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Did a Google news search for "Radeon 7990" limiting results published in the last 24 hours.

This came up: (Appears to be legit? - multiple search results have this)

http://www.pc-max.de/news/grafikkarten/zeigt-powercolor-ein-erstes-bild-der-radeon-hd-7990

Is it just me, or does that look like a triple slot wide card?

Yeah it looks like it. Looks like it is way long too, maybe more than 13 inches.

That can't be a reference cooler  ???

I doubt it.

No they wrote its a own Design of Powercolor, can be a 7990, but not for 100%.

If you look on the AMD site they advertise a similar looking Powercolor 7970...

Question is why ? GPUs are out, it's all about FPGA mining now.

Gpu mining will never be out.. a lot of people dont care about power usage.... I have a few places that I can run rigs free of charge...

Yeah but I don't want $20,000 worth of FPGAs if bitcoin goes belly-up one day.  At least I can resell GPUs later.

link translated: http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pc-max.de%2Fnews%2Fgrafikkarten%2Fzeigt-powercolor-ein-erstes-bild-der-radeon-hd-7990&act=url

Cuz you can't play SWToR on a Bitforce...

wtf... ::)

Typical FPGAs offer significantly less performance than even a 2 generation old GPU.  FPGAs offer lower power consumption, but that's about it.

It is true. GPUs will soon be out of the game.

Just wait for 28nm FPGAs and your GPU will be left in the dust in terms of both performance, cost and efficiency.

I am trying to sell all my GPUs before reward halv and before others flood ebay with used mining GPUs.

People that don't see FPGAs coming hard and fast don't have their eyes open ! Nobody likes it but its the way it is going to be ...

Wait, lemme guess.  In 4-6 weeks, right?

Coming Soon!™ © imsaguy 2012, All rights reserved.

Trying to imply I am promoting BFLs ? I think they are a scam ...

GPUs are on the way out ( even for free elec ) and if you don't see it then it will fall like a brick on you in Dec 2012

Soooo You don't think current FPGAs are worth it, but you don't think GPUs will last? What do you suggest, wait for some uber-cheap, high-hash FPGA that has yet to be developed/manufactured/sold?

Also, if you have free elec, what are the downsides of GPU mining, exactly?

Look at yohan's solution from a reputable UK company. Not a scam but 100% professional and not BS like BFL with all the delays ... they are a joke.

Downsides of GPUs : decreasing resale value, high noise, high heat now it is summer, AC costs, maintenance for fans etc. and loads of others.

FPGA are pretty much set and forget compared to GPUs which crash regularly.

Downsides of FPGAs: They're unitaskers.  They're WAY too expensive.  There's already a solution that uses even less power with FAR greater BTC return: PPT bonds.

Right now I'm earning the equivalent of 5 GH/s worth of BTC per month @ 0 Joules.  What does your FPGA farm do?

Did you get in on the PPT.A series?

FPGAs are a high risk investment...... Speaking of Money and MTBF that is yet to find out (nobody knows what a year of mining does to them!)


PPT.A Bonds:  Where do u think all the Bitcoin come from?

You mean the thread on this forum where they're selling cards a month and a half back-ordered for MORE than a BFL with no performance numbers as of yet? Yep, that sounds promising...



I'll give you the other points as valid concerns, esp coming up toward summer, but no resale value? Really? Video cards have an entire other market that coexists (or overlaps, depending on how you look at it) with miners: gamers. You can always sell video cards. FPGAs? There is no other market for crazy fast SHA256 hashers.

I can sorta see where ur coming from, but I think you have it all wrong...

When December rolls around if the market crashes, I can still sell off my GPUs at basically no loss. What about you, FPGA owners?

You forgot the part where they are using proven parts that are already in use in other designs, and the part where they are a reputable company that actually has been around for 10 years or more, unlike BFL.

That, and they're not selling them, they're offering a preorder with no payment until they ship. I have two that should be shipped in July, but if they don't I still have my money in my pocket.

You just named a few things people that pay for electricity worry about.... A/C costs.... and so on.. :P

Actually it's quite the contrary which is the reason GPUs are out, with BFL you get 25Ghash for $15.3k, you will not be able to get that performance from GPUs for that money.
And I am not talking about second hand HD5870, I mean buying from the shop what is available, i.e. HD7970

I have 10g/h and it cost me a bit less than $2000 buying up gpu's cheap. I don't have to pay for power or A/C I can run as many machines as I want in a shared datacenter for free. I paid my hardware off in a month of bitcoin mining a long time ago.

