Thank you for the many advice !
I guess I needed some justification to buy a 7970 because I currently have a grand in the bank from tax return and nothing to spend it on
After considering your inputs, I've decided to keep my 6870 and try bitmining a little bit with it. See if it suits me.
Yea, my favorites games are actually rather lightweight in the GPU such as Paradox's grand strategy titles (EU3, HoI3) and only play heavyweight games on weekends. I guess I am just a little bit OCD and hate to see fps dip below 60fps when gaming (e.g. Witcher 2)
What kind of MH does a 79xx pull?
I just started bitcoin mining. Joined deepbit, fired up GUIMiner, the 2011-08 version.
My average at the moment is only 190+ Mhash/s for my 6870. Did I mess up something ?
My core clock is at 948 and Memory clock at 1114
On this page : https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mining_hardware_comparison
6870 at similar speed have around 270-300 Mhash
I do notice a general system slowdown ever since I started mining. Screen redraw is particularly noticeable. Is there some way to limit the miner to 90% gpu usage so that screen redraw would be smooth ? I disabled hardware acceleration in firefox for the moment.
I just started bitcoin mining. Joined deepbit, fired up GUIMiner, the 2011-08 version.
My average at the moment is only 190+ Mhash/s for my 6870. Did I mess up something ?
My core clock is at 948 and Memory clock at 1114
On this page : https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mining_hardware_comparison
6870 at similar speed have around 270-300 Mhash
I do notice a general system slowdown ever since I started mining. Screen redraw is particularly noticeable. Is there some way to limit the miner to 90% gpu usage so that screen redraw would be smooth ? I disabled hardware acceleration in firefox for the moment.
The new 12.2 driver gave me a "free" boost of about 20mhash on my single 5830 system. I haven't updated my other boxes yet, but from the bitcoin forums it sounds like these are the drivers to use now.
http://support.amd.com/us/kbarticles/Pages/catalyst122precertifieddriver.aspx
I am planning on trying these out once I get a little testing done for efficiency. Was there any flags that helped optimize for the new drivers, or was it update and forget?
I am planning on trying these out once I get a little testing done for efficiency. Was there any flags that helped optimize for the new drivers, or was it update and forget?
Also, I've been getting some great efficiency numbers with turning down the OC and volts on my 6870. I'm now down to 1000MHz @ 1.168V core, which is giving me 318MHash/s and a total system draw at the wall of about 210W. Considering my idle is about 90-95W, that's pretty decent. It's not Furmark stable at the voltage, but it's fine for mining and browsing the internet. 1000MHz @ 1.16V is actually stable for mining, but I'll get driver crashes if I'm browsing around on flash heavy sites.
What's stock voltage on your 6870?
MrTeal, as fas as I know lowering your memory clock to the floor would give you the same hash/h and energy savings.
guiminer was just updated for anyone who's still using it https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3878.0
c:\users\username\dropbox\bitcoin\diablominer\diablominer-windows.exe -o mine3.btcguild.com -u username -p password -v 2 -w 256
Yeah, for some reason my memory clocks aren't lowering. If you look at the image I'm trying to set them to 900 in afterburner, it just doesn't do anything. I can set them above 1050, just not below. Obviously I need to investigate more.
Upgrade results
Core/Mem/Voltage/Power/Temp/Fan%/MHashs
CCC v11.12
900/1050/1.024V/167W/49C/32%/289
1000/1050/1.168V/207W/55C/43%/320
1040/1050/1.25V/239W/57C/80%/335
CCC v12.3 (not sure why it should 12.3, I thought it was 12.2)
900/1050/1.024V/165W/51C/34%/290
1000/1050/1.168V/206W/56C/43%/321
1040/1050/1.25V/235W/57C/80%/333
I'd say for me it's basically a wash.
sojuhasu, I'd say it's fine as long as you can deal with the noise. I have an Arctic Cooling Accelero Twin Turbo II, so my temp and fan speed results aren't really comparable to a stock blower.
So, I'm looking at putting together a dedicated rig, and I'm wondering what kind of MHash/$ ratio people look to get when they're buying a used card? I'm thinking something in the range of 3.5 would be about the minimum that would be acceptable for dedicated hardware. Does that sound reasonable?
If you are building an entire rig, the important value would be the total mhash/dollar ratio of the system. 3.5 seems unrealistic though.
Most of my miner systems do not have anything close to that ratio.
Hypothetical build which is fairly similar to what I recently put together:
$199 mb&cpu (I overpay some, could get buy with a cheaper option, but my miners are multi-use and used for non-mining purposes occasionally, so it's nice to have a better cpu than I need)
$80 power supply- 750w 80+ silver from a reputable brand
$50 case
$15~ ram
$330 3X radeon 5830
Total $674, mhash theoretical- 900~, 1.34mhash/$
Could save some making your own "case", or buying a minimal CPU, but I think It'd be tough to even reach 2mhash/$ unless you find some amazing values
Did you get those 5830s new or used?