Batch #1 of the Avalons shipped 300 units and the majority of them have been delivered. And even with those couple of hundred who are currently using ASICS have shot the difficulty up,
Yes, it is my understanding that Avalon are the ONLY ASIC provider that have currently shipped... Period!
From reading various message boards it seems the general consensus is that other ASIC rig providers are just looking to use funds from orders to create machines for themselves, whether that is paranoia or not who knows, until other companies ship there *could* be come truth in the accusations.
Are they producing what was advertised? Heard it was something around 400 btc a week?
Honestly don't know, I saw a review somewhere on a different board (don't recall which one) that said it was pretty close to what was advertised but not close enough.
I guess it ultimately depends on a users individual settings though, we have been playing with a range of GPU units were about to start marketing and the hash rates have a variance of around 100-200MH/s on the low end models and upwards of 800MH/s on high end model. The cooling requirements and clock speeds depend on how high the MH/s is on GPU models though, even 2 people using a 7970 GPU can have a wide variance depending on their individual setup and which mining client is deployed.
Sounds like a little tweaking and they could come pretty close, also wouldn't they have to take in effect the difficulty going up once more people starting running their ASIC?
Appreciate you taking the time to answer my newbie questions, just trying to get my info right so we I tell people I can give accurate information.
I'm a newbie myself all things considered, have just been reading a variety of forums about topics relating to bitcoins so take what I say as just my opinion #disclaimer
But yes, once difficulty increases the costs associated with mining will also increase as the profitability will decrease (over time) the only good thing about the ASIC systems, when they do finally ship, is that those whom invested the money in them should in theory, be able to get a jump up the proverbial ladder. Until then if you can afford it, go the GPU route and have as many rigs mining as possible, not just bitcoins but also litecoins and any other type of cryptcurrency to minimize your losses and maximize your mining potentials.