FPGA as it is now are a waste unless you have a ton of coins laying around ( that you mined or bought cheap )to waste on them. In a year or two the next killer thing will come around and with the reward halve most people who go to FPGA will never or just be getting to breakeven points.

A cheap ASIC may kill off gpu mining for the average miner who is doing it for profit. It won't stop the hobbyist or the free power people. FPGA wont make much of a dent.

U can say that because u have not to pay attention towards electricity ....

Im getting rid of my gpus ... Cant afford running them in terms of cooling, loudness and the mentioned cost resulting from electricity.


Asics are far away and counting resale value as a factor, they have none ....

Fpgas are in the beginigs and some sort of risk that we (or i) have to take when i want to continue with bitcoin. Glbse is only beta an u never know what might happen to them ....

Free datacenter space? Sign me up!
P.S., it needs to be PCI compliant, minimum, and N+1 everything.

I could see ASICs one day becoming crazy popular, but there'd have to be a large amount of time and $ to go into devolopment, and who's gonna front that?

I see FPGAs as a stepping stone. I do think they're awesome in turns of MH/Watt, but not in MH/$.

GPU's have there place if you can buy them cheap enough and are in an area where electricity is also cheap.
FPGA's and similar custom setup's are better for those were the above aren't true.

Right now, both have there place. GPU's can occasionally be bought real cheap, which makes up for the some of their disadvantages.
There is also the advantage of dual-purposing them for gaming/work/entertainment etc. I too own such a setup, but only 1. The rest will all be FPGA's.

In most places in the UK, electricity prices are pretty high compared to most places in the USA (and many other European countries for that matter) for example, the same is true for buying the parts themselves... expensive if you want them new. Never had much luck with working the secondary markets in the UK without being screwed somehow sometimes.

So for many FPGA owners (or soon to be) it is a no brainer. Sure it might seem expensive, when it has no resell value, but I'll be "sitting pretty" knowing those bad boys in the corner aren't costing me an arm and a leg in electricity. After they make their money back and it's all profit, why would anyone care if you can resell them. I certainly wouldn't want to be on the receiving end of someone who had been running their card 24/7 and it was on it's last legs, apart from the fact it's value would of massively dropped and you'll be unlikely to get much for it anyway.
Long term running costs were my bigger priority when I choose to get into bitcoin mining. Can't say the same if I'd just spent £1000 on GPU's, since even the most optimal GPU will cost me about 8 times in electricity than a comparable FPGA assuming I did my math right.

In the UK I'm looking at:
£350 for a 7970 - 550-600 Mhash/s

Or I can go with a
£440 for a quad spartan-6 FPGA - 800+ Mhash/s.

4x7970 system = ~$2000. Generates ~2800 MH/s. Would need about 9 of these systems to make 25GH/s. Total cost = $18k. After a year of mining, I could still sell my 36 7970s for ~$300 each for ~$11k recovered.


Thus you are really comparing the total cost of owning:

25GH/s for a year in GPUs for $8000.

vs

25GH/s into perpetuity for $15300.

I dont know about you but at this point the risk in bitcoin going belly-up and FPGAs being worthless is too high for me.

I would consider FPGAs only after the reward halving and watching if the market responds appropriately. Even then it would take a process advantage (ie. the first good 28 nm FPGA) before I buy in.

You forgot the SMALL factor of paying for electricity of 9 x quad 7970 Rigs for a straight year.

at 700MH/s for each card, you're not talking about a lot of undervolting. Each of those cards will pull ~250Watt at those speeds, is that correct? That means prolly around 1.2KW for each rig?

1.2KW * 9 rigs = 10.8KW
10.8KW * 24 hours in day = 259.2 KWh
259.2KWh * 11cents/KWh = 28.51 $ a day
$28 * 365 days = 10,406 USD.

Even if you have "free electicity", someone is paying that 10k in electricity costs...

Add that to your initial comparison:

Regarding this post, it is very misleading:

1. Assuming you buy a HD7970 at $500 each, it does not mean 4 GPUs = $2000. At best you need a $250 motherboard + $100 of other components, and a $250 power supply to run 4 GPUs per system, so 4 GPUs become more like $2600. So for hardware alone at $15300 you are looking at most 24 GPUs which will give just under 17GH/s assuming you overclock them a bit, which bring to problems 2 ...

