Bitcoin Forum

NewEgg Black Friday special.

Wish I didn't live in CA and could get these without sales tax.   :-\

DIAMOND A5970PE52G Radeon HD 5970 2GB 512 (256 x 2)-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support Video Card - OEM

$299.99 with free shipping.

Limit 10 per customer

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814103195

at the risk of sounding like a noob, can somoene please explain to me why these cards go for so much more than the 6970s...

5970 = Dual GPU
6970 = Single GPU

?

58xx and 59xx series cards are generally the best for mining.  Fast performance and lower power consumption compared to the 68xx and 69xx.

ATI did some weird stuff with naming.

The 6970's equivalent is the 5870 in the prior generation.  A 5970 is a dual gpu part with two 5870 GPUs on board and 2GB of RAM.  Makes for a lot of hashing power in one slot.  Also, the 5970 uses less power than 2 x 5870's, partly because it is volted and clocked lower than the 5870's, even though it's the same chip.

Thanks for the info, would you still recommend this card over a 6970 for gaming?

A 5970? In general it would absolutely crush a 6970.
Only when crossfire is not supported in a game will a 6970 be faster, but not even all that much.
Oh and if you are running extreme high resolution and AA settings (like triple monitor), I can see the 5970 performance being held back by a lack of vram. Both cards nominally have 2GB, but its really only 1GB (x2) usable for the 5970 since most stuff in vram has to be duplicated for both GPUs.

Depends on the game.  If the game has good CrossFire support and a good CrossFire profile, you will probably end up with much higher performance than a single 6970.

P4man makes a good point that if a game makes good use of VRAM and can use >1GB, then a 6970 *might* be better.

FYI, I can play BF3 at high settings on my 5870 1GB with very good results.  If I stuck one of my 5970's in here I'm sure I could get it to run at ultra settings at 1080p with no problems.  Don't forget you might need a quad core CPU on current gen games.

Thanks for the info dudes, very much appreciated :)

I suppose my last question would be then why does the 6970 seem to be a well selling card? just uniformed people like me shelling out for higher model numbers thinking it must be better?

5970 is supposed to be discontinued by now. Its successor is the dual gpu 6990.

5xx0 cards are becoming rarities.  Deals like the above are really steals. Probably stock clearance. Second hand they generally sell for more than neweggs new price.

Nice deal!

On top of that great price, "Free Shipping, 60-Day Return & Price Guarantee on this Product."

So mine for 59 days, then ship em back for a full refund!

Or, if you have any sort of ethical or moral standards, don't do that.

What if he donated all the bitcoins he mined with it during that period to impoverished families?  Would he then be some sort of Robin Hood? Hrmmm.....

I suppose so... I mean, to an extent.  He'd be stealing from both the rich and the poor.  Lot of the people who own stocks are mutual funds, who manage retirement accounts for the average Joe.

That said, I don't even believe Robit Hood is morally right in what he does.  Theft is wrong, regardless of who is being stolen from or the purpose behind it.

But no one would be stealing anything. Its up to newegg to charge restocking fees or not.

Technically it's not stealing.  Morally, it is stealing, since the intent of the guarantee is not to give you free use of a product for 60 days before returning it.  The intent is if you're not happy with the product or it doesn't work right, etc.

I hope you all read the fine print:

We want to ensure your holiday shopping this year is hassle-free. That’s why we’re automatically extending our return policies on almost every product to 60 days. There's nothing additional that you have to do!

Return for refund within: non-refundable
Return for replacement within: 60 days
Restocking Fee: No

-EP

Good call.  :)

Assuming:

- the current difficulty
- a bitcoin is worth $2.50
- and you would get 550mh/m from the card
- and not taking into account electricity costs

it would take about 8 months to make back the $300.  Doesn't seem like too good of an investment, unless you want to do it as a hobby. Of course when you quit you still have the used card.

Are my numbers off?

550MH/s is way light. You can get 700MH/s+ stock, and up to 760MH/s with a little tweaking.

Also I think people need to realize the days of 1000% per year ROI are over.  They only existed for a short period of time due to an aberration (the spike to $30 USD and the slow reaction of the community to expand hashing power).   Bitcoins are a commodity business. As such the ROI is going to be low.  I don't care what hardware you use there is no barrier to entry so eventually the rest of the community will react.  Anything above a 30% annual ROI is just a pipedream by people who don't understand economics.

