By the time you get the new card, you will mine the same amount with the same price as the difficulty will be much higher.
You have a valid point there. By the time they come out and a ginny pig spends $200 to find out if it will mine ETH and we get word of it, it's quite possible my 3,000 MH/s from 100 x MSI 390's will have mined approximately $10,000 worth of ETH at current difficulty, block time and price of ETH.
That's $10,000 towards a $34,000 to $35,000 investment. That investment could be paid off in 4 months.
I'm an ignoramus as to how ETH works. Any idea who or what determines when ETH changes from POW to POS? Of course, I could research to find out for myself. However, if someone knows the answer, I would appreciate the info.
Its simple really.
They will release the new software for nodes to update to and if they mine then wont update and POS will be delayed. The guys at ETH put a difficulty bomb to make mining impossibility hard in the future so the majority will update or the network will freeze and kill the coin. In crypto generally once 51% of the network decides to use a update then it becomes official, its like share holders making a vote in a publicly traded company.