2. With that many GPUs you are looking at atleast 6000watts of heat, so you will have to allocate an entire room and maybe install an air conditioning unit, which raises the cost even higher. Personally I don't have a spare room in London, if I did I could rent it out for atleast $140 per week.

3. With 6000 watts power consumption you really need free electricity to make any decent profit, if any profit at all, assuming your sockets can handle that much load.

Now Minirig has no real problems except the waiting time, other than that just plug it in and forget.

Kinda hard to ignore ~9000 Watts (Just the GPU's) because lets face it if you quoted overclocked MH/s ratings for those cards, it's going to be running hot and close to 250w per card, especially when you take into account PSU efficiency.
At UK rates, that many GPU's would cost me about £0.90 per hour. Holy crap on a stick, it ends up costing abit under £8000 for a year of electricity just on the GPU, not counting the other parts. That would not work out very well here to your profit margin.
Especially since you still got to take into account massive amounts of heat and noise. About half of those 9000W will be heat, maybe more, so that is enough to heat the average 4 bedroom house in a really bad winter (-10c), you'd be baking cookies if you did this setup without a really good A/C (multiple). Something not so much of a concern with FPGA's, with energy consumption as much as 1/10th of GPU's. There is other parts to buy, but you could say the same about FPGA's.

Starting to wonder if I even did my sums right... but 24/7 operation of 9KW is kinda expected to cost a lot, when your paying 10 pence per kwh.

Ya I was trying to be sarcastic about the small part. In my post right after that one I ran the numbers, and got similar results as you.

.

Oh I knew you was being sarcastic. Just scary to think of having a energy bill that high.
Think I'd freak if I saw every month it was costing me £666 a month :O I'm pretty sure my energy supplier would wonder what is going on too.

Sorry we did kinda highjack for a while...

So we're gonna have a 7970 X2, AND a 7990 that are both dual 7970 GPUs? I see this as a bad idea...

Sounds like it will be the 7990 like the 5970, and the 7970 X2 being like the 5970 ARES edition. So one efficient and fitting within the PCIe power envelope, and the other crazy insane and sucking down more power than a refrigerator (literally).

Rhere were already some cases of that sort.

The police went into a house because the thought the guy had a MJane growing farm....Surprisingly the only found a bunch of pcs runing there, and thats not illegal :D Some suppliers are watching enery bills and report them to authorities.

Haha I read about that! They said his "sustained increase in electricity" was very similar to an indoor farm and caused suspicion.

It's a 7970 X2 by powercolor's standards. 

This isn't the 7990 released by AMD yet, however it most likely beats anyway.

Similar to the 6870 x2 by powercolor.  Their own PCB's - But they have loads of problems.

People are paying insane amounts for a BFL single right now.

Some people ordered them when they looked like a scam. Now if you want to have a single tomorrow you need to pay like $800 or more. Their value is increased compared to initial cost to buy the FPGA ( $599 ).

I would love to see you buy a 7970 from the egg for $450 and sell it on here for $650 or something.

FPGA has resale value as long as BTC is not dead ...

Why would you resell the FPGA as long as BTC is not dead?  You buy it for the mining.  They can only be flipped so many times before the price for flipping is so high that you're back at the only reason you'd guy it is for mining.

1. Buy 20 BFL singles
2. Sell on these forums
3. ????????????
4. Profit!

ROFL you act like that's a GOOD thing.  If anything that just makes the price/performance ratio even WORSE than it already is  ::)

Wait, people buying them for 600 to sell for 800 are making those who just want to mine spend more money, and that isn't a good thing for the overall market?! Shocking!

7970s are basically at the $400 mark now if you know where to look. I dont know what kind of miners you build, but $250 motherboards seem kind of excessive. You can easily build a 1200W system for $400 without GPUs. So the $2000 estimate is correct.


Why would you install an A/C unit for this? Just vent all the air outside.


Actually revenue from mining is something like 3x what the electricity cost is right now (@ 11c/kwh). I'll let you do the math on this one.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Actually "free electricity" is possible with no one else burdening the cost by installing solar panels. Obviously a large investment initially, but you get free power into perpetuity.

Let's entertain the cost of power however. You are roughly correct in terms of most of the numbers. However, I hope to god if you're paying for 9kW of power you're not doing it at residential rates, It's more like 7c/kwh here at most. Which turns out to be $6622.

