Glad you figured it out; I'm amazed nobody mentioned enabling vectoring (the -v flag). This has given you the biggest boost.

What video card does your computer have? If it's 4+ years old, chances are the video card does not support OpenCL.

Both of the PSU's you've linked are pretty much garbage, especially the Apevia one. The Thermaltake would do the job, but that particular model has poor reviews.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817256071
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139028

These are decent. Both run on a single 12v rail. The Silverstone even gives you enough PCI-E connectors(you need 3x 6-pin for those 2 cards) right out of the box, no need to convert molex.

If it were me and my money, I'd get the Corsair supply. It's cheaper than the Thermaltake unit(after rebate) and has better reviews. Not to mention Corsair>Thermaltake as a brand.

bitpantry.com
bitcoincoffee.com
beesbrothers.com

Get your munchies on.

The Raidmax PSU should work, but it is known to be a bad brand of PSU. I wouldn't trust my hardware running on a raidmax PSU. Coolermaster is about as low as I'll go in terms of overall build quality on PSU's. The 500w model I linked you would've worked; just convert molex connector into another 6-pin PCI-E. It has 2 seperate 18amp 12v rails, either of which a 5830 will happily run off of. Ideally you want Seasonic/Corsair 80+ gold rated PSU's. While it's entirely possible that the 5830 you got is no good, it's also possible that the PSU you received is also no good. PSU's with a single 12V rail are typically preferred, and of higher build quality.

Doubt this is the problem, but... are you sure you're mining with the 2 cards as seperate devices? device=0 and device=1 respectively? What you're describing sounds similar to 2 instances of mining software trying to use the same card. One instance of the software will use most of the card, the other instance using the rest, etc

"Barts XT" is AMD's codename for the Radeon HD 6870; your graphics card. Turks = 6670, Juniper = 67xx, Cayman = 69xx etc. So when you select Barts, you're using your graphics card. Try downloading a GPU overclocking utility like Sapphire TriXX, you should be able to push an additional 100mhz out of your GPU's core clock without making any adjustments to voltage. As for extra flags, try these:

-v         <--- this enables vectoring
-w 128  <--- this assigns a workload of 128

You should see 300mh/s after these changes. (OC + flags)

OP is mad that he can't afford/doesn't have the guts to pre-order. That's all.

<----- order # 894, in for 2 54's and 1 27.

sorry dude, i invested with your competitor(who is using 90nm apparently)... will be interested to see what you've got 'under the hood' either way.

Guy who pre-ordered:  Of course ASICs aren't a scam, you're all just jealous of my anime hair >.>

Guy who didn't pre-order:  Of course ASICs are a scam, and being this is Bitcoin, I don't believe it until I see 6 confirmations <.<

edit:  i'm in for 270gh/s worth of cablepair's bASIC's, there won't be a rage bar big enough to contain my infuriated testicle hairs if they aren't real...

I've been mining for about 18 months now with an average of ~1600mh/s. I originally planned to hoard, at least until BTC value increased beyond the $31 it had been at shortly after I began mining. I hoarded up until about a month ago. I now have only 8.3 BTC in my wallet. I bought a few things... gold coin from Coinabul, some honey caramels from Bees Brothers, a ... "decorative glass vase" from Dank Glass, some coffee from bitcoincoffee..... and pre-ordered 270gh/s worth of ASIC gear from cablepair. I'm in it for the long haul. I'm not interested in selling BTC for fiat, I'm interested in spending BTC to make more BTC in the longterm, and to spend BTC on goods and services(to promote merchants accepting BTC).

Assuming ASICs are real, yeah, ROI will be pretty short for those receiving batch #1. Mining coins at insane speeds before a change in difficulty occurs, mad profitable. Estimating value vs fiat is tricky. Most people want to be optimistic and make the assumption that with steep rise in difficulty, and the block reward being halved, BTC value will also go up. Realistically, all I can see happening is market flooding with freshly minted coin as ASICs will be pooping them out as if they had Taco Bell the evening prior. I'm not sure how the block reward being halved will affect the market. For miners there will be a drastic activity change in how one determines to shut off hardware or not. Sadly the major players in the market aren't miners, they're just buyers/sellers/traders and for all intensive purposes may not even be aware of the upcoming change to the block reward. If I had to guess, I'd say with regret, that BTC value will likely go down instead of up as a result of ASICs hitting the market.

A8 is not the newest highend APU, A10 is. I have a friend with an A10-5800k(integrated 7660D) and it pulls just over 100mh/s.

Probably 90nm. Seems to be the most cost effective.

You should be getting 200mh/s out of that card. Even at stock frequency you should be getting more than 129... include -v -w128 in your batch/guiminer, should help

You're better off saving the money on your electrical bill by not mining with what is most likely an nVidia card, and instead spending those savings on buying coins outright off exchanges. You will end up with more coins, and contribute to increasing Bitcoin's value.

What brand is your PSU? More importantly, what kind of amperage setup is on the 12Volt rail? Most 500w PSUs tend to have 17/18 amps on 2 seperate 12v rails. There is a good chance that even after you turn molex connectors into another 6pin pci-e power connector, the card won't be getting enough amps. My first card was a 6950, and would not operate with 18 amps on 12V.

pretty much this. how many blocks has the client gotten? if it's less than 204,354 as of this post, then it's not done yet. delete the blockchain and let it try again, or download the chain manually.

My first casualty was a fan failure on an "xtreme" edition Sapphire 5830. instead of waiting for Sapphire to fix it, I attached a fan to it.. it now runs hot, 85c, at stock gpu core clock with underclocked memory.. boo..