AMD destroys Nvidia at Bitcoin mining, can the gap ever be bridged?

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Rikard

Senior member
Apr 25, 2012
428
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I might go for one of those Butterfly Labs cubes. Then again I might not. Anyway, about 275 bucks and about 9 times the hash rate of a 7970 at 48x less power consumption than 9 7970s let alone 6x less than one 7970. With these devices around for bitcoin mining, there is no reason to use a GPU for it.

If I were a 24x7 miner, and use AMD or Nvidia GPU's to mine for bit coins, I'd sell them and purchase a few of these cubes. Or at least barebones FPGAs.

It's also a far "greener" option than any GPU could offer. Bitcoins are kind of a pyramid scheme, and it will eventually run down to nil, so get in while you can I guess.

The problem is that they only exists as prototypes. If you are willing to gamble, you could order one today and have it delivered maybe three four months from now. In the meantime the Avalon ASICs will cause the difficulty to rise to the sky. So your good investment today might not turn out to be so hot once you get it. And it has no secondary purpose nor resale value...
 

blackened23

Diamond Member
Jul 26, 2011
8,548
2
0
It's been interesting watching the hyperbole from both camps in this thread. Completely ridiculous. I agree with many of you that bitcoining isn't worth it. I personally have never done it and don't see the draw in it whatsoever, and have never bought a card for supposed bitcoining value.

I've read some posts in this thread with a tone indicating that you can net 10s of thousands of dollars from mining. Hyperbole? Is that even realistic? Good grief. Then, on the flip side of the argument some of you are stating that ASICs completely minimize the value of bitcoining. Maybe, but I don't think folks realize how impossiblethese things are to get, not to mention they are extremely limited run items. To my knowledge, very very few exist and they all sold out within minutes, with only two production runs of 1000-ish made over the course of several years.

So with that said, I agree that buying a card for mining is a non factor for myself and many others. But, some of are you arguing with non factual arguments about ASICs. You cannot just go and buy an ASIC. You may as well consider them completely non existent because you can't buy one. Cloud would suggest that you can go to best buy and pick one up for 5 bucks. At least, that's what his tone suggests. The truth is, they're impossible to get. Very few were made and those which were, were bought up within minutes. Additionally, the thread topic at hand is regarding nvidia versus AMD at bitcoining, the tangent is beginning to enter troll territory.
 
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Keysplayr

Elite Member
Jan 16, 2003
21,219
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91
The problem is that they only exists as prototypes. If you are willing to gamble, you could order one today and have it delivered maybe three four months from now. In the meantime the Avalon ASICs will cause the difficulty to rise to the sky. So your good investment today might not turn out to be so hot once you get it. And it has no secondary purpose nor resale value...

But haven't ASICs been doing this for awhile already? Making it even more difficult to mine, especially for GPUs.
Do you really believe that guy with 15 Avalon boxes is making $240, 000 per month? Not sure if I do. But I'm open to the possibility.

Additionally, its a safe bet that there are many people working to create an "Avalon" for Litecoins as we speak. And when Smurfcoins get popular, The will design a "Smurfalon" box for that. Ad infinitum
 
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Rikard

Senior member
Apr 25, 2012
428
0
0
But haven't ASICs been doing this for awhile already? Making it even more difficult to mine, especially for GPUs.
Do you really believe that guy with 15 Avalon boxes is making $240, 000 per month? Not sure if I do. But I'm open to the possibility.
Mining is all about your relative hash power to the hash power of the total system. I can believe a guy with 15 Avalons is making an obscene amount of money right now since he is only competing with GPU miners. It is like a race car entering a horse race. With time however, all self respecting miners will have an ASIC farm. By then I would think that difficulty stabilizes like it sort of did for GPU dominated era, and probably the daily gains will be something similar too. It is a paradigm shift and early adopter are the ones reaping the benefit. Question is, do you want to spend money on a fast car to enter a race that has already begun? Meanwhile GPU miners like myself are still making money, but our days are numbered.
 

