I have a new 5750 to go with my 5850 but I'm defiantly going to need a new psu first, probably at least 550 watts on the same rail and I'll pass my old one down along with a 9800gt .

I really like the Thermaltake Toughpower ones cuz they look nice and beasty but theres always deals on these APEVIA ones so I don't know which one to get.  I imagine these would be good for around the same amount of power but if I paid the extra $20 it would be more reliable, efficient, and its modular, maybe worth it in the long run?  If you have any other suggestions lets me know. thanks

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817148046
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817153125

Alright, thanks for the info guys.  I think I will get the drive and just start using it and if i get to a point where I have everything backed up so that I can reformat, maybe cloud storage? I'll try out raid 0.  What would be nice in the future is 0+1, or just 1 for important stuff and a couple ssd's in 0 would be perfect for programs and os.  It kinda sucks right now tho, hd's don't seem to be getting any cheaper, just ssd's.  Other wise i'd say short stroke 4 3tb drives and be future proof  So I will go by the rule, you mine as-well use raid 0 if its fine to loose everything

Also Iv'e heard raid 5 is terrible for performance using cpu and being slow or something if you don't have an external raid controller?  that would require 3 hard drives anyways tho?

Alright.  so I'm looking at harddrives for expanding my storage probably for the next couples years until ssd's are cheap and I only have enough money for a cheap sata ii hd.  This one thats in my price range happens to be the same model as the one that I've had for a couple years and its still working perfectly so I was thinking why not do raid 0?  Only reason I ask is because Iv'e heard its better to get all drives from the same batch for raid but would that matter too much?  hares the link http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136696

I recently got a dual fan 5850 (with a cleaned heatsynk). I'm trying to not run the fans too fast because I hear they go out quickly on the dual fan ones, one of them already rattles in certain positions when I got it but it was supposedly underclocked and used in lan party computers

Right now I have clocks at 920/500 and auto fan speed so its running at 88c/78% fan speed pretty constant right now.  I'm not sure what I should do on a costum fan curve if any.  I could lower the fan speed 10-15% with it costing only around 5c maybe so I'm just trying to get a good balance. 

So yeah, I just want to know what the highest temp I can run my card at constantly for a few years  .

Thanks

Yes it does make since 

nope, would that be like a bois setting?  Of course I didn't try to connect them together so I just thought it wouldn't matter.

Ok, sorry to keep on replying. 

I just tried each card in both slots and both cards simultaneously in differint orders also testing it like that while powering one card with another computers 6pin that was more than enough power.  I don't think wattage is an issue since I can go in bois and use the windows boot menu no matter what before it trys to boot forever.

Since both card slots work I'm hoping that its some issue with windows, maybe I can test it with a bootable cd?  I could try ubuntu I guess.

Maybe Nvidia and ATI just don't work together in my motherboard or has any body ever done this?

Ok I looked at my psu manual and every single connector is on the 1st 12V rail except for the 4+4 pin one and I connected that to my motherboard.  I'm no expert but that seems retarded.  Doesn't that mean my power supply is going to be overloaded when I use more than 250 watts on the first rail?  I might be using around that much right now without the second video card and around 100 watts on the second rail maybe because 4+4pin is for cpu?

going to try 2 power supplies now.

Hey thanks for pointing that out.  I thought it only had 1 rail but I looked it up and it has two.  Need to look inside again, seems like it was balanced tho since I wasn't using any 4 pins and I was using them for my 9800gt and the 2 6 pins for my 5850.  Will try a different way maybe with more power from booster psu.

Also for some weird reason I had problems installing windows when I had my 5850 installed, but it worked with my 9800gt fine.

And the power supply is only a few years old, seemed like I was buying a quality one..80plus bronze and its still a common one on newegg.

