If you can BIOS flash 5 6870s or 6950s and setup BAMT in 38 minutes then yes Linux is faster.  Win 7 x 64 install with SP1, ATI driver, MSI afterburner, Trixx took 38 minutes to get my 6870s to run 965/175.  I doubt you can do that with BAMT.  Linux uses less resources, but on a dedicated miner does it matter?

If electricity cost is not an issue then go with BAMT, but I get much lower mem clocks more easily with Win 7 setups and that saves me over 110 Watts per rig (5 6870s).

Bump

Invested 250BTC for a little over a week and came out with 253.xx.  DeadTerra is pretty good about getting back to PMs.  I'll be bringing funds back once I mine some more coin 

Radiology questions?  if you want a film looked at I think we have a Radiologist on this board, check back in the thread for his posting and send him a pic with your question 

Yes as a MSFT shareholder I'm very well aware of all the tricks you can do to get Windows to install in different manners.  Why not just point to a Win 7 Torrent with the DAZ Activator 

I am not selling an OEM version.  Please note the word "FULL RETAIL" in the title of the thread.

Sure not many people need this more expensive version, but if you're going to compare prices at least link to the correct one ($299 on TD): http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=5019762&CatId=306

There are other members selling OEM copies.  I could grab them at Fry's for way cheaper than TD for resale, but that's besides the point.  I've priced my copy lower than what most have sold on eBay.

I think it's just a space issue.  Sure copper has gone up in the last few years (as have most metals) but it would probably be easier storing silver and gold for density.  I probably have at least 300 pre-82s and several hundred "1/2 pennies".

Surprised nobody is selling Morgan dollars on here...

The box says is has both 32-bit and 64-bit discs inside. This is the full retail version which doesn't require owning any previous Windows version - you do a install straight to a new HD.  The Upgrade version requires a previous activated Windows to be running from which the new install (or upgrade) will take place.

No more burning urethra questions? 

I would be all over this if I didn't have my old Nikkor 12-24 which cost me about 2x as much.  Good deal for some wide loving for DX format.

Just looked on Amazon and it's $249.60 http://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-FQC-00129-Windows-7-Professional/dp/B002DHLVII/  

I'll be happy to drop my price if you can show me the FULL version for $150 (not the upgrade)...

EDIT: Yeah, I think you were looking at the Upgrade version, a 3rd party is selling through Amazon for $155, but that's a cheaper version - not the same thing

Damn I would love to go (just a 3 hour drive from LA) but I gotta pick up the wife from the airport.  Once in a lifetime event.... if I don't pick her up it will be the end of my life 

+1 Bitcoin 

I have a sealed retail copy of Windows 7 Professional (Full, not an upgrade). UPC is 882224883436.  Asking $175 USD equivalent  in BTC.  I've been on these forums for over a year, but haven't really traded much (only given medical advice hehe).  I do have a perfect 342-0-0 rating on Heatware http://www.heatware.com/eval.php?id=955 (if you've ever traded on Anandtech you've probably seen me and I probably bumped your thread).  Also 397-0-0 on eBay.  I can do local trading in the Los Angeles area or can do escrow with a trusted member on the forums.  PM me if interested.

I will also have 4 copies of Win 7 Ultimate NFR available shortly.  I got them at an MSFT event during the Win 7 launch.  I think they're 32-bit but can be upgraded to 64-bit for free.  I just need to find where I hid them (got 2 babies running around destroying everything )

The MH/s that any pool reports is based on how many shares you submit in a certain polling interval.  Some pools use 5 min, some use 15, etc.  If you submit about 5 shares/min you're doing about 350 MH/s right now.  But remember your chance of finding a share is just dumb luck.  So somebody mining on a crappy 5350 could get more valid shares in 5 seconds than you could using a 7970 theoretically - of course in the end the 7970 owner will beat out a 5350 since random variation will be smoothed out by time.

So if your cards are being underreported you're just unlucky at that moment in time.  If you check later you might see the reported hash rate 100 higher than what you are actually doing.  Ultimately what matters is how many valid shares you are submitting since that is what you're being paid for in PPS.  In CGMiner you'll see the shares per minute reported as "U" (I guess for the card's utility).

Have you ever sold on eBay?  Ever have to deal with a scammer on the crime syndicate know as eBay/Paypal.  I've only lost about $200 to those 2 horrible companies and if I don't ever see myself breaking even I would be happy if Bitcoin becomes that much more secure as a result of the distribution of ASIC.  Yes I am disappointed I can no longer get unlimited free high end video cards but having an alternative to Paypal to me is worth more than the $1350 (now almost $1500 USD with the BTC price increase) I shelled out for a SC Single.

It never was really an issue of me being uncomfortable opening it (I've been playing with hardware since back in the days of a Hayes 300 baud modem since my dad is an EE) just I didn't want to void warranty or have my kids interrupt me and eat a thermal pad or retention spring (if you have kids you know what I mean).

