5870s going for 300+ on ebay...time to sell?

I knew someday the ati behemoths powerung my games would be good for something
 
I've only taken about 15 minutes worth of time to look into Bitcoins / BitMining so please forgive my ignorance and feel free to correct if my understanding is wrong.

Basically you invest time + electricity cost to earn Bitcoins based on the number of calculations your PC does over said time (Bitmining). These Bitcoins can then be exchanged for specific merchandise at select vendors (gift cards included) or real money, provided there are people out there willing to purchase your Bitcoins at the current exchange rate.

The Bitcoins themselves are simply a virtual number, represented by a bit of storage on a server's hard drive. There is nothing physically backing this currency like gold, silver, copper, etc. (not that the current US dollar is much different) and no bank or insurance policy to safeguard your balance (again, I can't put much faith in these things considering our current economy). There's also no 'real' physical limitation on the number of coins that can be produced/mined other than the current limit that has been dictated (21 million), but this is really just an arbitrary value as the main Bitcoin website advises that the Bitcoins can be divided up to 8 decimal points and even further in the future as needed.

I don't know, seems like a futile effort to me. If it's not backed by anything tangible then it might as well be World of Warcraft money. I say those of you who are getting into it have fun, mine as much as you can, and sell it off while it's still worth something.

Then again it could be the currency of the future and the folks who get into now could be set for life. Either way I'll at least get to profit on my 5870! :)
 
Nothing backs any currency anymore. The only "backing" of a currency is the promise of the people controlling it.
 
first time i've heard of 'bitcoin'. strange shit. perhaps i should dig out my old 5770 rig and put it to work.
 
Holy shit at the 5970 prices on ebay. I'm very tempted to sell my 5970 on ebay. Will these prices rise even more or will they start to go down soon? Should I even bother trying to sell it at this point?
 
doesnt hurt to try, sell it and get something for it
 
addictedto60fps said:
Holy shit at the 5970 prices on ebay. I'm very tempted to sell my 5970 on ebay. Will these prices rise even more or will they start to go down soon? Should I even bother trying to sell it at this point?
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im selling and holding on to my cash for a while. i bought an amd 5450 in the meantime. a few month break from gaming will do me good...plus im hoping for some good deals on vid cards in the future.
 
two 5970s with one client per core could make a great bitcoin machine
 
addictedto60fps said:
Holy shit at the 5970 prices on ebay. I'm very tempted to sell my 5970 on ebay. Will these prices rise even more or will they start to go down soon? Should I even bother trying to sell it at this point?
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Anyone's guess. I give this 2-3 more weeks before it pops but I have nothing real to base that on.
 
Wonder how much my 2 4890's would be worth?
Just sitting on a shelf right now, so worth it to try and sell?
May also try this mining tho...I already have had my computer running 24/7 lately re-downloading my large steam game list and stuff, so wouldn't really hurt anything to try.
And even if it does go bust soon, the only thing i've lost is time if nothing else. :p
 
kamxam said:
Wonder how much my 2 4890's would be worth?
Just sitting on a shelf right now, so worth it to try and sell?
May also try this mining tho...I already have had my computer running 24/7 lately re-downloading my large steam game list and stuff, so wouldn't really hurt anything to try.
And even if it does go bust soon, the only thing i've lost is time if nothing else. :p
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i did a quick search through ebay to see if my 5770's market value has gone up...no luck. i'd imagine you're in the same boat with your 4890's.
 
Yeah, still probably good to sell them tho. Only going to go down in price as time goes by.
 
Seems like only the 58xx and 5970 cards are the hot items right now. And here I was starting to feel like my 5850 needed replaced LOL.
 
People are buying up 5830 and 5850s too, eBay prices on 5830s are ridiculous
 
kamxam said:
Wonder how much my 2 4890's would be worth?
Just sitting on a shelf right now, so worth it to try and sell?
May also try this mining tho...I already have had my computer running 24/7 lately re-downloading my large steam game list and stuff, so wouldn't really hurt anything to try.
And even if it does go bust soon, the only thing i've lost is time if nothing else. :p
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4800 series cards are most likely NOT gonna sell like the aforementioned cards are for mining, they use more power and generate more heat, all the while pulling about 1/3 (at best) to 1/9th the hashes of 5800 and 5900 series cards...
 
I should really be doing this on the side, since I have a 5770 (from what I understand is the most efficient card for this?) in a 2nd computer that is never used for gaming.

Porter_ said:
i did a quick search through ebay to see if my 5770's market value has gone up...no luck. i'd imagine you're in the same boat with your 4890's.
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5770s are still being produced and sold new, so it is unlikely for the value to go up.
 
I tried bitmining for a little while. My 5970 (at 880) and my non-ref 5870 (990 stable when Afterburner is fully unlocked) gave me 1.05 to 1.10 GHash using guiminer. At this stage in the game, that's almost nothing, so I'm thinking of selling and buying a 6950 and a u3011 refurb.
 