The BFL mini-rig, even if you could get it to qualify for the same rates as the GPUs cost $735.84.

I also noticed that I made an error and typed $8000 for GPU depreciation instead of $7000 like I originally intended. So I will revise my original estimates:

Another thing I forgot to mention is that the ability to dump your GPUs after a year is actually very flexible.

The reason is because you scale with Moore's law.

In my example, my GPUs depreciate about $100 after a year. Given that I have 36 of them, I lose about $3600/year.

However, given Moore's law that computational power doubles every 2 years, I basically pay only $7200 to have my computational power double.

It is up for debate whether Moore's law will continue for the far future, however it seems pretty clear for at least another 2-3 nodes, it will hold.

Yea that what i read too, because AMD launchdate for 7990 is very imprecise, so that some Boardpartner are creating a 7970x2.

I kinda expect alot more accurate math from a asian. Maybe you should change your username (which is also very amusing btw)

You then back pedaling your math with bunch of assumptions. I guess thats how you "aced" your math in school huh?


You know what, fuck all this pricing bs, i will go straight to being Newegg owner and own a datacenter, fuck all of you bitcoin miners.

This is coming from a guy with one watercooled gaming rig and one dedicated 5850s minging rig, not even owning a mining farm.
 

No actually, I own only about 10 machines with dual Xeons in them... just that they dont mine.

Of course if you think the numbers are wrong, maybe you should just point it out?

Lovely, lets also assume each GPU is watercooled as well (since you just pulled 2800MHash/s) But thats ok, i'm the owner of Koolance.

What the point when you can just assume i paid $0.07/Kwh, get whole sale price for parts and a datacenter equivalent of power grid.

I would love to see where do you live that you can pull 9Kw of power without major rewiring.

You argue you rather operate a delivering business by using 10 Civics instead of one Semi-truck.

Its amusing when you can get the civics at dealer cost as well..

Then complete omit the management cost, drivers' salaries and maintenance cost.

lol holy shit bro, you're a fucking moron rofl

9000W really isn't that much, it's only around 40A. I could easily install that on my existing panel without upgrading my service, and I don't even use electricity for heating. Dealing with 9000W of heat is a much bigger challenge that providing electricity to GPU farm.

Not everyone use 240v. You might not need to upgrade your panel, but wiring isnt just your panel.

You can turn two seperate 15 amp breakers in to a 240volt source :) electricity is fun...

How many people in NA or Europe do you know without 240V service to their houses?

If you have 240V split phase it's relatively trivial to get a couple 240V lines brought out. It would cost me a $35 permit and a hour of work. If you wanted to get an electrician to do it, it would still only be a couple hundred bucks as long as you're not trying to run the lines all through your house. That's hardly major rewiring.

I have seen some pretty nasty jimmy rigged jobs in pot grows....


one hot wire coming from two plugs to = a 240v circuit :P

So...about that 7990. Some rumors point to 7970 x2 cards being released ( http://uk.hardware.info/news/27987/amd-allows-partners-to-create-hd-7970-x2 ); either way, even if a 7990 or 7970 x2 is released both would be pretty neat for a mini itx setup. Although, haven't the x2 cards been buggy in the past (such as Powercolor cards)?

Wonder how they compare: 7970 x2 at 925 MHz(?) vs a 7990 at 1GHz for overclock headroom.

I dont believe the 7990 will have 1Ghz GPU at stock. The wattage will be to high.

700 MHs is only like ~1100 MHz. You dont need to overvolt to achieve those numbers on air. I have 3 cards in my rig that did it. I'm sure others who own 7970s can chime in to the feasibility of this.

That's about the same as what I get. I'm running my 7970s at 1150 MHz now that the warmer weather is here. I was running them at 1250 MHz at stock voltages when it was cold out, the cards never went higher than 75C, and each card was well over 700 MH/s.

Same here : stable at 1215MHz 70°C

http://666kb.com/i/c46p84u2pvpko6h6s.jpg


http://666kb.com/i/c46p7pk8d10ryp56s.jpg

The 7970 x2

Yes you see right, 3x 8 Pin Connectors.  :o

Looks like its an inch or so taller as well....

It even comes with a little red button. What happens if you press the little red button?   :o

You have ten second to leave your block. ^^
Then it unleash the power;
http://666kb.com/i/c46sve6cct1aa15l0.jpg

It resets the blockchain.

