Bitcoin Forum

I know that the general consensus is that the 5830 is the best card for mining.  However, looking at the chart https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mining_hardware_comparison it looks like the 5770 has a better MHash/J rating than the 5830.  I know the 5830 can pump out more MHash/s, but is it true that the 5770 is more efficient?  There are a lot of numbers missing on that chart for both 5770 and 5830 cards.  I just want to know which card will put out more MHash per watt.

I prefer 5870 for price and Mhash/s.
It can do double than 5830 and the price is not so high.

Mining is everyday more difficult with one cheap card you will be cutted out soon!

The 5830 is not in any way the best card for mining. They have poor fans, high power consumption and fairly weak MH output.

The 5850 and 5870 are the premier 5 series cards.

As for the 5770, the only reason I use them is that they're single slot. This means I can buy a £40 mobo, £10 riser and put a 5870 and a 5770 in it and get ~600MH out of a single cheap setup.

They are also quite PSU friendly. I run the above setup on a good 550W PSU no problem, and 550W PSUs are often 33pc cheaper than the 650W you need to run dual 5870s.

I purchased 2x5830's to put in my existing rig to replace a GTS250.  Looking forward to getting them today in the mail.

where did you buy them???
i'd love to get my hands on a few of the 58xx cards

per watt, the 5770 is more efficient.  This might be a problem if/when mining costs reach a parity with electricity costs. 
It also means you have have a 4 card setup on a modest power supply.

It seems like currently, even if the 5770 is more efficient in Mhash/w terms, the profitability of mining relative to electricity costs makes it so that the 5830 is a better choice overall, as the increased hashrate will more than pay for the increased electricity usage; the scenarios where this isn't true are if your electricity is vastly more expensive, or in the future when mining difficulty has increased enough to compensate for the relative cheapness of electricity in the context of mining rigs.
(Someone could, and probably has, thrown together a graph comparing power consumption with hashrate, showing the electricity price point at which power efficiency trumps raw hashing capability.)

Obviously, other factors come into play when choosing a GPU; in this case, namely, availability. 5830s can still be found if you search for a while, but never^[1] as cheaply as they were a week ago at Newegg, which degrades their previous "obvious great GPU choice" status somewhat.

1. If you have an example showing otherwise, let me know! :)

Not sure I understand.  Even as the difficulty increases, won't the 5770 still be getting better efficiency anyway?  I understand that I won't be getting as much MHash/s and therefore, less btc per day, but the 5770 will stay more efficient than the 5830 right?

I think the ATI Radeon HD 6990 is the best that you can get at the moment for bitcoin mining...

Not so sure I agree that the 5830 is a bad choice. Granted they are hot and suck a lot of juice, but my 5830s get about 260 MH/s whereas my 5770s get 190 MH/s. Given a psu that could handle both you are probably better off with the 5830 unless your electricity rate is high.

Yeah, but the 5770 uses less power and is more efficient, regardless of electricity rate.

And christhecoolboy, we're talking about MHash per watt (efficiency), not MHash/s.

With 5770, you're also going to buy more hardware overall to get the same Mhash

5830s are better m/hs are they not?

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mining_hardware_comparison

Yes, they are.  However, I'm talking about comparing MHash/s to how much power you need to acquire that MHash/s.  The 5830 has better MHash/s, but it also uses more power relative to it's MHash/s than a 5770.

Well I am getting 315Mhash/s on my Radeon 5830.

Using Traxx Overclocking Util. Mem on 300 GPU on 1022

Phoenix 1.50 AGRESSION=13 W256 V

People aren't understanding the topic, so I'll use you as an example.  Your 5830 gets 315Mhash/s, but it sucks about 230w of power.  A 5770 gets around 180Mhash/s, but only sucks about 120w of power.  So let's set up a simple proportion here. 

5830= 315Mhash/s
            230w
Total- 1.370Mhash for every 1 watt


5770= 180Mhash/s
            120w
Total- 1.5Mhash for every 1 watt

In summary, with a 5770, obviously you don't get bitcoins as quickly, but you save enough power to make up the difference and more.

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