[noname2020x]

Using my system below, is it worth it to mine bitcoins if my price for kWh per hour is 13 cents? I would most likely have chrome and a word file open while mining. Do any of you mine?

Are there any programs to confirm/deny my bitcoin potential?

[ChanceCoats123]

Unfortunately, I'm going to have to say no to the overall question. However, it might require some clarification. What exactly does "worth it" mean to you? If you're talking about profitability, then it's a definite no.

This is a widely recognized list of mining speeds and their configurations: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mining_hardware_comparison

As you can see, your 560 would be getting ~80 megahash/sec at best. When using this mining calculator (http://www.alloscomp.com/bitcoin/calculator.php) You find that with the current USD <-> BTC exchange rate of ~$4.66/BTC, you'll make about $.25 per day, which is not nearly enough to even cover the electrical costs of running the card (remember that bitcoin mining applies a 100% load to your graphics card).

If you take note of the first link I gave (the hardware spreadsheet), the ATI cards are much more profitable when it comes to bitcoin mining. BUT, one final part to take into account is the "difficulty." The current difficulty and the projected next difficulty can be seen at http://www.bitcoinwatch.com. Since there is a general upwards trend for the difficulty, what is profitable now will more than likely not be profitable in the future.

[noname2020x]

Incredibly helpful, thanks!

[ChanceCoats123]

Lol. No problem.

[SMOKEU]

Buy an AMD card or a FPGA miner if you're interested in mining.

[Shell]

Originally Posted by SMOKEU

Buy an AMD card or a FPGA miner if you're interested in mining.

I don't see FPGA being as good as GPU, and GPU still doesn't make any notable money.

[SMOKEU]

Originally Posted by Shell

I don't see FPGA being as good as GPU, and GPU still doesn't make any notable money.

Many of the FPGA miners have over 10X the MH/W compared to a typical, modern AMD GPU. Some of them are capable of over 25GH/s.

[ChanceCoats123]

Originally Posted by Shell

I don't see FPGA being as good as GPU, and GPU still doesn't make any notable money.

First things first, Smoke is correct. FPGA's have well surpassed the hashing power of most gpu's. Secondly, Gpu's themselves make great money... I've made $100 on top of my initial $150 startup cost in the last 2 months. Did I mention that I've done no work other than clicking and typing?

Originally Posted by SMOKEU

Many of the FPGA miners have over 10X the MH/W compared to a typical, modern AMD GPU. Some of them are capable of over 25GH/s.

Have any links? I mean, obviously if you compare something like a BFL single which is ~ 840mhash, it's a lot more than a 5770, or other, but a 7970 is hashing 550mhash/sec+. So comparatively speaking, that's less than 2x as fast. However, I'm certain that people who have the knowledge to build their own FPGA's and program the code (or use the code made by the current FPGA producers), could achieve very nice hashing power.

[SMOKEU]

Originally Posted by ChanceCoats123

Have any links? I mean, obviously if you compare something like a BFL single which is ~ 840mhash, it's a lot more than a 5770, or other, but a 7970 is hashing 550mhash/sec+. So comparatively speaking, that's less than 2x as fast. However, I'm certain that people who have the knowledge to build their own FPGA's and program the code (or use the code made by the current FPGA producers), could achieve very nice hashing power.

Last week there was a site advertising 25GH/s miners, but now it's disappeared. This is all I could find for now. 6970 hash rates for 17.2W of power. Not bad at all.

[ChanceCoats123]

Originally Posted by SMOKEU

Last week there was a site advertising 25GH/s miners, but now it's disappeared. This is all I could find for now. 6970 hash rates for 17.2W of power. Not bad at all.

Ohhhhh, It's coming back. I remember what you're talking about. It was a company that is making the mining boxes. That's not a single FPGA, that's a box filled with 20-40 (depending upon the hashing rate of each).

[SMOKEU]

I'm sure if you keep an eye out on the bitcoin forums there must be a cheaper FPGA miner with a USB interface.

[trekky]

those miners are crazy prices! $500 for something small like that!
it only makes ~$30 a month! it would take about 17 months to make it pay some itself!
those dont seem worth the cost. because GPUs mine and play games those only mine

[Shell]

Originally Posted by trekky

those miners are crazy prices! $500 for something small like that!
it only makes ~$30 a month! it would take about 17 months to make it pay some itself!
those dont seem worth the cost. because GPUs mine and play games those only mine

Ya, GPUs seem far more practical and are quite powerful.
Yes FPGAs can act like fixed function devices to mine extremely quick, but I've yet to see any good designs for them.
Those FPGAs make the seller the big money, not the user, ridiculous price, only advantage is power usage.
I should sell FPGA miners, would be cheaper, faster and I'd make a killing. lol

Although Making an ARM-Farm would probably be easier. 850mhz A8 $30 boards, use cpu and integrated gpu to crunch together.

[ChanceCoats123]

Thing about FPGA miners is that when the difficulty level of BTC reaches a high enough point, GPU mining will no longer be cost effective. To put it roughly in terms of profit/month vs. time mining: A gpu will earn $30 a month for the first month, and over the next 24 months, your profit will decrease until it reaches $0. An FPGA, will mine $30 a month, but for the next 36-48 months, will continue to make profit.

The dates I used are not actual guestimations, I just threw numbers out there for examples. But the point is, while GPU miners have to stop mining due to power costs, FPGA miners will monopolize the markets with efficiency.

Another thing, the entire point of an FPGA is that it's specialized. So once you are done bitcoin mining, write the code, or pay someone to write the code that allows you to use your FPGA for something else, like folding, Seti, or anything you'd like.

[Shell]

Those miner FPGAs don't have RAM and little connectivity, making them worthless for a lot of things beyond cracking.
You might as well buy a dev board with the same chips if you want added value... although that costs $250-350 with a single chip depending on how fancy you want.

4 of those FPGAs on a board costs $640, and he's charging $580 for two, the guy's a scam.

[trekky]

yep

[SMOKEU]

Originally Posted by ChanceCoats123

Thing about FPGA miners is that when the difficulty level of BTC reaches a high enough point, GPU mining will no longer be cost effective. To put it roughly in terms of profit/month vs. time mining: A gpu will earn $30 a month for the first month, and over the next 24 months, your profit will decrease until it reaches $0. An FPGA, will mine $30 a month, but for the next 36-48 months, will continue to make profit.

Unless the value of the Bitcoins increase with the difficulty enough to justify GPU mining.

[ChanceCoats123]

Originally Posted by Shell

Those miner FPGAs don't have RAM and little connectivity, making them worthless for a lot of things beyond cracking.
You might as well buy a dev board with the same chips if you want added value... although that costs $250-350 with a single chip depending on how fancy you want.

4 of those FPGAs on a board costs $640, and he's charging $580 for two, the guy's a scam.

Clarification: I'm not saying it's not a scam (because it's someone with the knowledge just taking advantage of the market). All I am trying to get across is that there are potential positives to FPGA miners.

Originally Posted by SMOKEU

Unless the value of the Bitcoins increase with the difficulty enough to justify GPU mining.

Also very true. I am a believer that what you mention will happen (at least when the block value halves), so I bet I'll be gpu mining for a while.