I appreciate the reply.  I'm still pretty new to this, so I'm still learning.  Thanks for the analysis.

BTW, does anyone know how long this deal will last?

Probably until they are gone.  There have been other sales in the past. $500, then $400, this is likely the last of the inventory to make room for the 7000 series next year.  I would expect to see some price drops for 6000 series too around the start of the new year but the 5000 series is superior for hashing.

Thank you sir!

There will always be new cards coming out and old cards being sell cheap, it is very hard to go for every offer.  Extremely tempting though.

On a MH/$ basis these are probably cheaper than the yet to be released 7000 series.  On a MH/W basis though the 7000 series will likely require about half the electrical load.

I am trying very very very hard to resist the temptations, dun tempt me :)

unless you have free electricity, its still a pretty awful deal compared to the butterfly single board, which is looking more and more legit.

simply put: you can get ~1.4 GH/s with 2 $300 5970s or you could get ~1 GH/s with a (now) $700 BFL miner.


1.4 GH/s for $600


or



1 GH/s for $700




but obviously the 5970s will use more power.

Considering most people have trouble being operationally profitable with GPU mining, thats of course the proverbial sauropoda in the room. Unless have very cheap or free electricity, the choice is between spending $600 and losing more every month or spending $700 and being operationally profitable.

By investing into mining right now, you will be losing $ every month, regardless. Buying into mining right now is betting on the price of bitcoins increasing in the future. If you immediately sell your coins as you mine them you are doing it wrong.

No, If you mine at a loss hoping bitcoin prices will increase then you are doing it wrong. The sensible approach is to buy bitcoins with dollars rather than with more dollars in electricity and hardware.

Don't leave the hardware out of the equation.  If you mine you also have the (used) GPUs that you could sell or utilize for something else.

So if you buy a GPU for $300 and make the $300 back in a year or so, you still have the GPU, as opposed to just buying $300 worth of bitcoins now.

Its the other way around. If you take hardware depreciation in to account its even worse. If you mine at a loss because of electricity costs alone, it means you are buying bitcoins above market rate, you are just paying the utility company instead of the exchange. Why would you do that when you can buy them at market rate?

If the market rate for bitcoins is X, and the (higher) rate per mined bitcoin is Y, and the value of the used GPUs on the market is Z, then the difference between X and Y needs to be more than Z or you should be mining.  Or am I missing something?

My numbers very well might be off, but this is what I'm trying to say:

200BTC * $2.50 (market price) = $500 for 200BTC
200BTC * $4.00 (mined price) - $500 sale of used hardware a year later = $300 for 200BTC

Is that way off?

Not had your coffee yet?
You are paying $800 for 200BTC instead of $500. That you can sell the card is irrelevant. You can obviously sell it if you are not mining too. And if you dont have one, you are forgetting the purchase price. So this is closer to reality:

200BTC * $2.50 (market price) = $500 for 200BTC
200BTC * $4.00 (mined price) = $800 in electricity +$1000 in hardware - $500 sale of used hardware a year later = $1300 for 200BTC

You know, Ill sell you BTCs at half that cost!

Well there is no way you are going to sell a $300 GPU for $500 12 months from now.  ;D

Figure the max lifespan of a GPU is 3 years.  Thus it depreciates about 7.5% per month.  In a year you might get $130 for this GPU.  Personally I am in it for the long haul so I just look at 3 year lifespan so $300/36 = $8.33 per month.  This card costs you about $8.33 per month in hardware costs.  It consumes about 250W (if optimized) so @ $0.10 per kwh that is $18.00 per month.  

Thus lifecycle cost of this card works out to about $18.00 + 8.33 = $26.33 per month.   At current difficulty this card can mint about 20 BTC per month so that is ~ $1.30 per BTC. 

Of course you need to consider all the hardware not just the GPU if you are building a new rig but you can use the same kind of math (take total hashing power, total ammortized hardware cost per month, and total electrical consumption).

Just thought I'd throw this out there... It costs me just over $1.50 to mine a bitcoin and if I were only to mine "off peak" it would cost under a $1.

Thanks for pointing out the problems in my logic.

You're welcome. Im quite familiar with the flaw in your logic because I apply it every day by keeping my mining rigs running when it costs me more than buying BTCs from an exchange :D. At least I dont kid myself  by thinking its smart :).

You can't play BF3 with a BFL card, son!