Pendra37: how do you calculate the dag limit? I have only 3Gb cards and I know from the start that there will be an end but when is more difficult to predict. Will POS allow 3Gb cards to continue working?
Power meter in the wall indicates 850-900W for the whole rig (motheboard, gpu, psu, ssd, cpu,...)
https://investoon.com/tools/dag_sizeIt seems they updated the number post Byzantium and now it shows next April. Last time I checked, it was showing 2018 november or something. The thing is, as the difficulty increases, the hashing power decreases. With the hasing power decreased, the block time increases. The DAG epochs are not defined by date but by block numbers. When X block gets mined, new epoch starts, DAG increases... Originally, it was estimated that each epoch (ie X number of block number mined) will take about 5 days. Now lately, epoch took as long as 10 days due to the unexpectely high difficulty ramp up. That means the originally estimated 3GB limit hit gets pushed further and further.
On the other hand, with byzantium's difficulty decrease, the hashing power of the system increased quite a lot. This means, the epoch will go fast again and the 3GB DAG limit will hit sooner.
Please note that I'm no expert. This is only my (maybe wrong) understanding of the situation, after I read through several pages and sites.
POS is Proof of Stake. At that point, the POW (Proof of Work) GPU mining finishes. No GPU mining will work after that point. If I understand correctly, you will just need to keep your ETH wallet open on your PC to get something.
Byzantium will land on block 4,370,000 so we will have approximately 2,380,000 blocks before 3GB cards will no longer mine Ethereum. At 14.1s blocks, it will take ~388 days from October 17th 2017. This will put the end of life date for 3GB cards on Ethereum at November 9th 2018. As we will see the delayed difficulty bombs drop and extend block times at blocks 6,500,000 (0.4s), 6,600,000 (0.6s) and 6,700,000 (0.9s), I estimate it to be November 12-13th 2018. While the plan from the Ethereum foundation would be to be at POS at this stage, given their track record on delivery dates, I would take that with a grain of salt.