On normal 120v (single phase) it would be around 75 amps to support this.  Most houses would need a major rewiring including decreasing the wire gauge to support this draw unless you used multiple 20 amp circuits on 14 gauge wire into your server room.   On the other hand, if you used your dryer circuit which is usually 240 (2 phase), they are likely between 40 and 50 amp circuits and that would work as long at you used like 10 gauge wire or less into your room.

.02 BTC

A dyed in the wool killer would have asked about the little red button...

It looks less like a button and more like an indicator light, to me anyways. The high-res pics show it looking slightly translucent.

Previous Devil cards have the same red button.

If you push the little red button, it switches to secondary bios (Wish it was a red button like this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5unKNLcj8P8).

0_0 so when is this (or the 7990) coming out? I want....

I think the 7990 will came with only two pcie Connectors. AMD alway goes the secure way.
The release dato is unknown anyway, so Powercolor launch this for computex.

So the 7990 will only have 2x8pins for < 375W, and this will be faster clocked but have 3x8pins for ~525W?

AMD keeps always lower frequenzies on the Dual GPU cards, so they pass the ATX Form without stress.
Just look at Asus Ares, launched with full 5870 specs.

I do not like the fact that it will need 3 of the precious PCI cables....

I do not like to use molex connectors.  much less having 4 sets of molex adapters on one rig if you want to run 4x7990

LOL I doubt you will be mining with this one. It is likely to be extremely inefficient and way too expensive.
7990 should be alright though.

Expensive? Hell ya! Inefficient? It's probably just as "inefficient" as 2 7970s, which is gonna be what, 1100MH/s @ 250W?

EDIT: I'm assuming undervolted, with stock core and downclocked ram.

Yeah I suppose so, although if heat isn't managed well enough, efficiency could be affected. This 28nm stuff sucks down major power when it gets too hot.

7970 are NOT inefficient..

this rig pulls 830watts at the wall

404 HW errors?!?

Yikes  :-[

Too bad you can't undervolt in linux  >:(

after re-reading crazyates post, i think he was being sarcastic...  missed that.  i'm gettin old.


404 HW errors...  dont usually get them, but they happen on linux too.  this is out of 350k A shares, so no big deal. 

Can anyone just post a quick comparison of the hash rates of a 6990 vs 7990?

Since it hasn't been released and we don't know the clocks, no.

If you assumed no over clock and full 7970 speeds it would get about 1100 mhash. There's very little chance of it overclocking near where a single 7970 can go, to 1200mhz or more. It's going to be a very toasty card.  If you could get to 1200/1200 it would get about 1400mhash.

A 6990 stock gets around 700 mhash. 800 with overclocking.

Any word on final price of the 7970x2? This would be an important measure of the value to miners... i.e. if there is a price-break between this and 2 individual 7970s, it would mean a much better Hash/$ rate.

I don't think a price has been released yet for the 7970 X2. Considering its size and the amount of energy it will chug, I would think of buying one if a waterblock and more narrower rear IO bracket was released.

I am wondering if it is worth buying a dual Radeon 79xx card now or wait another 6 to 7 months for the second generation of GCN.

Wasn't that ASUS 5870x2 like $900+?  I'd expect a 7970x2 to be somewhere in that area, if not higher.

Edit: Ouch, they were $1100 from NewEgg.

The advantage this has over dual cards is cooling. To take up 4 PCIe slots in a MB, you can either have 2x double slot 7970s crammed together with bad cooling, or this triple wide with a slot below for airflow. Same MH/s, same space in the case, but better airflow.

...Same MH/s, less space in the case, but better airflow.

No, I said it right. I'm talking about keeping that 4th slot open for airflow. If you did take out the extra slot, it would be less space.

2 slots (7970) + 2 slots (7970) = 4 slots with bad cooling.
3 slots (7970x2) + 1 slot (for airflow) = 4 slots with better cooling.
3 slots (7970x2) + 0 slots (for airflow) = 3 slots with bad cooling.

