Topic: Why 9-month payoffs are still foolish - page 4. (Read 5568 times)

No it isn't. It seriously just isn't. You don't seem to understand the process so I'll try to simplify it for you. ATI designs and fabricates incredibly complex processors, this costs millions of dollars, it then designs a rich and incredibly intricate architecture to utilize those processors, which costs millions more, producing a "reference board". It produces just those things, then sells off millions of processors and licenses the reference design to manufacturers like sapphire, xfx whoever to produce the cards for retail sale. So when you buy a sapphire 5870 from Electronics-Store #1, or jimbob off the street for $500, AMD doesn't care because it's not selling to you, it's selling to sapphire who sells to the store who sells to you.

So what influences AMD? Marketshare, but share of what market? The gaming market, that has millions of cloying customers wanting the fastest most powerful GPU they can get their hands on, to run the shiniest newest game at the fastest speed possible. AMD is competing directly with NVidia and they need every last bit of their muscle to streamline for this aspect, to keep up with, and maybe even slightly outdo their competition. Any sideline would need to be VERY lucrative to even cause them for one second to give side attention.

There are at best 30-40,000 miners if you look at the numbers, and > 10million gamers. That represents less than one half of one percent of the market for video cards. No one gives a crap about that market segment. Seriously, we've had this discussion a lot before, bitcoin is cool, but lift your head up from the tunnel vision of bitcoin and you'll see how insignificant it is in the scheme of any kind of market share.

Of course they aren't going to *cater* to mining.  That'd be foolish.  It'd also be foolish of them not to see 'Hey, WHY are those 5x series still selling for so much?".  AMD is a multi-billion dollar company.  And they pay their execs tons of money to get as much marketshare/profit as possible.  Bitcoin mining is a part of that.

For (hopefully) the last time, AMD doesn't fab any 5xxx gpus anymore. They're done, they were done years ago, they're not going to start again, hence they make $0 off sales of 5xxx series cards. Why then do they care about bitcoin selling cards used at high prices?

AMD is a multi-billion dollar company, with tens or hundreds of millions of dollars going into each fab line, they're ABSOLUTELY NOT going to cater to a tiny cluster of renegade miners who use their cards just fine as they already stand in comparison to the millions of paying gaming customers. Just deal with that.

AMD may not care about BITCOIN, but they're not run by dummies.  5870's which were released *two years ago* are still selling at premium prices, even used. 5770's are only $40 less than 6870's.  Newegg has tons of refurbished/open box Nvidia cards while ATI/AMD get snapped up within moments.

Granted these are only observations from a newbie, but I'd be hard pressed to think that AMD isn't aware of the impact mining is having on their sales.

The people who think that AMD gives two flying craps about bitcoin are just not in the right headspace, pure and simple. I really wish there was an FAQ posted somewhere about how the bitcoin numbers represent essentially nothing to AMD. Literally, nothing. It doesn't bring them one cent.

THe 7000 series is still completely under wraps by AMD, except for mobility series, which as I recall was a tiny improvement over the 6000 series, with its 28nm fab process, and certainly not something at all related to mining.

As for the main topic the OP posted, as it has been since you started all this a few months ago, no one really knows what will happen. It's been a wild ride up and down; will it continue to trend down, maybe, or up, who knows? All investments are inherently risky. The ones with greater payoffs are almost always riskier. Warn people about that, fine. Make grandiose statements with no backing but supposition and/or fear mongering...  


Edit: Some further thoughts -- There is no real release date for the 7000 series cards, whatever they are. Powercolor suggests Q1 2012, so potentially a release as far as 7 months in the future, or more if there is a delay (almost the 9 months the OP is suggesting people not buy into). The cards when first released will carry with them the huge premium markup that all new releases have, so do not expect to see some balls-out radeon 7000 for $100 with a billion stream processors ready to hash at 5THash/sec. Furthermore, AMD is switching to a newer more sophisticated stream processor, why would they then double the amount? Or if they did double the amount, why would you expect them for anywhere near the same price as we see on 5xxx series cards. Furthermore we to my knowledge do not know how the VLIW-4D cores hash, since they are more complex, with likely more instructions for things that actually matter in a graphics card, such as tessellation, directx, streaming large amounts of data, not so much useful for mining.

You're right that it TECHNICALLY could go either way -- but it would take a Black Swan event to bring Bitcoin into the $20s, whereas the trend right now is $1 less every couple weeks.

So betting it will go lower is not "equal" with betting it will go higher. There is more evidence for the former.

Regarding the video cards -- you're right. That's why I said "wait and see" rather than go one way or the other. I'm sure there will be 6990s for sale even after the 7000 series is released (or definitively described) to the public.

I'm pretty sure AMD is aware that their card is the choice pick of mining.  I doubt that AMD is going to give up that part of the market with sub-par numbers. Sure mining isn't their focus, but they're aware that it brings them money.

Edit:  This is why I try to make sure any investments can pay for themselves within 2 months.  If BTC crashes in the first usually the 30 day return will still be in effect.  If BTC crashes in the second, at least I've made half my investment back.

But I'm not a major rig operator or anything.

By the same token, no one can refute "Bitcoin could be at $30 in a few months!" since both statements rely on subjective and selective data.

This is a gamble, pure and simple, and anyone who thinks they have a "foolproof system" is the one who's going to be hurting soon.  Play this like any other market -- take profit when you can, don't invest more than you can afford to lose.

There is a second gamble here, though:  the VLIW design could change for worse or for better, like you said.  Consider this: if the 7000-series changes in such a way that they emulate NVidia's approach (better actual D3D/OGL performance at the cost of lower hashing performance) then the 69xx cards you now have start to go UP in resale value, since it becomes known that there won't be anything in the near term to replace them.  This is, again, a gamble, you are betting that the future will turn out one way or the other.

Even if you're comparing your mining return to interest at a bank (which, admittedly, is quite low), it's still silly to buy cards that won't pay off for 9 or more months.

Besides the usual argument, "Bitcoin could be $3 in a few months!" which no one can really refute...

What if the 7000 series cards have a much better stream processor count?  Another thread mentioned them having *double* the stream processors. That's only a rumor, of course, but what if something like that happened? Does any of us know what the 7000 will bring? Isn't it prudent to wait until the details have been released, before sinking one's savings into 6990s?

Those who *didn't* buy cards with a long payout will be in a better position, because they can buy the 7000 series cards and keep up with the difficulty increases that will no doubt ensue.

Those already "invested" in $500 5970's and 6990s will have to watch their returns diminish, and won't have as much capital (or free slots) for 7000 series cards as everyone else.

So there are many things to consider when you go "all in" at this point.