Rikard

Senior member
Apr 25, 2012
428
0
0
Additionally, its a safe bet that there are many people working to create an "Avalon" for Litecoins as we speak. And when Smurfcoins get popular, The will design a "Smurfalon" box for that. Ad infinitum
New bitcoins cannot be created at a whim. But new bitcoin clones can... This is a serious problem. As a commodity they are all fine for trading I suppose, but until one coin gains critical mass as a currency, there is nothing that prevents people to start mining Smurfcoins and abandon MikeyMouseCoins or whatever they used before.
 

Will Robinson

Golden Member
Dec 19, 2009
1,408
0
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New ASICS,dedicated mining machines...blah blah blah.
I wonder what happened to the current thread......you know the one about how AMD GPUs destroy NVDA GPUs at BitCoin mining...
It stings I know but having new machines doesn't change the OP's original statement.:colbert:
 

SlowSpyder

Lifer
Jan 12, 2005
17,305
1,002
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Its amazing how much all the non miners know about mining.:hmm:
Especially how its not profitable "enough".


You have to like now an Nvidia fanboy has declared GPU mining dead...

So it must be so, GPU mining is dead, I guess that's it. Shut it down fellas.



Yep, only fools uses GPUs to mine with.

And if you scale up in the ASIC selection, it only get worse. You can reach 100x the efficiency/cost factor vs GPUs.


How am I a fool for mining with a GPU? If I was running an older card and wanted something new, why would I be a fool to buy a 7970 with the intentions of gaming and mining on the side? I would agree that I would not put together a machine for mining as its sole purpose based on GPU's. But just because AMD GPU's make money more slowly than dedicated mining hardware, that doesn't mean anyone is a fool for mining with one.
 
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Keysplayr

Elite Member
Jan 16, 2003
21,219
55
91
New bitcoins cannot be created at a whim. But new bitcoin clones can... This is a serious problem. As a commodity they are all fine for trading I suppose, but until one coin gains critical mass as a currency, there is nothing that prevents people to start mining Smurfcoins and abandon MikeyMouseCoins or whatever they used before.

Interesting. Thanks for the info.
 

markyh

Member
Apr 7, 2013
74
0
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Did you note in the link it was 275$ for 5Gh? Not to mention the cost efficiency just gets better as you scale up. 1499$ gives you 66Gh at 620W.

How is your GPU doing again?


so how many ASICs have you running right now? When will you get your ordered ASICS, where are you in the BFL que? Have the confirmed your ship date?

If you ordered 8 months ago and get your order next week, and want to scale up and place new orders when will you get these extra units?

ypu csn't answer any of these questions. don't you think if we could all hop over to BFL today and order to be shipped and running by the weekend like we could with an additional AMD 7950 GPU we wouldn't?

To start big scale GPU mining now is late I agree, but it will make money but you would have to order 2-3 BFL low end products to hopefully get by years end to keep up.

All 7950's that I see on ebay now if not faulty all sell for 70%+ of the best price you can buy one new from an e-tailer so if your ASIC ships in two months you are only gambling with 30% of the cost of a GPU. However if yours and everyones elses ASIC dont arrive until January 2014 you would have made some cash.

You can't make stsatements about something not working when you have no idea when what will make it obsolete arrive. Plenty of GPU miners been chgging away since last summer making good money while you might await for your ASICS to arrive. 100% of 0 mining is 0!!

M
 

desura

Diamond Member
Mar 22, 2013
4,627
129
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The real thing to keep in mind is that now is not a good time to get into bitcoin mining.

Maybe 1-2 years ago, but not now.

I did get it set up a few weeks ago. Took an hour or two.

But like, it just made me uncomfortable seeing my machine go into full power like that. You're going to wear out your hardware faster than you can make a profit.
 

Chiropteran

Diamond Member
Nov 14, 2003
9,811
110
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Did you note in the link it was 275$ for 5Gh? Not to mention the cost efficiency just gets better as you scale up. 1499$ gives you 66Gh at 620W.