Oh, ok.  That's kind of what I was hinting at o.o

http://www.donanimhaber.com/ekran-karti/haberleri/PowerColorin-cift-grafik-islemcili-yeni-devi-Radeon-HD-7970-X2-Devil13-detaylandi.htm

http://img.donanimhaber.com//images/haber/33616/powercolordevil13of_1_dh_fx57.jpg

http://img.donanimhaber.com//images/haber/33616/powercolordevil13of_2_dh_fx57.jpg

http://img.donanimhaber.com//images/haber/33616/powercolordevil13of_3_dh_fx57.jpg

http://img.donanimhaber.com//images/haber/33616/powercolordevil13of_4_dh_fx57.jpg

17 phases !?!??!?!?!?!!

With 500+ Watts running thru there, i'm assuming they prolly had to just to keep the temps down.

Not to sound like a huge n00b, but what is a "phase"?

Since power regulators are cheap, they are usually run in parallel instead of using one or two really big ones. The number of parallel regulators is the number of phases. Usually, each regulator chip also has it's own control signal pin from the voltage (PWM) controller, so they can be controlled individually for efficiency.

Very simply, think of it as 17 power supplies in parallel. It's a little more complicated than that (the different phases in the switching power supply switch at different time to help reduce ripple and whatnot), but that's basically what it does.

google it.

in an extremely dumbed down way of putting it though, more phases = better :P

I believe more is supposed to fight any sort of voltage droop from high loads. Usually doing a higher power load will reduce the voltage consequently, unless you have higher quality power hardware. you can see this easily with any sort of hardware monitor program and a stress tester. chances are if you run a stress tester program, your 12v sensor will drop a couple of percent, maybe less if you have very good quality power supply. The same happens to cpu core voltage. if you have bad power hardware on the motherboard, your core voltage will droop under stress (my evga 790i sli ultra had this problem bad. lost nearly 0.08v when under full load on quad core overclock)

If you couldn't tell, I don't know what constitutes as a "phase" either :P I can count them on a motherboard though.

Never could. I don't also understand the difference between say 24 phases and 8+2 or something like that for mobos.

I think the question here is go 7970x2 or reference 7990s ( if these even exist ) ???

The more phases, the less voltage spikes.  You know, when cpu's are oc'd to 1.4v.. a voltage spike could fry it.

But as always, Wikipedia knows.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buck_converter#Multiphase_buck

Say you have a 10 phase power supply that runs at 100kHz. That's one switching every 10us. Now, instead of switching them all at the same time, you'd switch one at t=0, one at t=1us, the next at t=2us ... and the last as t=9us, before the cycle repeats. It's multiphase because they're the same supplied, but they're out of phase with each other, similar to how 3 phase AC power lines are 120 degrees out of phase.

http://www.techpowerup.com/167182/PowerColor-HD-7970-X2-Devil-13-Taken-Apart.html

7970 X2 Board shots: (More in above link)

http://www.techpowerup.com/img/12-06-05/51b.jpg

http://www.techpowerup.com/img/12-06-05/51e.jpg

Now thats the porn I came here to see.

Jesus, 3 8 pins and an external power supply jack.

That's not a DC jack. That's the big red OC button seen in the other pictures.

Forget about this monster.

Where is my tame 7990 ???

With FPGAs and ASICs anyone buying this overpriced crap is a mugu / fool !

Agreed.  I'm keeping my eye on Computex for the (alleged) 7990 announcement.

The reason I am thinking is because I would say the regular 7990 cherry picked low leakage chips would be easier to get maximum MH/W compared to the above GAMER chips which need like 500 W alone to function properly.

It looks like it was made to OC not be efficient for mining at all  :'(

Good point! I'll take cherry-picked chips (higher ASIC quality?) over whatever hodge podge of 7970 GPUs that PowerColor decides to slap onto the same board.

Yes but I think AMD has given up with 7990 as it cannot compete with GTX 690 at any rate ( gaming / perf ) and mining is small marketshare and they also had thermal issues trying to cool so much heat with only one fan.

Hope I am wrong !

This is kind of a interesting concept, though do not how long/valuable this would be for mining: two Radeons 7970s (?) integrated on one motherboard, but no pcie expansion slots:

http://vr-zone.com/articles/asus-zeus-combines-x79-hedt-with-dual-gpu/16152.html

http://limages.vr-zone.net/body/16152/34b.jpg.jpeg

http://limages.vr-zone.net/body/16152/34c.jpg.jpeg

Looks really nice but too expensive and not enough quantities and also much more expensive than just two 7970s and cheap mobo I think especially using SB-E CPU ? No way it's gonna be cheap !

