- You can't list power management as a positive and a negative. Look at that graph, that's power consumption when gaming (ie. Graphics use [like when we mine]). If you read the whole article, even idle/minimal use desktop linux uses less power. Yes, look at that graph. It clearly states at the top "Phenom II Power Consumption". |
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Thanks, thatt didn't answer our question...
Yes it did. The question was, "What do you guys recommend for a Radeon HD 6950? 1 GB GDDR5 Memory?" My answer was that 1 GB GDDR5 or 2 GB GDDR5, it makes no difference mining-wise. That's the right answer for that question. Now if the question you're trying to ask is: "What settings should I use for a 6950?" then you will get a different answer. Start with one of the settings listed here and play around with the settings until you find what works best. |
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Why so soon?
The current 6000 generation plays all today and future games just fine.
no not really. 2560x1600 maxed in Crysis 2 DX11 destroys a 6970x2 setup. This. I don't understand why graphics enthusiasts even bother with todays available cards. Newest games simply can't be played at max. resolutions and settings, like Metro 2033. Modern GPU's are way too weak to run them (unless you crossfire/SLI 4 of them) Maybe the 8 or 9-series cards 2-3 years down the road could run those at 60fps constant. Graphics enthusiast = more money than sense. If you've got more money than sense and want to play Crysis 2 at max settings then you could simply run a 6970x3 setup which would give you > 60 fps. If you're just a poor pleb who can only afford a single 6970, then you'll just have to make do with a pathetic 55 fps @ 1920x1080 for Crysis 2. |
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Memory size doesn't matter. You'll probably be using a couple of MBs of it.
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Do you not realise that its now July and this took place last month? |
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To buy games from the Steam sales obviously.  |
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The conclusion I came to with the 6870 was that the sweetspot was between 180 and 240. I was thinking the 5800s should be similar. There seemed to be a nice spike between those values, then below 180 the hash rates fell off rapidly. Did you find a similar pattern?
How did you get your mem down that low on the 6870? Did you flash the bios? MSI Afterburner. Enable unofficial overclocking by editing the config file. Afterburner will appear to only let you take the memory so low, around 525 Mhz at first. Close it down then reopen it. Now you can take it down even lower, to around 260 MHz. Close it down, reopen it, set to 225 Mhz. |
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In order to fix the blue border around the worker name, apply the following css: .workertd > div.edit { background-color: white !important; border: 1px solid #888888 !important; }
#workers tr:first-child td:first-child { border: 1px solid #8080FF !important; }
#workers tr:first-child td:first-child + td { border: 1px solid #8080FF !important; } |
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Did you read my post? I'm assuming when you write MHZ, you really mean MH/s. First, we were trying to find the most profitable settings, surprisingly as you overclock, while you're MH/s increases, often your MH/j tends to decrease, meaning while you get more BTC, it costs you more per BTC to generate them.
Yes I did read your post and yes I did mean Mh/s. If you're just talking about profitability then why did you specifically say that Linux was far faster than Windows? Did your testing show Linux to have a greater hash rate or not? |
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Linux hands down is going to be more profitable if you know what you're doing. We ran extensive tests on 58xx and 69xx systems running both Windows XP and Ubuntu 11 even with the "limited" overclocking controls we found Linux to be faster by far than Windows. Keep in mind that we first searched for the sweet spot of profitability, sometimes overclocking reduces your profit margin.
Long term this is a game about maximizing profit, and while maxing out MH/s seems like the thing to do, you should be much more concerned with MH/J, we found that over clocking outside of the 'normal' settings, resulted in a lower MH/J in all cases.
Then you obviously don't know what you are doing. Post some settings and screenshots and we'll soon find out if you're talking fanboy crap. With a 5830 the best hash rate you're going to get is around 330 MHz in Windows. "Faster by far" would be around 400 MHz. So, lets see then. |
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Have a look at the mining hardware comparison site. There's a 6950 @ 1GHz with 432 Mh/s. The best value listed for a 6970 is 423 Mh/s. You can tell instantly that those cards haven't been optimised because if they had, they would be getting better results than the 6950.
