Hello this is GPGPU, not gaming. You have a common algorithm, not some binary blob that vendors create application profiles for by introducing all kind of tricks to improve performance. No miracles and no marketing gibberish, just simple maths. You have 1536 shaders clocked at 1008 versus 2048 shaders clocked at 925. With GCN, both architectures are now scalar and comparisons are even easier because bitcoin employs  a simple algorithm that is extremely ALU-bound and not memory-intensive and does not involve lots of branching. In the best case where NVidia implemented bitwise rotations and bitselect, difference performance-wise would be ~22% in favor of 7970. And this would also likely require a rewrite of the NVidia miners. As far as mining is concerned and as far as the TDP and prices announced until now are correct, there is no way 680 becomes a better alternative to 7970. Not even close.

Sure.  I'll post my results once I can get a card.  Will of course do stock and potential OC once I learn what is best for the new card in terms of temps and safety.

The open source drivers of past were made by open source community NOT by AMD. This is AMD releasing drivers for Linux, otherwise it wouldn't even be newsworthy.

EDIT: Actually it might be this was not really newsworthy, but AMD making some updates to the open source drivers which has existed. The article is not very clear on this ...

(I will be picking one up either way).  At least for gaming and power, they do very well!

  It would seem that until we mine, it's still up in the air.  The 580 gets roughly 140-150 MH/sec or so according to the hardware charts and personal use I've done with it but it doesn't show up on these compute hashing charts at all.  If a 7970 is in the 600s MH/sec range and we simply divide, it would actully appear that the 680 would mine even worse than the 580.  The architecture however is still different so I can't see it doing worse (many shaders at a high clock).  If anyone else wants to shine some light here it'd be welcomed

  Thanks to Olivon for posting the data.

You made another post about a currency you claim to dislike. Im beginning to think coinhunter hired you as his promotion manager

FYI people, Ten98 and Bulanula are the same person unless they both use the same computer with Tesco Internet from London.

Pretty well explains the pro Solidcoin, CH ass kissing and hatred of Litecoin in addition to being afflicted sick with a jealous rage that they aren't ArtForz LOL...

~BCX~

The stream processors ("cuda cores") are dynamically clocked, and can go to 1411MHz (non-oc'ed).
http://www.overclock.net/t/1231113/gigabyte-gtx-680-2gb-already-arrive-at-my-shop

Also, you should be using hot-clocks in your calcs, e.g.:

GTX 570, 480SP at 1464MHz (2*732MHz) shaders ~150MH/s, so (1411*1536)/(1464*480) = 3.084*150MH/s = 463MH/s

The thing is... they've changed the architecture from Fermi, so untill someone tests it with real hardware, it's all a gamble.
http://www.techpowerup.com/162500/GK104-Block-Diagram-Explained.html
nVidia presentation slides: https://imgur.com/a/aQmuA

What do you mean? Could you elaborate on that?

Then if you have NO proof. Please STFU and stop posting BS on this forum. Thank you! 

If you're looking for tyrannical alt-chain cult leaders, try solidcointalk.org.

I would really like to get people's opinion on this.

This passage in the much-talked about Wired article seems to be implying this but I find that a little too incredible ... or ??

"At the DOE’s unclassified center at Oak Ridge, work progressed at a furious pace, although it was a one-way street when it came to cooperation with the closemouthed people in Building 5300. Nevertheless, the unclassified team had its Cray XT4 supercomputer upgraded to a warehouse-sized XT5. Named Jaguar for its speed, it clocked in at 1.75 petaflops, officially becoming the world’s fastest computer in 2009.

Meanwhile, over in Building 5300, the NSA succeeded in building an even faster supercomputer. “They made a big breakthrough,” says another former senior intelligence official, who helped oversee the program. The NSA’s machine was likely similar to the unclassified Jaguar, but it was much faster out of the gate, modified specifically for cryptanalysis and targeted against one or more specific algorithms, like the AES. In other words, they were moving from the research and development phase to actually attacking extremely difficult encryption systems. The code-breaking effort was up and running.

The breakthrough was enormous, says the former official, and soon afterward the agency pulled the shade down tight on the project, even within the intelligence community and Congress. “Only the chairman and vice chairman and the two staff directors of each intelligence committee were told about it,” he says. The reason? “They were thinking that this computing breakthrough was going to give them the ability to crack current public encryption.”

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/03/ff_nsadatacenter/all/1

Are NSA capable of routinely (i.e hours not weeks) cracking AES ... anybody?

I have you on ignore so I've no idea what your post says, but I'm sure it's just a bunch of nonsense anyway

If it is a botnet that continues 1 trans blocks (or any fakery of non-real transactions),  i hope they realize that anything over 25% will cause the community to really work hard to stop it, and that the distortion of both the selling of the coins and the lost confidence will actually make them have LESS PROFIT.  Adding too many machines will kill their $3000 a day.

It's definitely not broken. You should read the messages you get presented carefully.
Have fun with it like all the others!

And thanks to all the others! So many users in just 2 days. I'm excited!

Except by your reasoning, a 5970 sucks because it ONLY gets 800 mhash, seeing as its a dual GPU board with two 5870s on it vs a 5870 doing 440. Also a 7970 doing 800 mhash uses far less power than a 5970 does and does not have special installation concerns (such as being a bastard that overheats, or requiring powered risers in installations of more than 2).