What he is saying is there is no reason or need to cross fire. Leave the cards "uncrossfired" and you can use and two cards you like. I wouldn't mix 5000 series and 6000 series cards if you can avoid it. Each generation has optimal settings and trying to get settings optimal across multiple generations will be a pain in the ass.
TL/DR version:
I would get a 5870 over 5850. Just don't crossfire. Some people report no problems enabling crossfire but it doesn't provide any benefit so keep it simple.
Oh I never realized that you did not have to crossfire in a multi card configuration. Thanks for clearing that up!  |
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Hello,
I am a little new to the concept of bitcoins but it does not surprise me of such a system. I am very knowledgable in computers and specialize in penetration testing and the security field. I am a member of a few forums and I am very reputable in all of them. You can trust me as for anything. I have made forum market transactions in the past on other forums with feedbacks of 100%. In all there is no reason for me to be of any harm or detrimental to the forum community.
I am currently mining on a HD 5850 mining rig and will expand later hopefully to FPGAs and the lot due to their high efficiency in mh/w ratings.
As hobbies I like to work out physics problems, design computer chips on Minecraft, mining bitcoins, and gaming.
I am definitely a person that knows what they are doing. I can guarantee no regret from whitelisting me.
Thank you in advance,
Aqrulesms
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You can run them in the same computer, but--
Two cards do not need to be crossfired to operate in the same motherboard, and many miners do not run their cards in xfire.
You could xfire them (the 5970 is two 5870s, and you can xfire any 58xx cards together) but you may actually see a performance decrease, since the 5970 will downclock to match the 5850.
So it would be the most economical to purchase another 5850? A 5870 will also downclock to match the 5850 also, correct? |
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Hmm that might be good, but the problem is my PS3 is not jailbroken, and I have a very small budget as to my mining.
I'm thinking about just mining single with one 5850, selling my PS3 and then using the combined cash to get a 5970 + 5850 CrossfireX configuration.
Are the two even compatible? I've seen pics of people running them crossfire but I'm not too sure, and it's not officially supported by Ati.
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Thank you very much. I'll go along with my mining plan.
Will most likely just sell my PS3(which I no longer use) for this operation.
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Hello, I currently have a converted gaming rig that I am currently using for mining. It is currently running a 5850 at 300 mh/s at stock speed without OC, as I want to make sure my card has a fair longevity. I am deciding whether or not to add another 5850 to this rig. The most concern I have is for the slowly increasing difficulty rate and was wondering if I could make back my $150 on this to later increase on my mining endeavors. At the moment HD 5850s cost $150 each, as you may know. In total I am simply wondering that with the combined power of 600 mh/s, can I make back my money fast enough? Power is not a concern, and it costs about 3 cents per kilowatt, totaling at 6 cents due to fuel cost. Thanks for your opinions and advice. |
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I believe he should set the flags for dedicated mining. It brought up my Mh/s very significantly.
CGMiner:
-I 9
GUIMiner:
-v -w 128
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With MSI Afterburner my cards appear to be great at 900/300. I had to raise the voltage quite a bit though. Not sure if that's bad or not but the card is faring well at 61C.
Thanks for the help!
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The price is starting to go back up on bitcoins and while a lot of people are jumping out of the game there are a lot of veteran miners still buying. If you already have a 5850 I would suggest going ahead and mining! You will make more than you spend in electricity (assuming you don't pay an absurd amount). I would also highly suggest downclocking the memory and undervaluing to save a lot of electricity and heat. You'd be surprised how much it can help . Here's and compiled undervolting results link https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=65997.0. There are also other posts about underclocking out there. If you need any of those links just ask. Best of luck! Quite interesting.. What exactly is undervaluing? Do you only bring down the memory clock speed and voltage or also the core clock? Thank you EDIT: What is a good OC tool to use? Asus smartdoctor seems to be quite limited. Would underclocking the memory also let me achieve higher core rates? He meant to say undervolt. Underclock mem speed, then experiment to get best ratio of high core speed to low voltage. With electricity so cheap, your biggest expense I'd guess would be component failure. Running cards hot or at a higher voltage will kill them much quicker than keeping them undervolted. That said, I had 7 5850s running for about 10 months overclocked @ stock voltage without any problems, but others seem much less lucky. If you're running the same non-reference 5850s (ASUS DirectCU cards) I'm running, it can be difficult. MSI Afterburner is well-regarded for overclocking, but it takes some effort to get it to function correctly with those cards (I couldn't get it to work). I did use ATI Tray Tools with good success on those cards, however. Underclocking the memory speed (which is irrelevant when mining, but you generally shouldn't clock it below 300MHz or it may become unstable) will cause the card to draw less power while operating, thus allowing you to raise the core speed (what is used in mining) without needing to increase voltage. Do you remember what your clock speeds were with default voltage? |
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The price is starting to go back up on bitcoins and while a lot of people are jumping out of the game there are a lot of veteran miners still buying. If you already have a 5850 I would suggest going ahead and mining! You will make more than you spend in electricity (assuming you don't pay an absurd amount). I would also highly suggest downclocking the memory and undervaluing to save a lot of electricity and heat. You'd be surprised how much it can help . Here's and compiled undervolting results link https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=65997.0. There are also other posts about underclocking out there. If you need any of those links just ask. Best of luck! Quite interesting.. What exactly is undervaluing? Do you only bring down the memory clock speed and voltage or also the core clock? Thank you EDIT: What is a good OC tool to use? Asus smartdoctor seems to be quite limited. Would underclocking the memory also let me achieve higher core rates? |
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Electricity is quite cheap in my area, at 3 cents a kilowatt, (lucky for me my powerplant runs on natural gas = cheap ) Electricity at the moment does not seem to be a very big concern, although they appear to be increasing the rate slightly in the future. I may be able to get another 5850 to crossfire my unit to get an average of 700mh/s. This is my old gaming rig so making a huge profit is not too concerning. Thank you for your help however. |
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Building one yourself is easily the best.
What is limiting you from building one on your own? Typically pre-built PCs have an overhead cost and are quite a big deal more expensive than just building your own PC. I can take this from experience. EX. Dell, HP, etc.
This way, you can ensure you'll get the most profit possible in any case.
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Hello,
I have recently found out about bitcoins and I would like to start mining. From what I heard, the difficulty of getting BTC is going up exponentially.
With only an HD 5850 churning out 370mh/s, is it a viable and profitable opportunity?
All tips and advice are welcome.
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