I'm usually gentle with my hardware but I found my cordless 18V leafblower did a lot better job of blowing dust out of my 6950s than compressed air did.  Just put them all in the driveway and watched the dust blow out.  They're all mining fine 1 year later haha.

I decided to just try to RMA it but Sapphire RMA leaves something to be desired.  From posts on HardForums I think Sapphire wanted me to RMA to the original vendor.   The Amazon rep had a hard time finding contact info for Sapphire so she agreed to accept the card for a partial refund which I was OK with.

It was my first failure out of 40 or so cards - guess that's not too bad.  Guess something was bound to happen when the ambient got up to 100F because the AC doesn't run on Sunday in the office where my main mining setup is.

As suggested I took a loot at the temps with GPU-Z.  I ran the card at stock 900 core with mem at 550 (didn't bother to lower to 175 like I normally do with Trixx).  I bumped the fan to 60%.  I heard the audible increase in fan speed.  Launched CGMiner and it was able to mine at about 280MH/s for a good 4 minutes with temps getting to 82C with ambient about 75F.  I launched GPU-Z and

GPU Temp #1: 82C (same temp reported in CGMiner - I guess the GPU core)
GPU Temp #2: 145C
GPU Temp #3: 93C

Um, yeah  - I'm no EE but 145C doesn't sound good haha.  I immediately shut down the miner.  Is that GPU Temp #3 145C the VRMs?

At idle and clocked at 900/150 the 3 temps are 39C/40C/37C

EDIT:
Retested with fan at 60% by dropping memclock down to 150 and temps are better: 68.5C/107C/76.5C

Looks like it is functional again but still running pretty hot for a 6870 being the only card in the rig.

I doubt its the PSU now that I think about it since I had a 6950 mining in my home machine without issue, the 6870 in question does the same thing at home.

It could be the fan, but it still seems to run smoothly.  CGMiner was reporting a RPM of 2216 which is just a little faster than most of the the other 6870s I'm running (they're 2100-2200 at 50%).

I'll launch GPU-Z and see what the VDDC temps are.

Honestly I'd rather do surgery on a human than open the card up.  Not because I don't trust in myself but I got 2 little monkeys at home that want to destroy everything.  One already pried a capacitor off a 3 card Mobo rendering it dead so doing any "surgery" at home isn't really feasible

Background: I bought a whole bunch of 6870s for my mining rigs (mostly Sapphire ones) and for the most part they have been problem free running 965/175 stock volts.  The ones I got from Amazon can all run that speed.  2 that I got from Newegg seem to have issues so I throttled them back to 950/175 and ran them in a 2 card rig.  The card with the issue has hashed for about 6 months without major problems until now.

Issue:  Yesterday CGminer reported that the card that usually runs cooler (one farther from the CPU) was "SICK".  So I killed CGMiner 2.4.4 and restarted it - card seemed to be working fine.  30 minutes later I check up on it and card says SICK again and is not mining. This time I watch it on a restart and note it seems to be hashing OK but the temps seem to be ramping up past the max it normally went to (past the 72C it previously maxed at).  MSI Afterburner shows it hit up to 92C sometime in the past (I'm assuming when it went SICK previously).  On this reattempt it got up to 88C, the machine hangs for 10 seconds, and the driver crashes with Win 7 x64 running fine just CGMiner not hashing.  I took the card out and brought it home to test it and it basically does the same thing when mining on my home rig (single card setup).  It seemed to run 3DMark 2011 Basic OK with a 4220 score (average) and played Civ 5 without problem for 2 hours).

Any idea what's wrong?  The fan seems to be spinning fine and I had it set at 50%.

I did a lot of messing around with the rig recently that may be relevant.  Last week I swapped out the previous Antec Neo Eco 620C and used a Antec HCG-400 (400W 30A on 12V single rail) since I needed the 620 for a 7970.  The rig should have had enough power as it read 340W on the killawatt with both cards mining.   2 nights before the "SICKness" I "upgraded" the drivers to 12.3 from 11.7 to see if the hashrate would really take a hit (it did, dropped from 305 MH to 275).  Yeah it was a bonehead move, but my 6950s suffered almost no penalty from going from 11.7 to 12.3 oddly and that cured the CPU bug on those rigs.  So I'm not sure if swapping the PSU or changing drivers could have resulted in the hardware "failure".  I keep hearing about VRMs overheating on 5970s - are the 6870s susceptible to such damage?

I could always RMA the card to Sapphire but I worry they'll find nothing wrong with it and I'll be out a mining card for 2-3 weeks.

Kudos on this call!

Simple question - I have a single card that I mine from at home and it's always mined from at home while my main setup is at the wife's office (obviously different IPs and subnets).  Should I just point my home miner to a different pool?  I'm just asking because I'm sure there's a lot of people here who have a main facility and then their home setup who might be having the same issue.