Bitcoin Forum

Hi.

I'm not sure that this topic title is best possible? I've been happily mining with my HD 5850 (~280Mhash/s) and recently it's become really inefficient and produces 1BTC/~144hour.. With that "speed" i can't pay electric used in mining.

I was thinking that i might be able to upgrade my GPU for better. I do play games too, and this 5850 is been good gaming card for me too.

I have AXP 750W PSU and Asus M4A785TD-V EVO as my MOBO.

I don't change MOBO, but i think maybe i can change PSU if it's not powerful enough for GPU what is coming.

In here i need your expert help. What GPU you recommend for me? I've been thinking on getting 6990 (my local computer store sells it for 62€/month and 12months time to pay). But if i choose that card i have to get better PSU.

I hope that new GPU(s) are good for mining and gaming. If it's CrossFire setup i don't need dummy adapter as i have monitor(DVI) and projector(VGA and it's hooked with adapter).

6990 will draw more electricity than the most efficient card there is for mining, the 5870! The 5850 should give you on moderate settings 300 MHash/sec not less! Buy a decent MoBo (with 4 PCIe Slots) and a 850 Watt PSU and you are golden again.

--
Free money never stays long with you, for me mining is contributing to a great idea; not making money.

Need to know the rest of your setup before I can say whether you will need a new psu. How many fans? What kind of cpu? cpu overclocked? How many hard drives? Also keep in mind every time difficulty increases, you need to DOUBLE your current hashing power to take as minimal loss as possible. Pretty soon difficulty will be reaching levels that will make for hard times and tough decisions. Can you afford to keep doubling your hashing power with each difficulty increase? Will it be worth it? If your living with your parents and they are paying for electricity, sooner or later they are going to notice that the electric bill is rising. These are factors you need to take into consideration.

A new motherboard and PSU will not change how a single 5850 performs! Nor does he need 4 PCI-e slots for 1 or 2 cards!

@OP
Try to find ANY 58xx GPU and you can CF for gaming, and run them independently for mining. Or try to find a 5970 if you want a dual GPU card! Then you can tri-fire for gaming, and have a decent mining rig! A 5970 + 5850 = 900MH/s+, and is the same as 3x 5850s! On top of that, they will all work together when you quit mining! If you buy a 6990, it and a 5850 will not work together for anything but mining! Plus 5970s are cheaper!

With a bit of overclocking you shouldn't have too much trouble getting that card up and running 350 mhash/s... My asus EAH5850 is running 380 mhash/s on a linux box right now :)

Thats true,
have you clocked at more than 920? With phoenix and tuning the flags me gets 359 Mh/s clocked at 900.

there's something weird.  you should be getting almost twice that.  280 Mhash/s at current difficulty should yield 1 BTC/75 hours.

Yup core is @ 1Ghz, mem 300 mhz, vcore 1.2 and temps are between 56 and 70 degrees depending on the weather and what fan % i feel is good enough given the weather :)

Here's how i get those temps: http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=7216.msg208598#msg208598 (http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=7216.msg208598#msg208598) :P

Hehe, nice one *thumbs up*  :)

With core at 1000 you maybe can get even more Hashes with some other flags.
If you use phoenix, could you try "-k phatk VECTORS BFI_INT FASTLOOPS=false WORKSIZE=256 AGGRESSION=13"? Would be very interesting what hashrate you'll get with this.

I was actually running 388 mhash/s but i just like round numbers :p My flags were basically the same except for 11 in aggression and worksize of 128... With aggression on 14 and worksize of 256 I'm at 394 mhash/s :) 6mhash/s increase, not bad considering they're free :P

Thanks all for your replies.

I try to answer all:

My full setup:
Asus M4A785TD-V EVO
2x 1TB SATA HDDs
1x SATA DVD-drive
AMD Phenom II x6 1090T CPU + Noctua NH-D14 cooler
8GB RAM
1x HD 5850 GPU (monitor, projector and TV is hooked in this card. Also (TV)audio goes through this card via HDMI cable)
no extra fans (120mm and 140mm is included in this case)
AXP 750W PSU
3 USB devices is connected all the time
Antec 300 case ( http://www.antec.com/demo/ThreeHundred/ (http://www.antec.com/demo/ThreeHundred/) )

No overclock at all. Everything is in stock/default "settings".