Well it climbed back up to $9.  I don't know if I should be selling every thing before it drops super low or will it?  I only have 2.2 btc but I was going to buy a gift card in btc sometime in the next few days so I can get my mom some new desktop speakers 

I don't know if I'm missing something because I've never had 2 video cards before.  I have a 5850 and a 9800gt but I was giving the 9800gt away anyways and I was going to get a 5770 for my second card.  My power supply is an antec earth watts 500 so it should be good (defiantly enough to boot up at-least right?).  When I tried adding in my 9800gt my computer gets stuck on the windows 7 booting screen, It wouldn't take 10 minuets the first time would it?

I have an old 135 watt (idle) psu with 4 pins on it so I have a booster if I need to use it.  and my 9800gt works fine when its the only card and my 5850 of coarse.

My system is an AM3, 2 crossfire slots, a pheonom ii dual core but its oced to 3.5 and uses 3 cores, 3 ram sticks, a sata hardrive, 5 fans and not much else (using power)

I should note that I have to change back to dual core in bois in order to install windows so I thats another thing I can try.

I guess I'll try another 500watt psu combined with myn from another computer to make sure power is not an issue but I wanted to ask first.

Thanks

I think windows 7 is smart os, easy to use but most people r still too dumb to use it right.  I don't even use a virus scan, haven't had a virus since windows xp. 7 is just super easy to customize/set up plus is plays DX11 games.

I just thought of this storage idea that seems good to me with HD's being more expensive and SSD's even more.  I don't know if it would be possible to use it like I'm thinking though.  I would want to be able to transfer files back and fourth and maybe download things to the disk/delete them.   Then have a little book for storing all the less frequently used files.

A used or refurbished 58xx card for only a little bit more will get you allot higher hash rates.  They sell broken ones even for 30-50 dollars sometimes and they hold their value more than any other cards.  A 5770 = a 6770 I think, there ok but the 58xx ones are cheap beasts.

I'm not bias towards amd or Intel or anything, Intel seems a little better for low dollar cpu's lately.  I think this is a deal that wont be around for long that I'm about to post, you can use PCI extenders if you end up getting more cards but it has one GPU slot.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813121557
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116704
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820145407

about $60 for the 3 parts, a full atx motherboard.  I would buy it now if I had the money.  

nice job .That was a really interesting read, even with my add

Thanks for the info, I'm sure it will be useful someday.  unfortunately I don't think thats an option with my card with this bois, I tried it and it wouldn't change clocks speeds at all (was stuck at stock).  thats ok anyways because I might end up selling the card for reference ones instead...  I feel dumb for spending $150 on a dual fan cooler one with a rattly fan, just wanted to get started already.

Right now Iv'e been having other problems, waking up in the morning and my miner quit running, also the card goes into some power save mode possibly, under-clocking the core clock to around 300 so I would have to restart.
So far the only thing that seemed to have caused that to happen is youtube so I turned off hardware acceleration and I haven't seen low clock speeds yet. 

It seems like people really know their stuff on this forum tho, even the noob section, thanks 

Nope, only the simple GUIMiner with the -v -w128 flag to make it faster.
Does this one do unofficial overclocking or something that would get around the bois limit possibly?

yeah MSI afterburner seems to be exactly the same as EVGA precision which I've used for years on my old 9800gt.  AMD overdrive is kinda yuk. 

Set custom fan curve, right now its sitting at around 81c and 66% fan speed and silent.

Well I tried that program now and it won't let me go above 920 on the core still, at-least I can under clock the mem with it and get it to run a little bit cooler.   I knew the bois was probably going to be locked when I got this card but I still got a great oc out of it,  I don't think I wana change the bois unless I could safely get 400+ mhashes

I don't know if AMD overdrive is like this for everybody but the range I have to overclock is limited and I can't under-clock my memory either.  I'm happy to be getting 350 Mhash/s but I'm sure I could be getting a little better.

Card is a dual fan gigibyte 5850 oc.  Brought clock from 765 to the max... 920 easily. 

I don't know if I need to flash the bois to allow for higher clocks or just use different program?

Just got this card in the mail this morning :exited: