Assuming 300mhash/s, bitcoin price of $17 and difficulty of 877k, a 5830 will create ~$188 per month at current difficulty (wont last that long - just an example), $141 per month at the next difficulty level, and about $103 per month at 1,500,000 difficulty.
If you buy today, it will pay itself off if you bought at $109 or even $160. More so if BTC price rises. While no difficulty level at this point will generally last a month (2 weeks or less actually), the rises aren't steep enough to make mining unprofitable. Even after you gain back 100% of the buy price at 1,5m difficulty, you will be gaining $80 per month profit at current prices.
Worth it with a single card? If you are just some random gamer then sure. Don't count on it for a living though. At 2 million difficulty you will be making $50 bucks per month at current prices.
At 3m difficulty, either prices will go up or ~90% of casual miners will give up and thus drive the difficulty down to about 2.4m.
If you buy today, it will pay itself off if you bought at $109 or even $160. More so if BTC price rises. While no difficulty level at this point will generally last a month (2 weeks or less actually), the rises aren't steep enough to make mining unprofitable. Even after you gain back 100% of the buy price at 1,5m difficulty, you will be gaining $80 per month profit at current prices.
Worth it with a single card? If you are just some random gamer then sure. Don't count on it for a living though. At 2 million difficulty you will be making $50 bucks per month at current prices.
At 3m difficulty, either prices will go up or ~90% of casual miners will give up and thus drive the difficulty down to about 2.4m.
Jack of Diamonds, I respect you for being the FIRST PERSON SO FAR TODAY to actually argue with the numbers themselves, rather than just shooting the messenger.
I personally don't think 300 MH/s is a reasonable expectation. Overclocking carries risks, and not every card can reach 300. I had problems at 292 with a Sapphire card (which are the best, BTW). AND if you're overclocking you're also using more than 160W, so the greater electricity usage must be subtracted at the other end.
Bitcoins aren't $17 at the moment -- we should go by the current price to be fair. Naysayers could just as easily calculate at $10, while you calculate at $17. Maybe the answer is to show the figures for $10, $15, $20, and $25? Let the would-be buyer make the choice about what he thinks the market will do. So if he loses his money, he'll have no one to blame but himself. But at least he'll know what he's getting himself into.
How many BTC are you saying they'll make per day? According to Deepbit's estimator, which I believe takes Pool commissions into account, one would make 0.30 BTC/day at a hashrate of 290MH/s.
.30 BTC/day times $17 (a generous figure -- which I'm sure we both hope for. I'm a miner myself) is $5.10 a day. But difficulty will go up before any cards bought today could go online. It will be at least 30% (this much is fact). So your monthly projection is already way off.
Monthly projections are *very, very* deceptive because they always fail to take Difficulty increases into consideration. And difficulty increases are a fact of life. It's foolish to deny them or treat them like they don't exist.
Matthew
I'll shoot the messenger. Stop being a troll/douche and freaking people out about your perception of the current numbers of one possible function of the cards, and leave it here. Not only do you troll your own topic, but you troll all the 5830 postings out there. It's not like its mines btc exclusively, and who knows what the numbers will be like in X months, where mining does or doesnt pay off. You're no different than (BUY! SELL! MINE! DON'T MINE! THE SKY IS FALLING! I'M BEING USEFUL!).
IN THE END, it's still a decent card, and for a decent price, it mines well and plays great (and alot better than most of the comparable cards out there). You can have your opinion, we don't have to respect it (especially when you act like a hypocritical troll).