GPU runs kind of hot, 70-75c and fan speed is  ~64-70%.

I use GUIMiner with these flags: -v -w 128 -f 40 (i don't have dedicated mining machine) and i mine in Deepbit. Here is what my statistic page says: Last 24h: 0.24 BTC
This card produces ~280MHash/s

I think there is all so far :)

EDIT: OS is W7 64bit and 11.6 driver
EDIT2: I pay electric myself, not living with my parents :)

Your system use a lot of electricity for the number of hash it produce.

You have 2 sata drives. You can look to remove one of them. On the back of your motherboard, you have a sata connector. From time to time you can use that connector to connect your second drive.

Also, check that cool and quiet is enable on your mobo. Your Phenom will use less electricity at idle.

1 SATA drive is for OS and all applications
1 SATA drive is for backup/sync (i just don't remember turn USB HDD on, so i bought internal HDD for backup/sync purposes)

CPU is constantly in use, i'm SETI@home fanatic :)

Cool n Quiet is disabled due SETI@home


EDIT: OMG, 5870 ares costs ~1100€ :o :o

EDIT2: OK, so if not going totally overkill. If i change MOBO, i think this would be best: ASUS Crosshair IV Formula (As it has 2x PCIe 16x slots. For gaming i mean it's good) and what GPUs i should chose? Also is my 750W PSU good enough?

Why bother running SETI/F@H at the same time with a bitcoin client?

I hope you are only utilizing idle cpu cycles, not GPU..
Even then it *could* increase the number of stales


5830s, 5850's, even cheap 5770s if you can get your hands on them. They're mostly out of stock though.

The next best thing would be a 6950 unlocked into 6970, great price/performance ratio.
A quality 750W psu will easily run 2/3 of any of the above GPUs.

Radeon 6990 has the advantage that you can put two of them in most motherboards & get 4 gpus, without having to buy two computers with 2 gpus each.
So it's actually a bargain and a great card for bitcoin mining.

Slight side note, if you get 6950's make sure you get a REFERANCE card.. 

Dont get a 6950 non ref card like I did..  ::)

@xonar:
SETI uses only CPU. GPU folding is only supported (by time of writing) using Nvidias card (CUDA). I've been testing shutting SETI and it has no effect on mining.

I've looked some of those cards and some of them can be bought on my local computer store. What these means in front of card model: HD, EAH and AX (tried search but didn't find answer i was looking)

@teflone:
How i know that? Does it say in box? And maybe stupid question, whats difference in those types?

They are just manufacturer codes, they aren't significant.

For example Asus ATI/AMD cards are in the format ASUS EAH6950 (E: PCI-E, A: ATI/AMD, H6950: Model HD 6950),
and Asus Nvidia cards are in the format ASUS ENGTX 580 (PCI-E, Nvidia, GTX-series, 580: Model GTX 580)

To find out if your card is reference, look at the amount of memory and the cooler. If it has a DirectCU II cooler for example and is overclocked in the factory, it's not reference.

All reference cards look alike but have different stickers on them.
Reference 6950's for instance always have 2GB of memory, a single blower fan on the right side of the card, and a dual-BIOS switch.

Your 5850 should be doing at least 340 MH/s.

My lowest clocking 5850 is running at 345 MH/s and my highest clocking one is currently at 399 (probably unsafely - high volts in an overheated storage room)

Mind elaborating on the superiority of reference cards?

He's talking about them being 100% guarantee unlockable.

Although from what I've read, some people have figured out how to unlock non-reference ones, even the 1gb ones as well!

I was messing around testing different OC settings and then i restored everything to default values (before OC) and did complete reinstall for driver and miner.

Now my Mhash is not stable, it jumps between ~120 - ~280? Any idea what might cause that?

I bought HD6970. I know it's not best money wise for mining, but it was best i could find without placing order.

Installing it soon and if my PSU can handle both cards (5850 and 6970) i set them both in my machine. If not, then i have to buy new PSU so i can use 5850 too.

6970 is running now, what flags do you recommend? I tried those found in hw comparison page but not really difference with or without those flags? I use GUIMiner.

Didn't have enoough room for 5850, i'm buying new PSU and put it in other comp.