Topic: Is this a bad time to invest in AMD GPUs for mining altcoins? (Read 2496 times)

i think future mining on any coin or algo is in the balance at this time. it will depend on the price of btc . it's that simple. asics are coming out left right and centre and the difficulty on all coins is rising fast . so if btc price goes down then profits will drop right down because it will take a long time for the diffs to drop enough

Claymore also announced that amd is working on the dag epoch issue for amd cards. Should be fixed with driver update in the "next 2 weeks or so".

Now its up to ETH devs to keep the miners happy!

 Late NEXT year at the earliest, by which point it probably won't matter.

 DAG file is still less than *3* GB at this point, didn't cross the 2GB threshold 'till a few months ago.

 Probably longer, GTX 980 and 980ti cards are STILL pulling in a pretty good percentage of their original new pricing.

Not true at all, they said that they will not delay or defuse the bomb till hardfork, later they will lower or slow down the bomb but they will lower block reward too.

https://youtu.be/hRQg_lHEKl4?t=41m46s

Well Zcash is hardly the most profitable thing to mine with Nvidia cards. Additionally, the 1080 TI's will maintain value because there really are not a lot of miners purchasing them in comparison to the AMD Rx series cards. The 1080 TI's are also pretty much the pinnacle of gaming so yes they will still maintain a fairly high resale value for about 2 years. You don't really count on that but it is a safety measure should the market collapse. I know for a fact that all those Rx series cards would be next to worthless with how many would flood the market under such a circumstance. The other thing is I don't have to worry about paying off my rigs since they are already paid off. I never purchase equipment that I can't pay for in cash/crypto so this eliminates all debt. AMD mining has a fairly good likelihood of coming to a screeching halt while Nvidia cards are better at mining everything other than Ethash.   

After what i've been hearing increased dag will render 4GB version worthless for ETH mining later on this year or thereabout. Then you would have to mine another coin than ETH.

Long Term...just think long term!

I dont care about ROI...if I have the power available then i use it! And even if there will come an unprofitable time i would go on with mining...wait for crypto going mainstream.
Totally agree with h311m4n at the investment point! I would not take any credit for this...trade your way up and invest the profit! I invested in Mining gear...i am sure this will pay off...and even not now or in the next month but the time will come! For so long i keep my coins in wallet and hold...The only thing i pay from my active income is the electricity bill...
Just invest what you can afford! And with that build up some passive income! the best way to get started in my opinion.

If there were 1000 people mining, your hardware would have a nice resell value yes. But with the gazillions of people who started buying gear all over the place and buy off all the cards they can get, even nVidia cards will take a hit on the secondary market once everyone starts to offload them because there are new cards arriving or whatever. It's simple offer and demand. I honestly think all the people building nvidia rigs with cards like the 1080Ti's that cost 700-800$ do not realize this and bet on the fact that if they bought a card for 800, they'll be able to sell it for 700 "because nVidia". This is just a giant gamble you're taking, but in the end these are just GPUs, and like any GPU, they depreciate. I don't bet on resell value at all. I mine, pay off my rigs and take the profit.

Not that I wouldn't want a 1080Ti rig, it must be pretty awesome, but the price of building one...man I'm sorry it just doesn't make sense. I'm doing near to 55$ a day currently with only AMD cards that I never purchased for more than 250$ for some 8GBs. They've all paid off by now (and then some).

By the time I'll pay off one AMD rig, you'll still be mining to pay off yours, even if ZEC goes to 400-500$ which it never really stays at.

I never said anything about taking a credit to buy gear  . I'm not sure you're getting my point. I'm just stating that one should, to the best of his possibilities, reinvest what he's mined to purchase gear. If you want to expand, this is the safest, not the fastest, but the safest way to do it because you're not going to put a hole in your finances. This is part of how investing works.

But yes, like you say, to each their own 

Nvidia 1070 is a good ETH mining card but USUALLY is more profitable on something else.

 I'd be real hesitant about building new rigs using ANYTHING for ETH at this time, if I didn't have very very low electric cost.

 It says a lot that the ETH network hashrate has been pretty much FLAT for about the last week - profitability is down to close the same level it was last summer, which makes it pretty marginal for most folks to mine.