There can't be 7970s under there, at least not full ones with stock clocks. There's just nowhere near enough surface area on that heatsink to dissipate 500W, unless there's barbs sticking out somewhere I can't see.

That was my impression as well. The article suggests it might be two 7970s. The bottom of the motherboard has 2 8 pin power connectors (maybe not 680s), 2 6 pin power connectors, equal amounts of RAM on both sides, a certain number of phases just below CPU socket. This board has 2 "16x PCIE buses," each having a graphics card, then a "8x PCIE bus for other uses around the board"; PCIE 3.0 that is. It does have thunderbolt which makes it quite intriguing. That long yellow and silver colored heatsink... curious to know what is below it, and if it can WC. (Maybe the board comes with a contraption that is placed on the unused expansion slots of the chasis?)

It uses 2x HD7970M (m for mobile, it's meant for laptops, so uses less electricity but is also slower) also the motherboard is a concept, it won't be in the shop.

That makes sense, the 7970M is a slower clocked Pitcairn (7870) die, so it would consume a lot less juice. I'd still say it will run pretty hot, that's a big hunk of aluminum but it really doesn't look like a particularly effective heat sink.

BUT IT LOOKS COOL THATS ALL THAT MATTERS

notreally

So apparently, the little red button activates the second BIOS to run the chips up to 1.1 GHz. Taking this speed, one chip would probably translate to about ~650 MH/s; resulting in a combined result of ~1300 MH/s per card. There is no doubt this card could achieve higher speeds given its design, adding a waterblock could most likely allow it to push even further. Power is not an issue for me, but would love to have a pair of these if price is reasonable compared to a 7970.


http://www.overclockers.ru/hardnews/47755/PowerColor_Devil_13_HD7970_X2_vo_vseh_podrobnostyah.html


http://computex.pconline.com.cn/2012/site/1205/2809436.html

http://www.overclockers.ru/images/news/2012/06/06/devil_13_13.jpg

Cтoимocть видeoкapты в eвpoпeйcкoм peгиoнe мoжeт дocтигнyть €1000.

at the end of the article.

Soon GPU mining won't be worth anything :) BFL ASIC coming.

Will believe it when I see it. Have fun spending $10-15K for $2K of GPU performance! :) Watercooled 7970's is where its at, but I just don't have the guts to void my warranty lol. :P

Well, "soon" a lot of things will be arriving: dual 7970 gpu cards, 22 nm, 16 nm, atom transistors (one created this year following Ohm's law), high temperature superconductors, warp drives ;D... It looks GPUs are quite significant in bitcoin mining at the present moment, if ASICs become the dominant method of bitcoin mining, then its case will be proven once it becomes widespread with supply and demand being met, not right now.

1000 euro :o

Not worth it !

Room temperature superconductors have been known for a long time already, the difficulty may be in mass producing them. One such superconductor:
4 atoms of potassium -->c60<--4 atoms of potassium  - makes a crystal that has 0 resistance @ room temperature.

Why would you use a warp drive when you can just fold space/time?  ::)

Why fold space/time when you can use an infinite improbability drive?  ::)

LOL, warp drive to sling shot around sun, go back in time to mine out bitcoins (Star Trek of course) :D.  

I am not familiar with which superconductor you are referring to, where did you see that fullerenes (or even graphene) doped with an alkali metal such as potassium results in room temperature superconduction? Graphene/fullerenes doped with potassium do achieve superconductivity, but those temperatures are at about ~40K and below (-235 C or -391 F and below). The highest temperature superconductors at the moment  have a temperature just above 100K (HgBa2Ca2Cu3O8+δ: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S096007790900321X).

There's several claims (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room-temperature_superconductor) on Wikipedia of near RTSC. Of course no one has duplicated these results yet, much less turn them into practical applications.

If someone can manage to create a room temperature (and higher and ambient pressure) superconducting material, he/she would not doubt become rich in a heart beat. Implementing this material even on a 7970 would significantly improve its efficiency (power consumption wise, even in other mining devices). It could probably even drive up overclocking potential without running into cold bugging in extreme overclocking methods.

http://www.magnet.fsu.edu/education/tutorials/magnetacademy/superconductivity101/images/superconductivity-bargraph.jpg

Unfortunately I think you're right.  If they haven't announced it at Computex by now, they're probably not going to at all.  I mean why wait til the 2nd to last day of Computex to showcase it?

Seems like that is the case.

