has been asked in several ways, but as of yet, there is no answer even on their own forum.

Do you have a specific link to the answer I might have missed?

https://forums.butterflylabs.com/forum.php

@ BFL_Inaba

What is the safe ambient operating temperature of your BFL single @ 60Gh/s at full operation?

Is it 60F?
Is it 70F?
Is it 80F?
Is it 90F?
Is it 100F?

Can I use it in South America at 100F (near the equator)?

Normally I wouldn't be posting in your thread, but since you called BFL out directly I figured it was an invite.  I'm a little confused here, Tom, so maybe you can enlighten me.  You say you are far enough along in your process to have prototype boards (or was it production boards?) arriving in your hands this week or next week... yet you can't give any power numbers?  If your crack team of engineers that are designing this are so great, they should have some power estimates, within a reasonable margin (say +/- 10%? 20%?) that you could give out, right?  Why aren't you publishing these numbers with the caveat that they are estimates?  Do you actually have numbers or are you not as far along in the process as you'd like people to believe?  

You say you guarantee your device will be competitive with any other ASIC on the market.  What is competitive?  Can you define that for everyone?  Is it 2x the power consumption?  Is that still "competitive" or what does the value of "competitive" mean to you?

Here's what I think your customers deserve:

1. A power estimate, even with the understanding that may be off a bit.
2. A guarantee that if your power estimates are in fact not competitive with other products, you will offer unlimited refunds (Just like BFL did when the FPGA power consumption turned out to be wrong).

A power estimate should not be a problem if you have the excellent engineers you say you have.  They should already have pretty accurate power estimates and you should be aware of them.  Why not be open about it?   Maybe guaranteeing refunds to people if your power turns out to be non competitive would go a long way towards easing peoples concerns that you're hiding something in order to collect orders from the naive.  After all, once difficulty matures, the difference could determine whether reasonable payback is even possible or not.

For my part, I'm sure you have a competitive power envelope but the fact that you aren't stepping up to share estimates with the rest of the community while everyone else has may give people reason to doubt.  

Once again, sorry to step into your thread, but since you called us out directly, I felt it appropriate to respond.

this.

But remeber, don't invest money you can't afford to loose.

In fact it could be (in a theoretical stable Bitcoin world) misleading in the opposite way. Eventually, market pressure should bring mining profit to a relatively low margin above electricity costs. This doesn't work that way currently because the market is unstable (mining hardware evolves and BTC price too). But if you took 2 mining hardware solutions with a difference in efficiency higher than the low margin (I guess 20-30% should be a sign of a mature market), the low performing hardware wouldn't even be profitable.
It doesn't matter anyway, if ASICs show up this year, I'm not sure any FPGA will have paid for itself when the difficulty will put them out of business.

You sure do know how to keep us excited Tom I wish I had some more money right now to purchase more bASICs!

bout to step out of the office for probably the rest of the day - if need me call me - 315-514-0269 otherwise you probably wont see me again until tomorrow morning I have a lot of business to attend to on this trip

Tom

Well he's always used this argument as a selling point of the MMQ, and I think it's misleading.

ok that can be interpreted in a lot of ways, ill take that wording out of the post

but the fact of the matter is the ModMiner Quad is twice as efficient as the BFL Bitforce Single.

I think he meant when difficulty catches up; ie, miners are back to operating at barely a profit.

This is simply not true. This would only be true if your MMQ used up 33% of its earnings in power usage, and the Single used up 66% of its earnings in power usage. In reality, these numbers are only 4.5%, and 9%. That is still technically half the operating costs, but it's not twice the profit.

Other News:
New Hosting is setup and new Website is coming along nicely - we will have a big launch with detailed specs of our bASIC mining devices coming at you really soon! Be patient - it will be well worth it



Also:

I will be out of town on Business tonight and will return tomorrow - if you really need me call - I wont be answering many more emails today.

I will resume regular working hours tomorrow

Tom
(315) 514-0269

That is not true for us.

As I have stated before our production boards are not completed yet, and therefore I do not have solid power consumption numbers yet.


But guess what? EITHER DO MY COMPETITORS!

Sure I can post a "simulated" or "estimated" power usage number - but its not going to be accurate. You really think BFL is going to give 1Gh/s per watt? keep dreaming.

These energy efficiency numbers from my competitors are simply estimates and are not going to be accurate. I give you my personal guarantee that our products will have energy efficiency that is competitive to any other ASIC product on the market.


Let me just remind you of one little thing, and keep in mind I am not trying to talk bad about BFL I am just stating verifiable facts.

When BFL was getting ready to release their FPGA Based Mining Device the BFL Bitforce single they claimed it would do 1Gh/s @ 20watts

When the device was finally released it did 832Mh/s @ 80watts!

Our Flagship FPGA Bitcoin Mining Device - the ModMiner Quad - when we first advertised it - we claimed it would do 840Mh/s @ 40 watts and guess what? Thats what it does!
the ModMiner Quad mines at the same speed as the BFL BitForce single except the ModMiner Quad is TWICE AS ENERGY EFFICIENT!

Also just to note: We released the very first Quad FPGA Bitcoin mining device and it is currently one of the most if not the most energy efficient mining device readily available.

I am not going to give you estimated power usage that is going to be inaccurate like everyone else is doing. We are too close to having the real numbers and I promise you that as soon as I have them - you will too.

And yes as of right now I still have an open refund policy. If you change your mind on your pre-order just send me an email and I will process the refund right away - only 2 people have done this since I began taking pre-orders on 09/03 - and believe me my other customers will be happy to have your order out of the way Also while we are on that topic it is likely the refund policy will change when we go into production because I am going to have to spend a LOT of money to have these boards made (the bASIC order count around 700 as of right now) and I still have to finish paying back the investor that fronted the money to have the chips made. When the time gets close to start production of the boards - I will give a weeks notice on the change of refund policy so anyone that wants to change their mind will have enough time to do it, however just like ModMiner Quad owners are happy as hell with them - I know you guys are going to love this little device. It was engineers in California who are at the very top of their profession. This is a really special product and you guys are going to love it.

actually bAsic (tom) will refund your preorder at any time, so he said.

Yeah, I have a feeling these companies want to suck as many preorders in before releasing horrible power consumption specs =(.....

Why is that? What about other firmware like tomato?