Power saving graphic chip? may lower the cost?

[PRCman]

saw some power saving device :

but don't know the performance

also ...  don't have the mother board

http://www.notebookcheck.net/ATI-Mobility-Radeon-HD-5870.23073.0.html
http://www.notebookcheck.net/ATI-Mobility-Radeon-HD-5830.24733.0.html

[Jaime Frontero]

very interesting.

it only has 800 stream processors, so it'll hash more like a 5770 in a desktop PCIe slot - but still...

easy to cool, scalable, and cheap.

very interesting indeed.  and bookmarked.  thank you.

[MiningBuddy]

How would you get these laptop gpus onto a normal mobo?

[bcpokey]

saw a few of these on ebay, haven't seen them for sale in stores (as they are usually bundled with laptops). ~$400. Doesn't seem a great buy to me.

[Jaime Frontero]

How would you get these laptop gpus onto a normal mobo?

you'd have to breadboard something together - i think they'd work in a PCI slot.  not terribly difficult.

50 W consumption...  my OC'd 5770s use over twice that.

[allinvain]

Yeah but is the performance per watt ratio good?

[Jaime Frontero]

Yeah but is the performance per watt ratio good?

800 SP.  should get about 180 Mh/s or so - for 50 W.

the closest hash rate you can get to that in a desktop PCIe slot is a 5770, for 120 W

the closest wattage in a PCIe slot is a 5670, for 75 Mh/s or so.

theoretically, it looks pretty efficient to me...

[allinvain]

Yeah but is the performance per watt ratio good?

800 SP.  should get about 180 Mh/s or so - for 50 W.

the closest hash rate you can get to that in a desktop PCIe slot is a 5770, for 120 W

the closest wattage in a PCIe slot is a 5670, for 75 Mh/s or so.

theoretically, it looks pretty efficient to me...

Nice so what's next, strip apart a bunch of laptops and solder some 5870m chips on the same card, build a PCI express bridge and voila...

[Jaime Frontero]

Yeah but is the performance per watt ratio good?

800 SP.  should get about 180 Mh/s or so - for 50 W.

the closest hash rate you can get to that in a desktop PCIe slot is a 5770, for 120 W

the closest wattage in a PCIe slot is a 5670, for 75 Mh/s or so.

theoretically, it looks pretty efficient to me...

Nice so what's next, strip apart a bunch of laptops and solder some 5870m chips on the same card, build a PCI express bridge and voila...

maybe this?

http://www.twinind.com/catalog_detail.php?id=7

eh.  life is seldom that easy - and i'm not the guy to do it.  i'm a network hack, not a hardware developer.

still... i'd bet you could pick up that mobile GPU pretty cheap, if you went about it right.

[allinvain]

Neither am I. I would have no clue where to begin. Designing your own circuit board is not that easy. I think for now I'll stick to "power hungry" 5870s and 5850s :p

My great hope is not for these low power gpus but for fpgas and ASICs.

[PRCman]

Neither am I. I would have no clue where to begin. Designing your own circuit board is not that easy. I think for now I'll stick to "power hungry" 5870s and 5850s :p

My great hope is not for these low power gpus but for fpgas and ASICs.

Is there any ASICs designed for short fixed length SHA256?

[phelix]

there are some threads about the ASICs on the forum. from what I read it does not look like they would overrun the GPUs too soon.

laptop gpus or other power efficient chips are mostly only underclocked and undervolted normal chips. you can as well underclock and undervolt your normal graphic card. In my case that will not be necessary until difficulty hits 1.5-2 million.