How is your GPU doing again?

My GPU are mining great. I have an ASIC on order. Order placed nearly a year ago. How much money do you think I made mining on that ASIC? $0 They still have not shipped. When they start shipping, they might start to replace GPU, but we are still months away. I'd love to be mining on an ASIC, but fact is they are not actually available yet, for any reasonable price. ASICminer sold 10GH/sec devices for over $10,000 each in an auction. A long way off from your quoted prices. Avalon, which is the only ASIC company to deliver thus-far, is already sold out of batch 3. Batch 1 hasn't even been fully delivered, which was started nearly a year ago.

In the meantime I'll make thousands of dollars mining with my GPUs, and when ASIC do start killing difficulty I'll switch to mining litecoin, which is actually slightly more profitable right now (but the difference is so small it's not worth the effort to switch currently) which can't be mined by ASIC.

As keys suggests, maybe there will be a litecoin ASIC in two years. I'll happily resell my 7970 cards for a couple hundred each on ebay, and enjoy the hundreds of thousands of dollars I have mined with them.

All the while shintaiDK waits for his ASIC device to arrive. Good luck man, maybe they will finally ship a full year after pre-orders began.
 

Chiropteran

Diamond Member
Nov 14, 2003
9,811
110
106
The real thing to keep in mind is that now is not a good time to get into bitcoin mining.

Maybe 1-2 years ago, but not now.
.

People posted the exact same thing around two years ago when the bitcoin mining thread start.

Bitcoin difficulty is always going up. The reward block will get halved every two or so years. Mining just gets harder, it is how it works. Anytime you start, mining is the easiest it will ever be, forever. In two years, you will look back and realize that mining in 2013 was orders of magnitude easier than mining in 2015.
 

blackened23

Diamond Member
Jul 26, 2011
8,548
2
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My GPU are mining great. I have an ASIC on order. Order placed nearly a year ago.

This is precisely why I find the counter argument regarding ASICs from cloud and others to be questionable. Respectfully, that counter argument currently doesn't hold much weight, period. It is hyperbole for the time being because obtaining any form of ASIC is impossible. The industry (for ASICs) is also rife with firms scamming customers on a good-will basis - firms that will never produce a product. Will that change? Maybe. As of now, good luck/have fun with ever trying to get an ASIC and in the meantime stop trying to use that as a counter argument.

Some don't care about bitcoin mining. I would be one of those people. I don't care and I never will. Let me go a step further and state that nvidia shouldn't care about bitcoin mining because their customers by and large don't care. I don't base GPU purchases on it, either - but in the meantime folks should stop spouting hyperbole about how you can analogously click on a website and get an ASIC next day aired to you for 5 bucks. How GPU mining is "dead" because everyone and their brother has an ASIC. Give me a break. That's a complete unintelligent counter argument that is not factual - ASICs may as well not exist because you can't get them. If that ever changes, post away. In the meantime, you get the drift.
 
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chimaxi83

Diamond Member
May 18, 2003
5,457
63
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This is precisely why I find the counter argument regarding ASICs from cloud and others to be hilarious. Respectfully, that counter argument doesn't hold much weight, period. It is hyperbole, because obtaining any form of ASIC is impossible. Will that change? Maybe. As of now, good luck/have fun with ever trying to get an ASIC and in the meantime stop trying to use that as a counter argument.

Some don't care about bitcoin mining. I would be one of those people. I don't care and I never will. I don't base GPU purchases on it - but in the meantime stop spouting hyperbole about how you can analogously click on a website and get an ASIC next day aired to you for 5 bucks. How GPU mining is "dead" because everyone and their brother has an ASIC. Give me a break. That's a complete unintelligent counter argument that is not factual - ASICs may as well not exist because you can't get them. If that ever changes, post away. In the meantime, you get the drift.

Exactly this. I find it humorous that the posters spouting that crap are green tinted, too. It's silly.
 

