Bitcoin Forum

I currently have a GTX 260 GPU.  I know it sucks for mining, so I was thinking about getting a 5830.  If I get one, can I just plug it into another slot on my mobo, and use just that one for mining, and continue using the GTX 260 like I normally do?  Would having two different drivers mess things up too much?

From a technical standpoint it's possible but there is certainly the potential for driver issues between the two

Actually its more about the capabilities of your motherboard.  Case in point, my ASUS M4A89GTD PRO/USB3 has 2 x16 slots however if you put 2 cards in it drops them to x8.  Not a big deal but... you can't run a nvidia AND ATI at the same time (only the ATI is recognized).  So for me I would need to sell the gtx460 and get another 6870.

Check with the vendor, even place a call to support.

I'm assuming that you game and do other things on your PC other than mine BTC. I'd suggest going for a bigger upgrade for instead of getting a lesser card just to mine. I think that'd be a smarter investment because you'll be using that card for more than just mining, making it less of an investment risk. This link has a comparison of various cards and their hashing power: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mining_hardware_comparison (https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mining_hardware_comparison). 6950's are looking pretty good for price, hashing, and performance power.

Depends on what you do with your GTX 260 and what platform you are on.

Under Linux I have done just that.  I use my Nvidia hardware to do protein folding and my ATI hardware to do BTC mining.  Getting them both working took a bit of time (the Nvidia hardware works at a different OpenCL revision than the ATI hardware which seemed to cause some problems).

As others have mentioned some motherboards use 16 PCIe lanes to service two PCIe slots.   Effectively making them 2x 8x slots when two cards are installed.   However 8x is more than enough to do folding so even if this was the case for my setup it wouldn't harm my work.

As a rule of thumb Socket 775 boards that have two or more 16x slots are usually doing something weird.  i.e. splitting lanes, multiplexing them, etc... the chipsets for the newer sockets should at least be able to handle 2x PCIe 16x

My mobo is an Asus P6T Deluxe V2.  I'm sure it can run 2 cards at x16.  I'm on Windows 7.  I plan to continue using the GTX 260 for normal stuff.  I was going to use the HD5830 as a dedicated miner 24/7 because I leave my computer on all the time anyway.  So, would I be better off selling the GTX 260, and getting a couple of 5830s?  Or even a 5830 and something less powerful, seeing as I don't game much anymore?

That's an x58 board so it can have up to 36 PCIe lanes.   So you're right both slots should be able to run 2x 16x no problem.  The third slot is probably shared or downgrades the second slot but that doesn't matter.  Those slots are so close together that you wouldn't be able to use both of them anyway.

The ATI cards are generally as good as the Nvidia cards at gaming and 2-3x better at mining.  So swapping the 260 for even a mid-range ATI card is probably a good idea.  You can see the details here: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mining_hardware_comparison

Right now the only thing NVidia is better at is folding and that may change with the next rev of the GPU client.