 *IF* the price starts rising again by quite a bit though, it MIGHT pay off.
 If the price keeps SLIDING, it probably won't.

Well the problem is that you are mining memory intensive ethereum with an Nvidia card. Go with something like LBC, HUSH, ZEC, VTC, MONA, and even obscure stuff like BTX. This will give you the best results with Nvidia cards.

No it is not a good time to invest in the RX series. They are only good for ethereum and ethereum price is going down, profitability is going down almost everyday mining Ethereum with these cards. It is better to wait for the new cards from AMD or even further where Nvidia has promised to bring us GDDR6 memory in February 2018. For the moment you cannot ROI before 8-10 months for a RX card considering you get it at retail price, if you get it more expensive forget ROI.

If the price of amd gpu is much better then nvidia I will go on amd.
First many of new 1060 gtx are equip with hyunix memory with very low speed of mining,
for example friend buy cart with max oc memory +450 and max speed on eth 17.5m too slow
Even much better model can reach +900 only have 20m speed.
Same older card with samsung on +900 have about 25m, but now that is too hard to find
I think manofacturers will no longer make gaming card for miners, only special mining cards with 3 month of warranty
will be good for mining...

When you say gimmick/it wont happen at all.. you think it won't ever go to PoS? ..Why? .. I read the article as just another delay  .. that link itself should have a thread of it's own ha. I had no idea about that ..no complaints here lol

Thank you! No one had an answer about my biggest concern, the difficulty bomb. Great find!

Anyways, as far as alternatives there is ETC, UBIQ, EXP, DAXX, and DBIX. Between all of these some should remain profitable to mine even should ethereum switch to a POS/POW system or become unprofitable. You can still do AMD but my recommendation is to go with 1080 TI's if you have the money to invest in an expensive rig.

Just a heads up for those concerned
https://themerkle.com/ethereum-developers-contemplate-delaying-difficulty-bomb-by-another-1-4-years/
POW was a marketing gimmick all along, they are slowly preparing the grounds for admitting it will not happen at all.

The investing in proper coins is a timing scenario, while miners - not immediately concerned with face value, in my opinion, mining is a long haul operation people should go into with a strategy for if x happens I can do y or z to mitigate that, and so on.. But I agree man to each their own.

Hate to participate in the negativity - but don't bring that bullshit around here when someones just looking for help. This isn't reddit.
We were all beginners at one point.

Thank you for your input!

Well the GPUs I ordered are coming in one by one, so who knows? According to the online store, I will get the last two of the five by august 10.  Anyway I'm already mining with my 5 nVidia cards now (2x 1070 and 2x 1060).

I'm not expecting immediate returns, but it's true that I'm making this investment from my credit card (although with a 0% interest for 12 months, IE: $1200 = $100/month for 12 months). I made my calculations back in mid june when I decided to go for the mining, and back then I calculated a ROI of about 4 months, since ETH was around $350. Right now I'm hoping for a ROI of 8 to 10 months just to have a good sleep after and then I can play the long game, hold on to coins without a worry and such.

My problem however is not with the mining itself, but with the future of these RX580 as mining cards. A 30% hash rate drop was already announced for AMD cards, and it's still under a question mark if AMD will (or can) do something about it. There is also the question if like in 6 months or so ETH will be profitable to mine (in general, not just with AMD GPUs) due to difficulty increase . If it wont be profitable, then I will regret not going the nVidia way, since those cards seem to perform better at other cryptos.

Man...so much negative energy on this post! OP...how soon will you be able to get your rig up and running? If you are fine with not getting immediate returns, then I will highly recommend building your rig and start mining and hold on to mined coins.

Let me share my experience from 2014, I mined Monero (XMR) for about 5 months in summer (using 1x R9 290X+ 2x R9 280X) and finally quit around Thanksgiving because the XMR price was shit. However, I held on to those coins and finally sold them last September, when we had a big XMR spike and recovered the money I paid for my gaming PC (~$2k)! Had I kept on mining during 2015 - early 2017, I would have made much more, as many of my friends did mining ETH. But hindsight is 20-20. Anyways, what I have learned from that experience is that always think about the long game and price of cryptocurrency (if it is any good) will rise eventually and you need to be patient.

Good luck!