Keysplayr

Elite Member
Jan 16, 2003
21,219
55
91
This is precisely why I find the counter argument regarding ASICs from cloud and others to be questionable. Respectfully, that counter argument currently doesn't hold much weight, period. It is hyperbole for the time being because obtaining any form of ASIC is impossible. Will that change? Maybe. As of now, good luck/have fun with ever trying to get an ASIC and in the meantime stop trying to use that as a counter argument.

Some don't care about bitcoin mining. I would be one of those people. I don't care and I never will. I don't base GPU purchases on it - but in the meantime stop spouting hyperbole about how you can analogously click on a website and get an ASIC next day aired to you for 5 bucks. How GPU mining is "dead" because everyone and their brother has an ASIC. Give me a break. That's a complete unintelligent counter argument that is not factual - ASICs may as well not exist because you can't get them. If that ever changes, post away. In the meantime, you get the drift.

For somebody who doesn't care and repeatedly states as such, well, you sure do seem to care. Just an observation.
 

Cloudfire777

Golden Member
Mar 24, 2013
1,787
95
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Anyone who have 45k?
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=321110918071&ssPageName=ADME:X:AAQ:US:1123

This is precisely why I find the counter argument regarding ASICs from cloud and others to be questionable. Respectfully, that counter argument currently doesn't hold much weight, period. It is hyperbole for the time being because obtaining any form of ASIC is impossible. The industry (for ASICs) is also rife with firms scamming customers on a good-will basis - firms that will never produce a product. Will that change? Maybe. As of now, good luck/have fun with ever trying to get an ASIC and in the meantime stop trying to use that as a counter argument.

Some don't care about bitcoin mining. I would be one of those people. I don't care and I never will. Let me go a step further and state that nvidia shouldn't care about bitcoin mining because their customers by and large don't care. I don't base GPU purchases on it, either - but in the meantime folks should stop spouting hyperbole about how you can analogously click on a website and get an ASIC next day aired to you for 5 bucks. How GPU mining is "dead" because everyone and their brother has an ASIC. Give me a break. That's a complete unintelligent counter argument that is not factual - ASICs may as well not exist because you can't get them. If that ever changes, post away. In the meantime, you get the drift.

Why don`t you read the entire thread before going all mental? Hashrate have increased a ton, difficulty along with it. Coincidence? Its real and its here. So stop living in the a dream. GPU mining is far less profitable than before, even though you say you can`t find many ASICs. But they are in the market, its just that the owners cling on to them like gold, because, they are gold. They don`t go on and brag about it either, rather keep it a secret instead of revealing their financials all over the internet. FPGAs stacks are available everywhere. Bah, I`m not having this discussion again.

speed-lin-ever1.png
 
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blackened23

Diamond Member
Jul 26, 2011
8,548
2
0
For somebody who doesn't care and repeatedly states as such, well, you sure do seem to care. Just an observation.

It really doesn't bother me that you think otherwise or about your observations. On an I don't care scale of 1 to 10, i'm lingering off the charts beyond 10. I can make a million observations myself, but out of respect i'll keep them to myself. Interestingly enough, some other users on a simple google search (for the name) leads to results across nearly 30+ forums with over 100 pages of google results with all 100 pages of google results netting a similar theme. Now that, as you say, is an interesting observation. Certainly I could go on about that, but I won't. I really don't care. We'll just leave it at that. You can certainly put me on ignore if anything bothers you - I should add that finding anything bothersome would be strange since i'm merely arguing facts. Some others here are not arguing facts - about how ASICs are plentiful and you can buy them anywhere. Once you veer into non-factual territory, well, you get the picture.

The facts are this, nvidia doesn't care about bitcoins and they shouldn't. Does anyone care that NV cards are worse? No. Does anyone not buy an nvidia card because of bitcoin ability? I don't think so. If they do, they're probably not gamers. I won't bore you with more rhetorical questions but I will say that citing ASICs as a counter argument is pretty absurd at this point because you cannot buy them.
 
