Lodewijk andré de la porte <l@odewijk.nl> sent an interesting reply.

Date: Tue, 15 Oct 2013 02:57:52 +0200 Subject: Re: Bitcoin mining efficiency and Botnets From: Lodewijk andré de la porte <l@odewijk.nl>

"High end" (optimal for mining != high end per se) GPU's have been dumped since forever in favor of FPGAs. Some people picked them for availability or resell value even in the FPGA era.

FPGA is now totally dead because ASICs rule the game totally. They're totally Bitcoin exclusive so resale value if Bitcoin goes bam is 0. They're flooding the market at increasingly competitive prices and there's likely no money to be made off them soon, except where electricity is cheap.

If your profit depends on bitcoin achieving a certain success it is usually better to buy BTC directly, and save yourself risk and hassle with physical objects.

Note: Litecoin's mayor advantage is that it's something that works relatively better on GPU. There GPU is still fighting FPGA and ASIC would be less feasible (maybe even infeasible?) bc of memory demands.