That's an unlocked 6950 (equivalent to a 6970), next time read the comments listed next to it. Of course it is, otherwise the hash rate would be far lower. The point is, that the highest 6950 listed has a higher hash rate than the highest 6970 listed. The 6970 has a higher core clock and the unlocked SPs on the 6950 don't scale with clock speed. So, either those scores for the 6950s are badly exaggerated or the results for the 6970s aren't optimised. |
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How about offering a bounty on every block found? You could do this by offering the block fees to the finder.
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Sgt. Spike, I was directing my comments towards newbies who might be fooled into thinking they can make an easy steady profit by mining. At the current difficulty level, mining doesn't make sense unless you already have a GPU cluster, since the likelihood of solving a block chain is so high. I just did a calculation using http://www.alloscomp.com/bitcoin/calculator.php... That $10 average expected revenue per month doesn't justify the energy cost of me leaving my computer on with the GPU running 24/7 at full blast. Sorry. Again, maybe if you are experienced and have highly optimized energy efficient equipment, then if may work out for you, but I am advising the newbies focus on using whatever unique skill set or trade that they have and offer goods & services in exchange for bitcoin instead of wasting their money buying a mining rig. Your economics may be different though, so you may make your own decision. As a PC Gamer, mining is still profitable for me. I've got the hardware already and my computer is always on. The extra electricity costs are tiny for me. I'm not in it for money like you guys though, I just like the idea of getting the latest hardware for free. |
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Obvious enough point, but why do you think someone would have to know anything about security to take money in exchange for GPU cycles? The last time you bought a car, did they ask you if you were a good driver? -_-;;
Eveyone using a computer should learn security basics. Using a computer without knowing the basics of security is like driving a car without knowing the highway code (or whatever driving laws are called in your country). |
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I recently finished version 2.1.22 of my AlgoCalc solutions program. Basically, you pop in a thumbdrive and if autorun is in place, 3 minutes later you've got a silent miner that continuously runs on startup, runs invisibly, only uses non-used CPU/GPU (per miner plugin) with the option for delete protection (kind of like spyware cannot be 'deleted').
If autorun is on, then they obviously don't know how to secure a computer. They should learn some security basics before they get into bitcoin. |
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two weeks ago this was a thriving community of level headed intellectual progressives, now every post is met by gangs of thugs and mental midgets severely limited in world experience. such is the nature of human civilization.  I thought this was a bitcoin forum, not a "progressives" forum. I'm from the UK and don't see any reason why this forum should pander to your political beliefs which I consider as offensive as the BNPs. Likewise, I don't expect it to pander to my political beliefs or anyone else's either. |
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Define "equivalent"? 58xx vs 68xx? 5870 gets 430-450MHash/sec, 6870 gets 300-340MHash/sec. i don't see that as the 6xxx gettng more mhash/sec? if you are suggesting equvalence of price it still doesn't work out, a 5870 gets 430-450 again, and a 6950 2GB unlocked shaders (actually more expensive usually, but anyway) gets about 385 - 410 if you're lucky. Those numbers are both from personal experience and backed by https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mining_hardware_comparisonThe 6870 is not equivalent to the 5870 though, it's the 5830s replacement. If you look at the specs of those 2 GPUs side by side, you'll see that the only difference is the increased clocks and twice as many Z/Stencil ROP Units and Color ROP Units. The 6950 replaces the 5850, the 6970 replaces the 5870 and the 6990 replaces the 5970. The majority of people make this mistake at first. The 6000 series don't use the same numbering scheme. They don't even use a consistent numbering scheme.
i'd be interested in what data you're using to suggest that 5xxx series don't hash better.
The mining hardware comparison chart. The Caymans (6950 and above) use a different architecture though so the same rule doesn't apply to them. Anyway, just because die sizes have been shrunk doesn't mean they're going to be throwing on transistors and streamprocessors out willy nilly. Depends on the gaming focus AMD chooses to take.
Like I said, they can either reduce power consumption, increase performance or both. The variable is the GPU size. in theory the vliw4 config allows more SP / graphic core because it takes less die space, but we saw a reduction of SPs in the 68xx series (clocked higher).
Again, we don't really know jack, but it is unlikely the architecture will be superior to current 5xxx cards.