The only options are the 7970x2 from HIS and Powercolor.

I mean why let Powercolor show off the monster before you get to show the 7990 reference model yourself ??? Why let them steal your thunder.

One would think they would first announce normal 7990 then super duper 1000 EURO Powercolor and HIS 7970x2 models ...

Value of 5970s just jumped ;D ?

And Asus:D

Seems like all the 7970x2 solutions by the OEMs are good enough.

There really isn't any added-value AMD could add here except maybe binning chips straight from the factory, but it's obvious that is not needed (or the OEMs are binning themselves somehow...)

Mis-rememory...it's a potassium buckide - K3C60, the first fullerene crystal superconductor, found in the early 90's, becoming a SC @ 18K. :-[
c60 4-1-4 interspersed with potassium.

https://i.imgur.com/lUqBC.jpg

Well they could use aluminized brass for the PCB, it's much more conductive than pure copper or aluminum.

Anyway, back on topic.

Do you think we could see a reference 7990 ?

ATM I think AMD kicked the bucket and resigned against GTX 690 ...

My impression is that AMD has left it to individual brands to decide whether to offer a 7970x2. Instead, AMD is making official GHz editions of the 7970 with tighter ASIC binning so that it draws the same power but is clocked at ~1075MHz.

Crossing my fingers that the 8000 series will launch before next year. A tweaked GCN should be quite nice.

What do you guys think would be the hash speed of a 7990, if it came out anyway?
My guess is double the 7970 - seems logical - or about 1.4GHash/s. Seems pretty beefy, for now.

700MH/s per core (at least on a 7970) is with a pretty hefty overclock. I'd say a 7990 couldn't handle the power of 2 cores OC'd that much, not to mention that heat! I'd say prolly closer in the 1000-1200MH/s range, at decent thermal levels.

Gotta also remember that AMD is gunning for the GTX690, so heat be damned.  They'll find a way to be competitive with nVidia.  If that means beefier components, then so much the better for miners.

Well sometimes I wonder - Since ATI was bought by AMD I wonder if they are getting a bit more conservative. When's the last time anyone put an AMD processor in a no-compromises performance build?

AMD has conceded the no-bars-hold performance to Intel. However, I do consider their purchase of ATI to be one of the smartest things they've done.

GPUs are going to be more and more important as time goes on. Better graphics + OpenCL are going to be more important that anything else.

Just look at the success of their APU series. So what if the CPU part is 10% behind Intel - the GPU portion is 150% better, and at decent power consumption. And with AMD's push for more and more software to leverage OpenCL, it's all working in their favor.

So the future is to leverage GPU power for better performance. Intel can't do that because their GPUs suck balls, and arn't really getting better. Nvidia can't do that, because They only make GPUs. They might have the best drivers, but do they even make any chipsets anymore? They're only dealing with one part of the equation. This, in my mind, puts AMD and their APU development as the best candidate for future innovation.

http://media.forumpcs.com.br/wp-content/blogs.dir/34/files/llano_a8-3850-3066433/llano1.jpg/1200_0,0,0,0/llano1.jpg/llano1.jpg

Hokay. Sorry - Just something I was thinking about the other day. :P /rant

Keep in mind the gtx680/690 was not the fully fledged kepler chip either. It was going going to be the midgrade chip. nvidia is holding out with higher grade faster parts because the 7970 wasn't the beast they thought it was going to be.

GK104 lucked out.  They underestimated it.

GK100 failed.  That was supposed to be their high end chip.

GK110 is likely what we shall see in the new tesla's.  Most likely won't be a gaming chip.  Unless they use the shitty chips that aren't picked for their workstation cards.  Still under development though.

GK104 is just overclocked balls to the wall for nvidia.  They REALLY lucked out.

AMD has blown a superior hardware lead befire. Look at the Alpha acqusition and the development of the Athlon and Opteron and first to x64. They kicked the shiat out of Intel performance wise for a while.

Intel went back to the book and redid the whole design process and came back swinging, both with excellent new hardware and software optimizations.

I expect AMD to do the same here. They have an excellent hardware team that is hampered by poor software and driver development and poor general leadership.

I remember reading that Intel employed more software engineers than hardware. So ya, I totally agree with you on that point.

How come their hardware team didn't realize CPU memory bottlenecks after 4 cores? :D

hence faildozer

wtf...

you necro'd this thread to say that...?