Bitcoin Forum

Is AMD done making GPUs for 5000 series cards?  Cuz I was asking someone how long they think the max time on AMD making a GPU, selling it to a manufacturer like sapphire, and them making it into a card and then getting it to distributers would take.  It turns out, it's a long time :P but he brought up the point that they may not be making 5 series GPUs at all anymore since 6000 came out.  Pretty much all 6000 series cards are inferior in MH/s/$ and MH/s/watt except the 6970 and that's a little expensive for my tastes so that would suck.  Anyone know for sure what the state of 5830 GPU production is?

AMD was done with 5xxx about a year and a half ago

Newegg reupped. GET EM QUCIK!

With demand for the 58xx series cards so high, you'd think AMD would restart production.  I find it hard to believe they've stopped though.

I got 2 of the 5830's from new egg when I got another gd70(5slot) motherboard.   I have had a hard time making them work right.  I dont think it is the same card any more .  http://www.neweggbusiness.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102946

I am considering sending them back...  but it is difficult to make myself put them in the mail..  thinking of trying them again.....

anyone else having trouble with the new sapphire 5830?

I think you're assuming a few thousand bitcoin miners are more than a drop in the bucket for AMD.  We're not... :)

+1

maybe not for amd, but i bet sapphire is happy with the current changes in sales.

Eh, maybe, but I don't think that's the case.  I believe most 5000 cards that are still popping up are inventory that the vendors had already bought from Sapphire and they are just clearing out their stocks.  I don't think Sapphire is still producing or selling any of these and once the last of these 'found' lots are found, that's probably going to be it.

There is a batch of 5850s from the factory.

One local shop got in stock of 100pcs from the distributor.

Okay, there's a lot wrong here.

My quick estimate put the number of miners using radeons of some sort at over 10,000, not 1,000.

Newegg still doesn't have any and hasn't since almost 24 hours before you posted that but that's a business link.  Does the business side have some 5830's? That wouldn't even make sense but sounds exactly like something they'd do.

Why have I been in business for 8 years doing comp repairs and builds and full time for 3 (part time now cuz I work in an IT dept 20 hrs per week :P did I say "in" I meant I am the IT dept for a 50 PC 4 server business lol) and I don't have a newegg business account? lol  :D  I just applied :P odd cuz at work I have a tiger direct business account and I don't like them lol.

oh and btw in between paragraphs they approved my business account and the answer is no, they do not have any :P I think all they looked at was my monthly expenditure estimate and didn't bother to verify anything else rofl.  But they didn't specify "newegg expenditure" or "total business COGS and purchase related expenses for 2011 divided by 7" so guess which one I gave em :P

and finally, how the hell is it that the 5830 is faster at hashing than the 6850?! (there doesn't appear to be a 6830)

5830 = 1120 Stream Processors
6850 = 960 Stream Processors

Wish someone would sticky one of these topics. SApphire and XFX and whoever makes PCBs do not control the production of the GPUs, which is more or less the most essential part of the card. They are crazy expensive to design, and fabricate and require mass manufacturing plant leases. AMD sunk millions or billions of dollars into the 6xxx series GPU, they aren't going to try to re-contract a fab plant to make 5xxx series cards because 10,000 people want to mine with them.

As for why 6850s are slower than 5830s, the reason is simply that GPUs aren't designed to hash, that is just a fortune side benefit. The 6xxx series were designed to be scaled down versions of the 5xxx series, in that they use less energy, produce less heat, while performing rouhgly comparitively in gaming graphics with better tesellation performance. This however comes at a cost of the stream processing units that are used in hashing. Hence the 6xxx series is not as good as the 5xxx series for hashing.

So the last two replies both suggest something that I pretty much figured.  AMD might maybe release some custom type of GPU with modified memory control abilities, a suggestion to put a tiny amount of memory onboard, and a ridiculous number of stream processors and call it a "mathematics card" or something equally unspecific :P If I'm not mistaken, sapphire especially and either Nvidia or AMD made several custom types of cards that specialize in autocad instead of gaming for example and just called them a desktop or professional line.  Like some had low heat and power GPUs with an insane amount of memory to draw and process businessy, non-gaming stuff.  It could totally happen.


....and then a couple 5830's are hitting ebay lol.

are you talking about quadro or firegl cards?
They are already there (since years), have much vram, are 24/7 able, generate less heat and are very expensive.

Indeed. The current price mechanics for GPUs comes from their MASSIVE volume of sales. I believe the 58xx series sold something like 20 million GPUs (not an exact number, but certainly feasible). So if it costs 50million dollars to contract a fabrication facility to produce their chips, then you can see prices like $200 for a 58xx card on the shelf.

Now if it costs 25million dollars to contract a fab plant (their time is expensive) and you expect to only sell say, 200,000 GPUs to miners, then it's not unreasonable to expect to see prices be thousands of dollars on the shelf, like the firegl cards. Until you see adoption of bitcoin mining on the level of video gaming you won't see cards being optimized for mining at the same prices, and of course then you face the double edged sword of insane difficulty killing that benefit.

Hmm... i just had an order I placed on Amazon for a pair of 5850 @ $150 each filled, with delivery estimate tomorrow. 

holler?

7 just showed up today that I ordered back in Mid May, so they must have come across some stock and are filling orders as they get them.

6970 is pretty bad for MH/$, something like 6950 or 6870 though is not bad in term of MH/$, and I'd use them if you can't get your hands on 5xxx series cards at a good price.

You forgot design costs, board costs, distribution. It'll cost tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars per card if the pro cards aren't basically just the consumer cards.

This is why military hardware costs so much. They make so little of it.

Back in stock on newegg get while you can

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102946

out of stock   :-[

Lol I'm glad I didn't wait :D that was quick

I just happened over at NewEgg and saw them in stock.  Blinked twice just to make sure I was reading it right, quickly put in an order for four.  A few minutes later, I checked, and they were out of stock.  Glad I didn't blink three times :)

NewEgg had some Powercolor 6990s in last night for like 23 seconds :(