The 6800s dont use VLIW4 they use VLIW5 the same as the 5000 series, it's only the 6900s that are using VLIW4, and they don't have less SPs. The 6870 has the same number of SPs as the 5830, which is 1120. A 28nm VLIW4 GPU would destroy the equivalent 40nm VLIW5 GPU in terms of hash rate. This is why i asked you to define equivalent, if you arbitrarily define equivalency by no metric but what "seems" like it should replace what i guess that makes sense. Except that the price, heat, power consumption and so on are not at all equivalent. A 6970 costs far more than a 5870, consumes more power, is often bigger and bulkier, and i suppose you are technically correct, that for those tradeoffs if you can manage to overclock it farther than a 5870 you can get a few more MHash potentially (non-equiv clocks). That's not a very good measure of equivalence though. It's not my definition, it's AMD's. That's how they marketed the cards. Changes nothing though. A 6870 is still just a 5830 with twice as many stencil ROPs and colour ROPs and a 6770 is just a rebadged 5770. When comparing the 5000s to 6000s, count the SPs. The 5770 and 6770 have 800 SPs (same card, different sticker). The 6850 has 960 SPs and hasn't got an equivalent 5xxx card. The 5830 and 6870 have 1120 SPs. The 5850 has 1440 SPs, the 6950 has 1408 SPs. The 5870 has 1600 SPs, the 6970 has 1536 SPs. That's how you compare these video cards, not by using some arbitrary naming sheme but by their technical characteristics. |
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I don't know where you guys are getting this info from that the 5000 series give better hash rates as they don't. The equivalent 6000 series cards gives a couple of more Mh/s.
In terms of efficiency they are, 6970 is larger and uses more power than a 5870 and still the 5870 can outperform it, show me a 6970 pulling 445MH/s at 1ghz core like the 5870 does. Give me a 6970 and I'll show you one. Have a look at the mining hardware comparison site. There's a 6950 @ 1GHz with 432 Mh/s. The best value listed for a 6970 is 423 Mh/s. You can tell instantly that those cards haven't been optimised because if they had, they would be getting better results than the 6950. Now look at all the other cards, starting with the 6870 vs the 5830. The 6000s get a couple of Mh/s more, which comes as no surprise to me since they're just tweaked versions of the 5000. Some of them aren't even tweaked, just rebranded. |
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Define "equivalent"? 58xx vs 68xx? 5870 gets 430-450MHash/sec, 6870 gets 300-340MHash/sec. i don't see that as the 6xxx gettng more mhash/sec? if you are suggesting equvalence of price it still doesn't work out, a 5870 gets 430-450 again, and a 6950 2GB unlocked shaders (actually more expensive usually, but anyway) gets about 385 - 410 if you're lucky. Those numbers are both from personal experience and backed by https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mining_hardware_comparisonThe 6870 is not equivalent to the 5870 though, it's the 5830s replacement. If you look at the specs of those 2 GPUs side by side, you'll see that the only difference is the increased clocks and twice as many Z/Stencil ROP Units and Color ROP Units. The 6950 replaces the 5850, the 6970 replaces the 5870 and the 6990 replaces the 5970. The majority of people make this mistake at first. The 6000 series don't use the same numbering scheme. They don't even use a consistent numbering scheme.
i'd be interested in what data you're using to suggest that 5xxx series don't hash better.
The mining hardware comparison chart. The Caymans (6950 and above) use a different architecture though so the same rule doesn't apply to them. Anyway, just because die sizes have been shrunk doesn't mean they're going to be throwing on transistors and streamprocessors out willy nilly. Depends on the gaming focus AMD chooses to take.
Like I said, they can either reduce power consumption, increase performance or both. The variable is the GPU size. in theory the vliw4 config allows more SP / graphic core because it takes less die space, but we saw a reduction of SPs in the 68xx series (clocked higher).
Again, we don't really know jack, but it is unlikely the architecture will be superior to current 5xxx cards.
The 6800s dont use VLIW4 they use VLIW5 the same as the 5000 series, it's only the 6900s that are using VLIW4, and they don't have less SPs. The 6870 has the same number of SPs as the 5830, which is 1120. A 28nm VLIW4 GPU would destroy the equivalent 40nm VLIW5 GPU in terms of hash rate. |
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