Topic: What would you pay for a 450MH/s FPGAs @ 24w? (Read 1822 times)

I may have... an FPGA is general purpose just as a GPU is, but doesn't have the memory access Scrypt needs. Without another cryptocoin general purpose use, the FPGAs of today will easily be displaced once availability of similar priced ASIC items are around. Where GPUs are right now only marginally profitable depending on the conditions and pricing in the market if you are fixated on BTC and morally opposed to considering mining anything else... that will be the location of FPGAs in a time in the future. The difference is that GPUs readily have somewhere else to go (gaming OR mining Scrypt), whereas FPGAs, once they are priced out of being profitable, can't translate as-is on to Scrypt for a second lifetime.

Congratulations, you've just motivated tomorrow's new batch of scamcoins!

(Give your FPGAs new life, mine our SHA3coin! Etc...)

-MarkM-

In my opinion, unless you are fixated ONLY on mining BTC or other SHA256 coins, an FPGA would be toward the bottom of the list as to retention of value, based on what is CURRENTLY the state of mining algorithms. It will certainly be displaced by an ASIC of any type for hash/energy/$, especially moreso for ASIC devices on a scale size (A BlockEruptor is fine, but you have to pay each time for the casing, the board, heatsink, , the data connector... a Jalapeno, you get more ASIC chips in a different footprint, but pay once for the case rather than about 18 of the same block eruptor cases... a Asicminer blade, continue along, you're paying for one case rather than dozens of jalapenos, etc.)

At the moment, for a purely widescale market of the entire world of miners and mundanes alike, a GPGPU (video card) has a better resale over its first couple years of life than any device. I could sell my brother my Radeon 7950 in one-two years for 50-75 percent the price, and he could use it. Say I had a ZTEX Spartan6 (bitcoinfpga.com) bought in Feb 2012, $414, 190 MH/s, 8.5W, and decided to sell it for about 75 percent... 300 bucks is about same as a BlockErupter.

So, you have the choice between it, a BlockEruptor, or a Radeon 7950, same price. One produced 190MH/s at 8.5W, One produces 300 MH/S at 2.5W. one produces 550 MH/S at 200W. You asked me "Can I use it for anything other than SHA256 mining?" For all practical answers, for options other than the Radeon 7950, the answer is no. For most of the world, miners and mundanes alike, we have no use for an FPGA as-is if you rule out mining. The one item that has the resell value is the video card... and to a miner, there is no way they would choose the $300 190 MH/S 8.5W device over the readily available $300 300 MH/S 2.5W device, especially given the ability to put more in a smaller physical footprint.

I tried asking the question on here, trying to creatively think, of if you could retrofit an FPGA with memory to make it viable for Scrypt mining, giving it extra life... and was given the BFL Josh "quarter buy a clue" video link. At the moment, with the open availability of BlockEruptors... there just isn't any reason to buy an FPGA at a loss against the BlockEruptor pricing. (I'm not even starting to list pricing of the Avalon chip buys, the Avalon batches, and the BFL preorders, because those for all intents and purposes aren't available for immediate mining RIGHT NOW to the general public.)

Now, if someone comes up with a third algorithm... something that isn't memory intensive like Scrypt, but isn't SHA-256 based that ASICs can't compete in... then FPGAs will end up having a better resell value and will be on top of the heap until an ASIC can be developed and brought to market for that (which is tending to be about 12-18 months turnaround, it seems.)

+1

Everything will have a better resale value compared to asics, you can resell GPUs, FPGAs, etc. FPGA's might actually hold value better than anything else.

Thanks everyone. You've convinced me to pass on these.

The other big thing you have to consider is resale value. You can plug numbers into ROI calculators all day, but bitcoin mining is so unpredictable that you never know what is going to happen. Always having a viable out with hardware value to offset you expenses is a huge bonus. I'm currently sitting on probably $15k in hardware at resale value. It'll be relatively easy to move as it has a diverse market. Selling 100 usb powered ASICs in an uncertain market, to a very small niche, 6 months from now, is an abolute crapshoot.

Based solely on cost/hashrate:

An X6500 hashes at 450 mh/s using the tml "maclane" bitstream (this of course isn't accounting for rejects).

An ASICMINER blades hashes at 13,000 mh/s and costs 49.99, which is 260 mh/s per bitcoin, so...

