A bit of it is tied, but I underclock my cpu's without affecting hashrate. You just need to reasonably do it. Having one program hog all the cpu resources in any way, leaves a bottleneck for lack of cpu to do basic OS management and do the network to gpu work. 

Excellent to hear. Now as long as they keep pumping out drivers for xp I'll be in business.

The reason ati's are faster for this specific mining work is that mining uses the SHA instructions (I think that's what it's called).

Pretty much it boils down to the nvidia card have to run a set of instructions (like say 4), where as the ati card can do it in 1 instruction.

So no matter what, until nvidia adopts openCL or gets some similiar instructions, they are going to suck balls at this.

I would waste my money on 5970's. Pick up used 5870's for 200 apiece and use the leftover money to get a dedicated rig. Apparently with the new drivers you can run more than 4 cards in windows, so just get a board with a lot of slots and go to town...

I was trying to find info on this, but my search attempts failed.

Is there any performance mining wise vs the two? Or any big factors I should know about? I've been using 7 to date, but I'd like to start installing windows xp to usb disks and don't want to have to purchase 16gb usb drives just becuase of the needed space.

I'm not a prude, but from a business sense having the Adult section not on the front shelf is a good idea. BTC for porn is fine.

For 50 dollars less you can pick up at 5770 and those easily get 200mhs. It seems 2mhs/1$ is a sweetspot.

Any prices? I could offer a price, but I doubt you'd like one I came up with by going and finding average used prices on the lot...

Wee! Time to go find Lady Luck and give her a good kick in the head!

Yup, I've lost a little over 2btc so far... a 4 day block... and counting....

You other guys are having some odd problems, I've always had my onboard working as long as I had the drivers for it.

OP: Just plug your monitor into your onboard, make sure your onboard is enabled. Linux should pick this up. (It does in windows.)


Poclbm should only show openCL devices. Your 4200 (I hope doesn't) support openCL.

The 4x won't matter. All you need is 1x.

To be honest, I'd quickly return both of those 6850's for 3x 5770's or any of the 58xx series. If you can't find those, then 6950 would work.

Here's why:

Qty*card = total mh/s @ total price

2x6850 = 420mh/s @ 300 dollars
3x5770 = 600mh/s @ 270-330 dollars
1x6950 = 350mh/s @ 190-230 dollars. (Plus these will retain a better value in the future)

As for you problem, have you tried linuxcoin? Everything is all set up. It sounds like you have a lot of crashing going on, perhaps reinstall the software?

Your hardware set up will work. Also with that big of a PSU, you can easily run 4 cards if you had a different mobo.

VECTORS BFI_INT AGGRESSION=14 WORKSIZE=128 FASTLOOP=false

Is a good place to start with phoenix if you are making a dedicated box.

Or people in the non-mining gaming community is going, "I would have purchased an ATI card, but they are sold out. Again. Or overpriced for the decent ones. Hey look.... all these nvidia cards are cheap as dirt!"

I would skip right over raid 6 and use ZFS. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZFS

And extremetech is a crap website. They reprint old news everyday, or the article is garbage.

The original article is pretty much just an update to this: http://blog.backblaze.com/2009/09/01/petabytes-on-a-budget-how-to-build-cheap-cloud-storage/

Or you might commit suicide:
1) Waiting the 2-3 weeks for RMA
2) Having the RMA rejected
3) smelling the vrm's burning.

Sounds sketchy if it doesn't fit right.

I'm not a hater.  I just don't see the point. 32mhs isn't enough to compensate for the wear and tear on your laptop. Heck, 32mhs could be accomplished by a little overclock. It is .3% more hashing power for you.

Which CPU are you running? How many hard drives, fans, etc.

Use this for a much more accurate power consumption configuration.
http://extreme.outervision.com/psucalculatorlite.jsp

NOTE: You do not have to use an extender if you chop the back off of the Pci-e 1x slot. Obviously, this voids your warranty. but the board you purchased was probably about $30 bucks.

1) Any video pci-e compliant video card. Even the pcie 16x rev 2.0.
2) You can use them all at full speed for mining. I wouldn't suggest gaming with all 3.
3) 5770 is the best $/mhs. But go with the 58xx or 6950's (with or without bios mod to possibly unlock extra shaders). I keep picking up used 5870's for $200, and that is a $2 per mh/s. That's what you should shoot for, 2 to 1. Don't get 6850's. For the extra 30, pick up at 6950, it achieves nearly same performance as the pricier 5870.
4)Do not set up cross fire. Use dummy plugs, I see you are running linux, you might not have to use dummy plugs.
5) Same cards from different vendors WILL NOT matter. What will matter is if the card comes with a factory overclock and what style cooler. Try to pick up the reference centrifugal coolers, these exhaust the air out the back of the case, and makes it much better for keeping the heat from recycling in the case.

Anything else, PM me.

This is just a rehash of what others are saying but I run dual 5870's in a closed case. Antec 900.

Now first, I have both front intake fans on high, the top exhuasting, the PSU exhausting, and the rear exaust fan on high. I then put in a 150ish CFM fan into the side, it's a double thick one and is always on high.

This computer sits directly front of the AC, at 900/300 clock speeds my gpu's are around 70c. I won't push them higher becuase I've already had 1 die.

You should realistically be running an open air rig with those style of cards, then your box fan on the "front" would achieve a lot as it's moving ALL the air across the pc. As the msi coolers you linked are terrible.

If you want to get fancy, I'd put one big piece of cardboard on the side of yoru case. Mount a 120mm fan over both of your gpus for intake, then towards the front of your case on the cardboard mount 2 120's for sucking the hot air out. You might be able to lower the temps with enough push/pull effect.


Also, how hot is your room?