Teenyman45 said:
I tried bitmining for a little while. My 5970 (at 880) and my non-ref 5870 (990 stable when Afterburner is fully unlocked) gave me 1.05 to 1.10 GHash using guiminer. At this stage in the game, that's almost nothing, so I'm thinking of selling and buying a 6950 and a u3011 refurb.
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what...? that 5970 and 5870 would give you about 2.5BTC/day, which would be 75/month, which would be about $2,200 worth of bitcoins a month, you could literally buy those two things you mentioned after a month or two of mining and still have your cards hashing away...

wtf...?
 
limitedaccess said:
I should really be doing this on the side, since I have a 5770 (from what I understand is the most efficient card for this?) in a 2nd computer that is never used for gaming.



5770s are still being produced and sold new, so it is unlikely for the value to go up.
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because of the lower power usage it's really efficient, but only gets about 250 MH/s, which should produce about 10 BTC a month...
 
I think I'm going to pull the trigger and sell my 5970, considering how much 5970's are going for on ebay. This is too good to pass up, as I can pretty much upgrade for free, at the going prices right now on ebay.
 
so i installed the client and there is no option called "generate coins"

last time i had it installed it did have that options, which i checked, and it did nothing....or i didnt know what it was doing, but now the option isnt even there
 
Any idea how much a 6990 would generate? I'll probably put it on the lower clocked bios to save some energy.

I'm still wishing I didn't sell my 5870s for $150 a piece...
 
Pretty sure I'm going to sell mine as soon as I get back from getting some ice cream, lol.
 
wol-va-rine said:
what...? that 5970 and 5870 would give you about 2.5BTC/day, which would be 75/month, which would be about $2,200 worth of bitcoins a month, you could literally buy those two things you mentioned after a month or two of mining and still have your cards hashing away...

wtf...?
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Um, you haven't factored in for declining returns as difficulty scales and pool sizes increase. When Slush's pool was at 500GH I earned roughly 0.095 to 0.11 BTC per block found. (Deepbit overall paid significantly less because even though more blocks were found it did not compensate for the much smaller share per block). At 1400GH my share is generally in the neighborhood of 0.04-0.05. This will only continue to decline. Unless the price of bit coins continues its rocket like assent, it will be not worth the effort in somewhere between 1-3 months time.

I recently considered buying the parts to build a couple of mining rigs but since the 5850 Xtreme cards are already long off the market I would need to do so with either unlocked 6950s or 5870s or 6970s. Three GPU mining rigs are $900+ for GPUs $200 PSU $150-350 depending on MB-CPU, $85 for Windows because I have never self initiated into the mysteries of LINUX, $30-50 for cooling fans, spare RAM I have, spare HD I have, and case is not necessarily essential. My local electricity rates mean about $100 per month per rig in energy costs with an 80+ gold PSU. In theory each rig would pay for itself in maybe 1-1.5 months assuming BTC stay around $30 and shares per block decline at the rate I expect. Essentially, high risk of losing 50ish percent of my invest (the other 50% being recoverable through selling the hardware) with possible gains of a few thousand dollars or significant gains if coins become much more valuable. While that seemed good in theory, when I actually took the first couple of steps to buy the parts Murphy's Law hit me with the entire book, a bat, a hammer, a truck, a yacht, and one comical kitchen sink.

I'm just kicking myself because back in Feb or so I had confused Bitcoin with a payment processing system called bitcash. Had I joined in the mining rush then with about 5GHash in rigs I could buy a house now even after paying my taxes on the gains.
 
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Can someone explain to me what this Bitcoin thing is and why is it making the 5870 grossly inflated in price? Is it basically like folding for cash?
 
yimingwuzere said:
Can someone explain to me what this Bitcoin thing is and why is it making the 5870 grossly inflated in price? Is it basically like folding for cash?
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Lots of links already to what it is, but basically yes it's like folding for cash right now.

Not only has it inflated the 5870 & 5970 prices, it seems to also have liquidated practically all of AMD's leftover stock on these cards in no time flat (lucky early adopters! Hence the increased used prices). It's a type of computation the 5870 excels at, and because of it's 1600 shaders, no other card has so many. There are a few other projects which the 5870 also excels at.
 
OK thanks. Now I have to figure out whether I can nab an unlockable 6950 2GB after selling the 5870 and factoring shipping costs to the US/Europe. Seems like only a handful of users are using Bitcoin in this corner of the world, and you can still get leftover cards from retail at around US$180-200.
 
Woot - I just put up my 5970 up for sale as well on ebay. Let's see how much money I can get for it! Hopefully, after the auction ends, I'll have more than enough money to get two 6970's. :)
 
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