450/260 = 1.73 BTC.

Just one perspective.

If you can't drop 50 coins on a blade:

An ASICMINER usb BE hashes at 330 mh/s and costs 1.99 btc = 165 mh/s per bitcoin.

450/165 =2.73 BTC.

I wouldn't pay more than $200 for it, and even that is borderline with the ASIC wave that is about to hit.

Agreed - I was talking purely from a profitability standpoint. If you are aiming to run something at this scale, doing it with the Blade and USB ASICs starts to make sense for logistical reasons.

According to my math, depending on what you pay for electricity it would take 8 months before the USB miners start to overtake the $4,000 in additional investment due to power savings. After that the USB miners are ~ $450/month cheaper to run. Also, according to my math you can do a 2.4 Gh/s rig for ~$1,500 using 7950's. That's $21,000 for 33.3 Gh/s, which puts it out to 10 months for the USB sticks to overtake the GPU's.

Even so it seems to me like the USB miners may be a better price than I initially thought.

That means you could run 100 of these Usb ASICs to pull the same power and ONE 7970.

The Erupters do about 330mh/s so 100 of them would do 33.3gh/s at 250w

7970 does ~700mh/s for ~200-250w.

Doing the math the Erupters are 57.57x more efficient, power wise, than a 7970.

Erupters being around 2btc which is about $260 at today's exchange rate.

7970s being about $400

100 Erupters would be $26,000

Enough 7970s to reach 33.3gh/s is ~48 cards.

48 7970s would be $19,200 but then you have to figure you have to have a power supply and mobo/cpu/ram for every ~6 cards. Thats $22,000 for 33.3gh/s in gpu miners and they will be pulling 12,000w vs 250w for same speed using Erupters.

So final numbers.
33.3gh/s miner using Erupters would cost about $26k at a power consumption of 250w
33.3gh/s miner using 7970s would cost $22k at a power consumption of 12,000w

Final conclusion.
In the short term gpus are the best deal but once you figure in electrical cost, heat production, and space savings the Erupters win hands down.

So one miner would use the same power as a couple light bulbs and the other miner would use about the same power as 3 or 4 houses.

My price point... would be to pop the same figure that Avalon used to price their preorders:

The amount of money that one of these items would create in 3 months.

Using Bitcoinx.com/profit (from today, 31-May-2013 at 8PM EDT), that's $196.70... for a BRAND NEW one.
With the fact that its used, I'd probably insist on paying 50-75 percent for it. You'll probably run into an argument that takes into account its rarity and that its hard to get, and trying to charge MORE than a brand new one. (If you do run into this, counter with the pricing, you can see here on forums, on Asicminer Block Eruptors that mine 300'ish at a lesser power usage, and use that as a price point.)

With an ASICminer BE running 2.4BTC for 300, I'd make my maximum price 2.4+1.2, or 3.6BTC.

my thoughts exactly.

Another thing to consider aside from the USB miners being new vs. used: from what I've read, most consider the USB miners to be great for early adopters, hobbyists, enthusiasts, and those who want an ASIC now. Those people are willing to pay a premium for a device that most agree will not return on its investment. So a pair of used FPGA's need to be priced much lower than the equivalent Mh/s/$ of the USB miners.

Another thing to keep in mind, a GPU rig can be built for roughly $1,500 USD for 2.4 Gh/s. At that rate, the 450 Mh/s devices would be priced at around $280. Now factor in the fact that they are used, but also have a much lower power draw than a GPU miner.

I would say lower then the price of 2 NEW usb miners that pull very little power.  I would say 4 BTC or less.  or comparable usd

so basically around ~4.76 - 5 BTC

the ASICminer usb's are hashing around 300 with a power draw of ~500mA (if I am correct) thats about .5 watts.

They are going for around 2.4 BTC on.

2 usb miners for ~4.8 BTC can hash at 600 while the offered fpga can hash at 450..... he definitely needs to lower his price considerably.

He is asking $600 which is too much IMHO but he has offered to move a little bit on the price - especially if I buy a few. I'm just trying to figure out what a reasonable/fair counteroffer is.

how much is he asking?

I know someone local selling a couple 450MH/s FPGAs @ 24w - what would you pay for one of these / what do you think it is worth?

I have a feeling he is asking too much but I'm not sure...