Topic: What to do with my GPUs when ASIC arrives? (Read 8729 times)

Actually it's pretty easy to make ASICs for litecoin mining and it will be even more advantage over GPUs. The only thing that stops people from making them is the low demand for litecoins.

So if i use gpu to mine ltc, i can still be cometive with those asics in the market? in theory it should work, as only gpu can produce Ltc, or am i wrong?

They're about neck and neck right now in terms of profitability per watt, however, the profitability of BTC for video cards will be expected to drop upon the introduction of ASIC miners.  ASIC miners do not exist for litecoin's algorithm (which is designed to be more ASIC resistant than SHA256), so GPU mining LTC should remain profitable for some time.

Unlike SHA256, scrypt requires 8kb of L1 cache per process unit and as large as possible, as fast as possible RAM to store a constantly accessed buffer into.  Hence, when ASICs are created for litecoin the gain in speed/watt may not even be on the order of a magnitude, whereas the gain in speed/watt in hashing SHA256 is about 100x (or two orders of magnitude).

why? can I somehow sell them for btc and come out ahead of simply mining btc?

mine litecoin instead

BFL originally stated shipping in October.  They are taking on more staff to speed up the process and now hope to start shipping in November?!  It appears that getting them before Xmas may be tricky!

In case I wasn't clear: I meant that WHEN the ASICs are out I'd prefer to stop mining, (not stop mining now). I'm currently mining with 2.5GH/s, I've also revealed my setup in the post. In any case, when everyone mines @ 40GH/s, my 2.5GH/s will be a drop in the ocean and definitely what comes out of it (at that time), definitely won't pay my electricity bill.

Yes - I am VERY uncertain. A BFL rep said the company was working on speedier deliverers. Also they may have thousands of pre-orders. I said November to give them plenty of time. Who knows, oh wait, I ended as Nov 2013 as the time they finish pre-order deliveries. Their goal is to start the first week of November 2012. I read into your question too much, as when do they start and finish the preorder list...

I aim to order a SC Single in January.

He's either joking or trolling. Expected deliver of the first orders is late October or early November, according to the latest reports from BFL_Josh.

lol a one year range? That is a huge uncertainty.

Preorders should arrive between November of this year to November of next year.

Sorry, n00b question, but about when will these ASICs arrive? I'm in the same boat with a couple of these old GPUs.

Luckily there are tons of other project that run very well on AMD cards

Absolutely agree and this was my thought on the matter as well.  The difficulty may make it eventually that the Single takes as long as a GPU to pay itself off but given that in the overall scheme of things it costs a fair bit less than a full system with many GPUs or multiple systems combined, I'm not too worried.  As long as we all get ROI, whenever that is, IMO, that's fine for me.

I agreed with everything you said, right up until the part where you said to stop mining. Why would you not mine now, before the difficult spikes and it requires ASICs to make 1BTC/day?

Hehe. It's just a phrase; as we say "a matter of speaking". The "Benjamins" were just another word for money / bitcoins / any means of exchange really. I wasn't referring to the fiat money. IMHO, Bitcoin is NOT a big risk. It's the next step; and frankly, my opinion is that's gonna be what's left after everything else has failed...

...except; if we have no computers and/or electricity and/or internet...

Good post dude....


I am goign to mine as hard as possible with my GPU's while you guys are waiting on these ASIC's ....I'll use my coins to buy some when they are released and are working.. But I doubt i'll buy through BFL....

you can never contribute "enough" to Folding@Home


that said, AMD cards suck balls at folding

This is where you are wrong.  The reason bitcoin exists is because there is a problem with the benjamins... The fucking Federal Reseve (a private bank) keeps printing them and handing them out to there friends and governments that do not have our best interest in mind.

Sure bitcoin is a big risk but if it works the payoff will be greater than holding gold or silver.  This is what people like myself see and make decisions based on that not On how much federal reserve notes we will get right now.

In my opinion, it all makes sense when you compare what the network production/equity is now, with the one that will be, when the Asic miners come in. If you think about it a bit; the current exchange rate is about $12 for 1BC. That means you need about 100BC or $1200 for a BFL, SC and 40GH/s. You need about 100 days, to produce 100BC at a rate of 1BC/day with an average setup that sets you back about $1000 to $1200 (a couple of 5970s, a couple of 6870s, and some 6950s) and gives you 2.5GH/s.

Now, lets project this for a while to after 6 months to 1 year. By that time, lets asume that EVERYONE (who can afford it) will mine with an asic by then. The difficulty should respectively rise to actively produce an average for 40GH/s lets say 1BC/day. This means on a direct comparison that your (future) 40GH/s equals with the (today's) 2.5GH/s. Respectively you will be at the same position minus the initial 100BC you gave to buy the asic, minus the cost of the videocards (if you don't manage to sell them, or want to keep them anyway).

It's all about the Benjamins gentlemen. My advice is (that's what I'm gonna do) to quit mining and while the price is still low; I'll prefer buying 1BC per day. When this won't be feasible anymore, I will have a fair amount of BCs to buy myself a couple of asics at 1/3 or even less of the current price... and won't mind about the loss. Of course I'll stand out from mining for a fair amount of time, but what is time? Isn't money..?