you have forgot the resale value which is huge for nvidia, a 1070 can be sold again at 80% of its retail price, so i'm not actually paying more in the end
also there is the 1060 which is cheaper and has a 140 sol/60watt ratio which is better than amd and price is there same as a 480 4gb
A 470 can do over 170s/s @ 90 watts, and costs less then a 1060. AMD is the current mining king, your wasting your money if you buy nvidia for mining unless your primary reason is to buy a card or two for your gaming rig.
yes because nvidia is not optimized fully,. wait until clymore will work on it, it will be on par if not better
and btw 170 sol 90 isn't better than 140 sol 60watt, it's not even better than 140 sol 70 watt...
Or you could get a 470 4GB for $155, and do 180 sol. You COULD downclock/volt a 470 to hash slow like a 1060, use same power, not be pool locked, and have far better miner features. I highly doubt you can get 60w at the wall with a 1060 mining at 140 sol though.
Also, to the comment on resale, resale value is kind of irrelevant. If you have made up the cost of your card 5 times already, does it matter? AMD cards hold resale for a long time due to their popularity in mining. 5 year old cards still sell well.
it matter in the case you need to return fast your investment you just sell back, and buy the new gen card
i don't like to remain with the same gpu for many year, as soon as new better and more efficient gpu come out i sell and buy that
it's a different way to roi, because you don't need to roi on 100% price of your card but just 20%, so almost zero risk involved...
p.s. a 1060 should do 60 watt only because my 1070 do 95 watt at 206 sol, therefore 140 sol at 60-70watt maximum is plausible
ROI on a system with a 1070 is currently about a year, terrible. 1060 3GB is slightly better, but you will have higher system costs with slower cards.
So in say 2 years, you made 1x profit on a 1070, or 2x profit on 470s (total system costs, not just cards, which would be worse for 1070). You claim Nvidia has amazing resale value, but ignore that AMD cards resell do very well, due to their mining popularity.
Minor theoretical efficiency gains are a worthless topic. 85% of mining income is profit, 15% power (this is at the lower end, often it is 90%+ profit). If you are 10% more efficient, you are doing 1.5% better on the whole, but paid 100% (or more) for the privilege. No matter how you slice it, buying Nvidia for Eth or Zec is just a bad idea. Maybe if you pay $0.30/kwh you may have a case, but in that situation mining isn't that great of an investment anyway.
4gb version and 470 are not a good duo that you can resell easily, like for example a 480 8gb, gamers don't like gpu with few gb or slow card on gaming, and you usually sell to gamers
a 1070 can be sold at least at 80% of its retail easily on any forum
and why you say you will have higher system cost with a 1060? a 1060 and 480 have the same price here, difference is 20 euro with the 470, so the whole system will be 120 euro higher not a big deal, but efficiency is better
and it's not 10% more efficency, look at a single 1070 220 sol at 95 watt, against 170 sol at 90 watt, that is 25% more efficient not 10%... this multiplied for many rig will make a big difference, and i'm not talking about random dude with 1/5 cent electricity, the majority ain't that cheap
also you forgot one thing, one big thing, having better efficiency isn't only about electricity, it's about saving on cooling and lower cost on psu, all these adds to the saving in the end when you build a farm
and anyway nvidia is not optimized yet like amd..... a 1070 will do more in the near future
I mean system costs relative to hashpower. So if you can spend $400 for system costs for 6 cards, if you get 840 Sol, vs say 1080 sol, you are spending a higher % on PSU, MB, CPU,RAM, SSD. Smaller issue with similar speeds, but would be bad with say a bunch of 1050s, or 460s.
Lets assume a terrible situation where your power efficiency is horrible, and you spend twice as much on power with 480 vs a 1070, for the same hashes. So say it costs you $10/month instead of $5/month for power. You spent an extra $200 on 1070, so it would take 40 months, or over 3 years for you to benefit, at which point both cards will be old tech.
If 480 is 25% less efficient, and it costs you an extra $2.50/month with high power cost of $0.14, it would take nearly 7 years for you to benefit, assuming coins didn't all go to PoS by then, and your profit stayed the same, even with hardware that is 2-3x faster in future. How is this considered a better investment?
My point is that, yes, power efficiency matters, but if it costs twice as much, you will never make up the difference. If the cards have similar cost/hashrate, and not a massive price difference, it may be a factor, but it would need to cost you like $0.40 in power before it was actually worth it, and in that case, your overall income from mining would be really bad anyway.
A 1060 3GB is an ok choice for some people with high power costs, its cost/hash ratio isn't nearly as bad as a 1070, I don't feel like doing the math though.
i used to have over 40 x 7950 and it was impossible to power and cool those cards, i had to split 20 and 20 in two locations and still was a pain and power expenses where very significant!, now they are not.