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RussianSensation

Elite Member
Sep 5, 2003
19,458
765
126
So stop living in the a dream. GPU mining is far less profitable than before, even though you say you can`t find many ASICs.

Wrong. GPU mining has been both less profitable before and more profitable. At current rates a single HD7970OC is making $105 after all electricity costs for the entire system @ $0.15 per kWh. That means for people with access to relatively cheap electricity sitting out on cards like GTX460/470/480/5850/5870, or older/similar, the upgrade to 7970 is less risky because of BTC than buying a card that depreciates like a 680. The 7970 also comes with 2 solid free games that can be resold and costs less than a GTX680. 1 month of mining would make the HD7970 just $300 despite it being the faster card overall.

I see the same argument used over and over again why mining on GPUs is a waste of time. Lets see what's better to buy a $430+ GPU that's slower or get a GPU that makes $100+ a month and has free AAA-games? HD7970 is still worth buying for games + mining for those looking to upgrade.

Even with today's difficulty, the math shows that BTC mining is still profitable. If you throw in 3 7970s OC per system, you are making $$$ without having to spend a lot since you can fit 3 cards in most modern cases/good mobos as BTC doesn't rely on PCIe x16:

680 Mhash per each 7970 @ 1150mhz x 3 = $430.
Less 5% pool fees => - $21.5
Less 800W electricity @ $0.15 per kWh x 24 h x 31 days = - $90
======
$318 a month

And some of us never listened to the naysayers and were mining for years now and cashed out at some high rates of coins $100+. People here are not claiming they made $45k in BTC with a single 7970. Every single GPU upgrade for me since HD4890 has been free (except when I got 3 470s) because of BTC. On the last peak, I sold a decent amount of holdings which gave me enough money for 20 years of GPU upgrades. 2-3 years ago the same people kept saying GPU mining is a waste of time. :whiste:

The best part about it the 7970 OC is at least as fast as GTX680 OC, which means you have to be a hardcore NV loyalist to not consider a card that makes $ against one that costs $430+ and just depreciates to $10 over time.

When you can buy a 1050mhz HD7970 with a good cooler for $410 and that card makes $100 every month, the 680 makes no sense. Sorry.

The reason BTC on GPUs is not big in the mainstream forums is because it's largely beyond the scope of most computer users. It's also understandable why a lot of NV users do not care for BTC mining since apparently to them $1000 GPUs that are 35% faster than a $410 one are reasonable. Problem with that theory is that people have been bitcoin mining since HD4800 days. That means thousands of dollars saved from GPU upgrades already and that doesn't take into account that some people have built up enough coins / sold at $150-200 to get free GPU upgrades for decades. ;)
 
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Cloudfire777

Golden Member
Mar 24, 2013
1,787
95
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Yes because we were talking about GTX 680 or Nvidia GPUs :whiste:
LOL I`m out. I wont have this discussion over again
 

BallaTheFeared

Diamond Member
Nov 15, 2010
8,115
0
71
It was hard enough selling Crysis 3 a month ago, I can't imagine you'll get much for the bundle now, maybe $30 for all 3 games if you can move it at all.

It would be easier and probably just as profitable to move a Metro key that comes with the 680 in this case, and you'd probably get as much if not a few dollars more.

It's odd you use the benefit of mining 24/7 or very near to it, and selling the games that come with it to push the card.

Are we to assume you're saying buy a 7970 to mine, buy a 680 to play video games?
 

Eureka

Diamond Member
Sep 6, 2005
3,822
1
81
I still have no idea how you guys get the $100/mo number for a 7970. My 7950, at 510 Mhash, netted me about .08 BTC in 3 days (I'm fudging some of the numbers right now). At a trading rate of $120/BTC today, that's around $9.6 over 3 days. After power usage, that's $6 I'm taking home, from 3 days. $2 a day for a month is still, at most, $60.